India's Problem, Krishna or Christ Part 21

Toru Dutt, of Calcutta, one of the brilliant young stars of India, was versed in French, German and English. At twenty-one she published "A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields." It is a skillful and able English translation of the works of famous French authors. She and her sister, Aru, were remarkably talented. It is sad that she, who was so full of intellectual brightness and so beautiful in Christian life, should have been taken away by death in the bloom of life.

Miss Goreh is the only Indian Christian who has thus far added to our popular English hymnology. Her beautiful hymn:

"In the secret of His presence how my soul delights to hide; Oh, how precious are the moments which I spend at Jesus' side.

Earthly cares can never reach me, neither trials bring me low; For when Satan comes to tempt me to the Secret Place I go,"-

has been a blessing to many in this land of ours.

Mrs. Sattianathan of Madras (the wife of a distinguished Indian Christian) was another bright young woman who showed marked evidence of talent as an English writer. Her books, descriptive of the life both of Hindu and of Indian Christian women, have had deservedly large popularity. They created in many of her friends a hope for even greater results from her. But, alas, these hopes were soon shattered by her sad and premature death.

The second Mrs. Sattianathan, herself an M. A. of the Madras University, has entered upon a brilliant career as a writer, and has established the first English monthly magazine for her Indian sisters-a magazine which is full of attractiveness and promise.

These ladies are only a few of those who ill.u.s.trate the ability, devotion, beauty and promise of the women of India. Such are preeminently the hope of that country.

It was while looking upon one of these Indian Christian ladies that the late Benjamin Harrison, Ex-President of the United States, remarked that if he had spent a million dollars for missions and had seen, as a result of his offering, only one such convert as Miss Singh he would still have considered his offering a most profitable investment.

These women are creating their own opportunities and will, ere long, achieve much in all the ranks of life and especially in their own peculiar sphere of womanly activity and influence. Woman will do more for the progress and development of the country than the sterner s.e.x, as she has. .h.i.therto done more than he to conserve and dignify the past. And it is safe to conclude that the womanhood of India will discover its chief glory as it now finds its largest opportunity in Christianity. And I may add that the mission of Christianity to, and in behalf of, the women of that land may almost be called its chief mission, as the results which it has achieved, and will yet achieve, in this line, will const.i.tute its chief glory.

At large centres the Indian Christian community is already beginning to feel its power and is organizing in behalf of its own highest interest.

The "Madras Native Christian a.s.sociation" is perhaps the strongest organization of the community. It unites hundreds of the best members and gives them a corporate existence and furnishes opportunity to render articulate the ideals, ambitions and needs of the Christian community. It has recently undertaken several enterprises of importance, such as _The Twentieth Century Enterprise and the Indian Christian Industrial Exhibition_. It discusses, with much sanity, the most serious problems of the community and creates a worthy sentiment which will increasingly spread until it reaches the remotest parts of the country.

All this tends to show that the community is growing conscious both of its strength, its responsibility and its opportunity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rev. S. Sattianatha, LL.D.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mrs. S. Kruba Sattianatha.]

For the furtherance of this purpose weekly and monthly magazines, both in the English language and in the vernaculars, are being conducted by them.

_The Christian Patriot_, the best organ of the community, is published in Madras, is conducted with much ability and represents the best sentiments of its const.i.tuents. It has done much to develop the consciousness of life and power in the community and has always urged worthy ideals upon its readers.

The seriousness with which all the native Christians of India regard their calling and the grat.i.tude with which they enjoy their faith is clearly attested by their offerings.

Perhaps nothing can render more satisfactory reply to those who charge the native Christians with worldly motives than to show how far they deny themselves in behalf of their faith. In other words the benevolence and offerings of the native Christians may be taken as a fair test of their sincerity and of their spiritual appreciation. It is a good test in any land. I have said that they are very poor. A few years ago I investigated carefully the economic conditions of the most prosperous and largest village congregation of the Madura Mission. I discovered that five rupees (that is $1.66) was the average monthly income of each family of that congregation. And that meant only thirty-three cents a month for the support of each member of a family! We have congregations whose income is less than this. And yet, the Christians of that mission contributed over two rupees (seventy-five cents) per church member as their offering for 1900. For all the Protestant Missions of South India the average offering per church member during 1900 was one rupee and nine annas (fifty-two cents). For South India this represented an aggregate sum of R 248,852 ($85,000) or about seven and one-half per cent, of the total sum expended in the missions during that year. An American can easily realize how much this offering is as an absolute gift; but he cannot realize how much of self-denial it means to that very poor people; nor how large an offering it is as related to the best offerings of our home churches today. If our American Christians contributed for the cause of Christ a percentage of their income equal to that of the native Christians of India they would quadruple their benevolence. And if, in relation to their income, the Christians of India contribute four times as much as the Christians of America, in relation to their real ability, after supplying the most primitive needs of their bodies, they contribute a hundred times more than do their brothers and sisters in this great land of luxury and abundance.

