Pioneers and Founders Part 15

Proprietary chapels have now nearly become extinct. They were an effect of the neglect of the heathenish eighteenth century, and one of the means of providing church room by private speculation; and thus they almost necessarily were liable to the abuses of popularity-hunting and of lack of care for individuals, especially the poor: but a man in thorough earnestness is sure to draw good even out of a defective system; and Daniel Wilson, sitting in his study which was connected with the chapel, became the counsellor of hundreds who sought spiritual advice and a.s.sistance, chiefly of the upper and well-to-do cla.s.ses, but he took care to avoid wasting time over these conferences, and when it came to mere talk would put people's hats and umbrellas into their hands. There were also large Sunday-schools connected with his chapel, and taught by the members of his congregation, and these led to the first organization of a district visitors' society, one of the earliest attempts of the slowly reviving English Church to show her laity how to minister to the poor under pastoral direction.

His father-in-law, Mr. William Wilson, had purchased the advowson of the living of Islington, and, when it became vacant in 1824, presented it to him, when he carried thither all his vigour and thoroughness. Church building was his first necessity, and he absolutely prevailed on his parish to rate themselves for the purpose, so that three churches were begun almost at once, and by the time his Life was written in 1860 the great suburb had multiplied its single church in thirty-six years into fifteen. At Islington the chief sorrows of his life befel him. He had had six children, of whom one died an infant and two more in early childhood. The second son, John, after a boyhood of great promise, fell into temptation at the University and led a wild and degrading course; ending by his retirement to the Continent, where he died in 1833, after a very painful illness, in which he had evinced great agony of mind, which softened at length into repentance and hope. The eldest son, Daniel, who attended him on his death-bed, had taken holy orders and succeeded to his father's former living of Warton; and one daughter, Eliza, born in 1814, survived to cheer his home when his wife, after some years of invalidism, died in 1827. Zealous, resolute, and hardworking, he never allowed sorrow to interfere with his work, and was soon in the midst of his confirmation cla.s.ses, and of a scheme for educating young tradespeople on a more thorough and religious system.

In the meantime he had always loved and urged the missionary cause, and had consulted with Bishop Turner before he went out. When the news of his decease was received (the fourth Bishop to die at his post within nine years), the appointment began to be looked on as a sentence of death, and it was declined in succession by several eminent clergymen.

Daniel Wilson had anxiously watched for the answer in each case, and was suggesting several persons to Mr. Charles Grant, when the thought struck him, "Here I am, send me." A widower of fifty-four years old, of much strength, and with no young children, seemed to him the fit person to volunteer to fill the breach; and he wrote stating, that if no one else could be found for the post, he was willing to offer himself. The appointment was accordingly given to him, after an interval of nine months since the see had become vacant, and an infinity of toil and arrangements crowded on him. Islington was resigned to his son Daniel, and he was consecrated by Archbishop Howley on the 29th of April, 1832, "the day of my espousals to CHRIST my Saviour," as he wrote in his journal; and on the ensuing 18th of June he sailed with his daughter for Calcutta. The ship touched at the Cape, which under the government of Sir Lowry Cole was by no means in the same hopeless state of neglect as when Martyn had visited it. Bishop Wilson there held an ordination and a confirmation, the first for himself as well as for South Africa, whose Episcopate was not founded till twenty-three years later.

He landed at Calcutta on the 5th of November, 1832, and took possession of the large unfurnished house that had at last been wrung out of Government. He found only just enough chairs and tables, placed there by the Archdeacon, to suffice for immediate use; and was answered, when he asked why his orders that the place should be completely fitted up had not been attended to, "I thought this would be enough to last for six months,"--this being the term for which a Bishop of Calcutta was thought likely to need earthly furniture. But Bishop Wilson was resolved to take reasonable precaution, and not to be daunted, or to act as if he were afraid. He furnished the place, and rented a pleasant country-house, called the Hive, at t.i.ttaghur, where he spent a few days of every week; and, having been told that much danger was incurred by the exertion of visitation tours before the const.i.tution had become accustomed to the climate, he resolved to wait for two years before making any long journey; and, in the meantime, he was able to collect a great amount of information, as well as attending to the regulation of matters at head- quarters. He kept up more formality and state than Bishop Heber had done; and, of course, as the one had been censured for his simplicity, so the other was found fault with for pomp and stiffness. But these were minor points, chiefly belonging to the character of the two men, whose whole natures were in curious accordance with their prize performances at Oxford,--the one with all the warmth, fire, and animation of the poet of Palestine, sensitive to every impression, and making all serve to light his altar-flame; the other all common-sense, sincere, deep, and laborious, but with a narrower range of sympathies, and afraid of all that might distract attention from the one great subject. General literature had no charms for Wilson. He is believed never to have read one of Scott's poems or novels; and the playful mirth that enlivened all Heber's paths was not with him, though he had the equable cheerfulness of a faithful servant doing his Lord's work. His daughter, soon after his arrival, married her cousin, Josiah Bateman, his chaplain (and biographer), and thus continued to be the mistress of her father's house.