Who in America, today, in contributing to the cause of Christ, denies himself a convenience or a comfort; yea more, who on that account fails to meet the craving of bodily appet.i.te? And yet there are many Christians in India who suffer in both these respects in order that they may add the widow's mite to the treasury of the Church and their loving offering to advance the Kingdom of the Lord.

In this way the infant Christian Church of India, in its poverty of this world's goods, is revealing a wealth of spirit and a richness of purpose such as are worthy of emulation in Christian lands today.

The organized effort of the Indian Church for self-extension is rapidly multiplying. Every endeavour is put forth to train them out of that spirit of dependence which is one of the necessary evils incident to modern missions.

In nearly all well organized missions in India are found, as we have already seen, Home Missionary Societies, which are conducted and maintained by the people, and which constantly direct their thoughts to their privilege to further the cause of Christ in their own land and among their own people.

Work by the young for the young, also, is being conducted with increasing prevalence, zeal and success throughout the land.

Indeed, all departments of a healthful, normal life and activity are vigorously prosecuted on mission territory with a view to imparting to the Christians, not only a knowledge of the highest type of Christian altruism, but also for the purpose of making them partakers of the same.

And the Indian Christian community at present, notwithstanding all its faults and weaknesses, which I would not conceal, furnishes us much encouragement as a product of past effort and as a growing power which is to be used by G.o.d in the speedy upbuilding of his Kingdom in that great land of the East.

There are, indeed, not many forms of organized Christian activity conducted by Indian Christians themselves-apart from Western missions.

There are some, however, which are worthy of note and commendation. Such are Pandita Ramabai's Mukti Mission for Widows; Miss Chuckerb.u.t.ty's flourishing Orphanages; Mrs. Sorabji's High School for Women; the Gopalgange Mission started by the Rev. M. N. Bose, and Dr. P. B. Keskar's Orphanage and Industrial School at Sholapur.

Recently a novel enterprise was inaugurated in the American Mission, Jaffna, Ceylon, in the form of a Foreign Missionary Society, which sends forth, to a region in Southern India, its missionaries to carry the gospel of Christ to the non-Christians of that place. It is chiefly conducted and supported by the young people of the mission and is prophetic of a movement which will, ere long, spring up throughout India as a result of a growing sense of responsibility and opportunity among the Christians of that land.

It is with no spirit of boasting that I wish to dwell upon the share which America has had in producing these results. Other people have done in some respects, better than we. But there is no doubt that India is much influenced by our land. America has, for a century, lavishly given her sons and daughters and expended her wealth for the salvation of India. Her sacrifices have not been in vain. None have found more hearty response among that people than the American Missions. Among the many Protestant Missions now at work in that Peninsula less than one-fourth are American; and, yet in connection with these missions have been gathered and are found nearly one-half of all of the Protestant Christians of that land. In South India the mission which has found much the largest success in gathering converts is an American Mission. In North India, again, one of our missions stands preeminent in the mult.i.tude of its Christians, and another, in the excellence of its educational power and leavening influence. In Western India, also, America stands first in the acknowledged power and preeminence of one of its missions.

In the organized movements for the young, America again stands conspicuous in that land. As we study the wonderful activity exercised by Protestant Christianity in behalf of India's youth, we are at once impressed by the leadership of American workers as we are by the American methods used.

The finest Y. M. C. A. building in the Orient is mostly American, both in conception and in the organized energy and princely offering which made it possible. It stands today in the city of Madras, as one of the n.o.blest and the most beautiful tributes of western Christian enterprise to that great land.

The only theological seminary which has been adequately endowed for the training of Protestant Christian workers in India, is an American one.

Perhaps the best, because the most sane and enterprising, Christian weekly newspaper in the land is American.