On the Whitsunday of 1833 the Bishop baptized one of those Hindoo gentlemen who are among the most satisfactory of Christian converts; they are free from the suspicion of interested motives which has always attached to the pariahs and low-caste people who hung about Serampore and its dependent stations, and, justly or unjustly, were accused of turning Christians when they had exhausted other resources of idleness and knavery. A curious instance of a thorough conversion happened the same year. A lad, educated like most other well-to-do Hindoos in the schools of the Church Missionary at Mirzampore, when about fifteen, became persuaded of the saving grace of Christianity, and determined to be baptized and openly forsake his idols. His parents persecuted him, and he fled to a friend, a Hindoo convert; but he was seized by his relations, and the case was referred to the Supreme Court, who decided that the father's power over the son must not be interfered with; and the poor boy was dragged away, clinging to the barrister's table, amid the shouts of the heathen and the tears of the Christians. The boy remained staunch, and three years later came again and received baptism; but his sufferings had injured his health, both of mind and body, and his promise of superior intelligence was blighted.

In 1834, the Bishop set off on his first long journey, which included Penang and Moulmein, where the Judsons had taken refuge after the Burmese war, and where he found, in the midst of half-cleared jungle and Buddhist temples full of enormous idols, a school kept by an American master, so full of notions of equality, that, at the examination, he expected the Bishop to go to each cla.s.s, not the cla.s.s to the Bishop.

The Commissioner had built a church, the walls of teak slabs, and the pillars each a single teak-tree, and it was ready for consecration. After this and a confirmation, the Bishop went on his way to Ceylon, and then to the Madras Presidency, where he had already had a long correspondence with the pastors of the Christian congregations on the question of caste.

Things had not prospered of late; and, to the dismay of the Bishop, he found that, in the course of the last year, 168 Christians had fallen back to heathenism, where, not having broken their caste, they could still be received and find a place. The truth was that, though caste might appear only a distinction of mere social rank, it was derived from a pagan superst.i.tion, and was a stronghold of heathenism. Schwartz was all his life trying to make it wear and die out, lest the violent renunciation should be too much for his converts' faith. But his successors had allowed the feeling to retrograde; and Bishop Wilson found separate services, sides of the church allotted to the high and low castes, and the most unchristian distinctions made between them. He decided that toleration of the prejudice was only doing harm, and issued orders that henceforth catechumens preparing for baptism, confirmation, or communion, should be called on to renounce caste as a condition of admittance; and that, though the adult communicants should be gently dealt with, there should be no recognition of the distinction in the places in church, in the order of administering the Holy Communion, in marriages or processions, and that differences of food or dress, or marks on the forehead, should be discontinued. The clergy were in consternation, and made an appeal before they published the Bishop's letter to their flocks; but they found his mind made up, and yielded. The lesser stations complied without much difficulty; but at Trichinopoly, Vepery, and Tanjore, there were many Soodras, the soldier-caste, professing to have come from Brahma's shoulders, and second only to the Brahmins. They were desperately offended. At Trichinopoly, only seven Soodra families continued to attend the services, although the seceders behaved quietly, and offered no insults either to the clergy or the pariahs. At Vepery, on the reading of the Bishop's letter, the whole Soodra population walked out _en ma.s.se_, except one catechist, who joined them afterwards. They then drew up a paper, declaring that they would not yield, and would neither come to church nor send their children to school, unless they continued to be distinguished; and they set up a service of their own in a chapel lent them by a missionary belonging to the London Society. He was, however, reprimanded for this by the committee which employed him at Madras, and the chapel was withdrawn; upon which the Soodras remained without any public worship whatever for five months, when the catechists and schoolmasters came forward and acknowledged their pride and contumacy, the children dropped into the schools, and the grown-up people, one by one, returned to church, but in their own way.

At Tanjore, the contest was a much harder one. Serfojee had died in 1834, and the son whom Bishop Heber had vainly tried to obtain for education was one of the ordinary specimens of indolent, useless rajahs, enjoying ease and display under British protection; but the Mission had gone on thriving as to numbers, though scarcely as to earnestness or energy; and the Christians numbered 7,000, with 107 catechists and four native clergy, under the management of Mr. Kohloff, almost the last of Schwartz's fellow-workers. The Bishop's letter was read aloud by him, after the sermon, on the 10th of November, 1833. There was an immediate clamour of all the Soodras, who would not be hushed by being reminded that they were in church, and, while Mr. Kohloff was being a.s.sisted from the pulpit, gathered round his wife and insulted her.

Letters pa.s.sed between the Soodras and the missionaries. There was no denial that the Bishop's command was right in itself; but an immense variety of excuses were offered for not complying with it, and only one of the four priests consented,--Nyanapracasem, an old man of eighty, who may be remembered as one of Schwartz's earliest converts, and of the four priests ordained by the Lutherans,--with three catechists, and ten of the general body; all the others remained in a state of secession. When the first death took place among them, Nyanapracasem, the one conforming priest, was appointed to read the funeral service; but he fell sick, and the only subst.i.tute available on the spot was a low-caste catechist, a very respectable man, but whom the Soodras silenced with threats, employing one of their own people in his stead. Next time, they borrowed the Roman Catholic burial-ground, and services were carried on, on Sunday, by one of the dissentient priests, but marriages were celebrated in the heathen fashion, and there was evidently a strong disposition to form a schism, which the reckless, easy, self-willed conduct of the Soodras showed would be Christianity only in name. There had even been an appeal to the Governor-General, and the Bishop felt the whole tone of Christianity in India to be at stake.