The only Quarterly Review conducted in that land by Protestant Christians was founded by an American.

And, in the same line, it is interesting to note that American presses and publishing houses are multiplying and are exercising an ever-widening influence in the redemption of that country.

So largely have all these American agencies been used for the furtherance of Christian truth and light; and so much have they been welcomed and appropriated by the people, that it may well be spoken of as "an American Invasion."

The Bishop of Newcastle, England, referred to this in his last annual sermon. "So far," he says, "has America realized the need of winning India to Christ that a hundred years hence, if the last thirty years' proportion continue, India will owe its Christianity more to America than to Great Britain and Ireland combined." These words are no less significant in their truthfulness than generous in their appreciation. England has been entrusted with the work of leading that great people of the Orient, politically and socially, into a larger and higher life. This, by a strange Providence, has been entrusted to her in consequence of her conquest of that people seven thousand miles away and seven times her own population. So also has America been favoured with a fair share of opportunity and of influence as the moral supporter of England in this unique and unprecedented work. And, while England by the nature of her compact, or conquest, is somewhat handicapped in this task, so far as her religious influence upon the people is concerned, America has free access and ample entrance into the heart of the community because of her disinterested and unrestrained relationship to them.

Her voice to India has always been the voice of a constraining altruism.

All her endeavours in that land have been the outgoings of a world-wide philanthropy and of Christian self-denial. Therefore, she has been free and unenc.u.mbered in all her ambitions for the uplifting of that people; and she has found the heartiest response and warmest appreciation from those whom she has sought to bless. Consequently, that n.o.ble band of 1,000 of her sons and daughters, who are today giving themselves to the salvation of India; and the one million dollars sent forth annually to maintain her work in that land, are fruitful in the highest good and in the richest result in all parts of the land.

While all this means a great achievement, it means also, and preeminently, a stirring opportunity. The widest door of opportunity is open to America among her antipodes in that historic land. Christian effort can nowhere else find heartier welcome or results more encouraging and telling in the great gathering of eastern nations into the Kingdom of our Lord.

Chapter XI.

MISSIONARY RESULTS-(CONTINUED)

1. THE LEAVEN OF CHRISTIANITY.

Our Lord compared his Kingdom to the mustard seed which grew into a tree.

This wonderful growth and development of his Kingdom we considered in the last chapter. He compared it also to the leaven which was placed in the meal and which leavened the whole lump. We shall now consider the leavening or a.s.similating work of his Kingdom as at present witnessed in India.

If a man were to ask me, "wherein do you find the most encouragement as a Christian worker in India?" I would doubtless reply:-not in the Church and community gathered by the missions, but outside of the Christian fold, in the inst.i.tutions, and among the non-Christians, of the land. It is not in the fields already harvested (though much of joy and promise we certainly find there), but in the fields whitening for the harvest, that we see the largest hope for the ultimate conquest of that great people by Christ.

There are in India, at present, a thousand results, movements and tendencies which, to the thoughtful, watchful, Christian worker, bespeak the rapid coming of the Kingdom of Christ, even though their testimony is not heard through mission statistical tables, and though their activity is found mostly outside the visible pale of the Church.

I appreciate the fact that, when we begin to consider these results which lie outside the life and organization of the Christian community, we need much discernment and discrimination, lest we ascribe to Christianity alone an influence and an efficiency which it only shares with Western thought and civilization. But it is not only impossible to separate these forces, in our endeavour to estimate the share of each in the results achieved; western thought and civilization, both in their origin and development, are themselves as much the product as they are the expression of Christianity; so that we need not hesitate much in ascribing to our faith all the results which the combined energy of these have produced in that land.

Another discrimination is here necessary. In the last chapter we dwelt, almost exclusively, upon Protestant missionary activity and results. These we were able to measure chiefly through the concentrated activity and published statistical reports of Protestant Missions. But, in considering the more indirect and general results there achieved we must not forget that they must be ascribed to all the Christian agencies at work in that land. I believe that Protestant Christianity is much the largest Christian power among all the forces that make for the redemption of India. And yet it would be presumptuous and unjust not to recognize the strenuous activity and pervasive influence of Roman Catholicism in the land. I am convinced that that great historic Church, with all its errors and false methods, is nevertheless a positive and a mighty power in the dissemination of Christian thought and principles in India. In the results which I am about to mention, this and all other Christian agencies have had their share.