It was in the height of this crisis that his journey to Madras was made in the track of Bishop Heber. Twice he preached at Vepery, and the Soodras attended; but he asked no questions, and let them place themselves as they chose, and take precedence, intending to fight out the question at Tanjore.

There, at seven o'clock in the morning of January 10, 1835, on the bank of the Cavery River, he was received by all the faithful Christians and school-children, headed by Kohloff and Nyanapracasem, These were the two remaining fellow-workers of Schwartz. Kohloff, now becoming aged, had his hair long and loose round his florid German face; he was still a true German, full of simple kindness, and his English had a good deal of accent. His Hindoo companion was a beautiful old man, with long snowy hair flowing over his long white robes, who took the Bishop's hand between both of his, and blessed G.o.d for his coming, hoping that as Elijah brought back the stiff-necked Israelites, so the Bishop might turn the hearts of the Soodras.

Late that afternoon, a great party of these a.s.sembled to lay their complaints before the Bishop, bringing their two dissentient priests. One was of doubtful character, and was unnoticed; but to the other, John Pillay, the Bishop addressed himself, telling him to a.s.sure the other Christians that his heart was full of love, and that he would hear their grievances, and answer them another time, when less weary with his journey.

Several spoke, and the Bishop listened to their individual cases. They were anxious to come and hear his sermon, but would only do so if allowed to sit apart; and to this, as one great object was to obtain their attention, the Bishop consented, with a reservation that it was only for that once. The church was thronged, and after a Tamul service, the Bishop preached, pausing after every sentence that a catechist might render his words into Tamul. The text was, "Walk in love, as Christ also loved us," and the latter part of his discourse was on the lesson from the Good Samaritan, as to "who is my neighbour." There was at the end a long pause of breathless silence, and then he called on everyone present to offer up the following prayer: "Lord, give me a broken heart to receive the love of Christ, and obey His commands." The whole congregation repeated the words aloud in Tamul, and then he gave the blessing and dismissed them.

After this there were a great number of private conferences. People came and owned that they had been very unhappy; religion had died in their hearts, and they had had no peace; but their wives were the great objectors--they feared whether they should marry their daughters, &c. &c.

The two priests especially saw the badness of their standing-ground, but they should lose respect, they said. No Pariah seems to have been in holy orders, but if a Pariah catechist visited a sick person, he was not allowed to come under the roof, and the patient was carried out into the verandah. And then came a rather stormy conference with about 150 Soodras, which occupied two days, since every sentence had to pa.s.s through an interpreter. The objections were various, but as a body the resistance continued, and it was only individuals that came over; some of these, however, did, and it was so clear from all that had pa.s.sed that to permit the distinctions was but a truckling to heathenism, that the Bishop was more than ever resolved on firmness. Two of the priests had conformed, and the Christianity of those who would not do so was plainly not worth having.

There was some polite intercourse with Serfojee's son, whose taste was visible in the alteration of a fine statue of his father by Flaxman, from which the white marble turban had been removed to subst.i.tute a coloured one, with black feathers and ta.s.sels. In him the family has become extinct, since he only left a daughter, and the adoption of a son, after the old Hindoo fashion, has not been permitted by Government.

Thence, Bishop Wilson proceeded towards Trichinopoly. He encamped, by the way, at a place called Muttooputty, a large station on the Coleroon river, where the way had been so prepared for him that there was a grand throng of native Christians, untroubled about caste, and he was obliged literally to lengthen the cords and strengthen the stakes of the large tent used as a chapel. It was one of the memorable days of joy that come now and then to support the laborious spirit of the faithful servant.

"One such day as we have just pa.s.sed is worth years of common service."

At Trichinopoly, with the deepest sense of reverence, he visited the scene of Heber's death, ministered at the same altar, and preached from the same pulpit, after an interval of nine years.

Here, his mode of dealing with the caste-question was thus: When he came robed into the church, he saw groups of natives standing about, instead of placing themselves like the others of the congregation. He went up to two, led them to seats, and his chaplain following, did the same; the rest were seated in like manner without resistance.

When the Celebration took place, the Bishop had given directions as to the order of things. First, a Soodra catechist communicated, then two Pariah catechists, then an English gentleman, next a Pariah, then two Eurasians; and thus without distinction, 147 communicated. The barrier was broken down, and the nucleus of a church without caste was formed.

This presidency of Madras was immediately after formed into a separate see, and given to Daniel Corrie, the friend of Martyn, while Dr. Thomas Carr became Bishop of Bombay.

On Wilson's return to Tanjore he found an increasing though still small number had conformed, and before he left the place there were hopes of larger numbers. On his way back to Calcutta, he visited the horrible paG.o.da of Juggernaut (properly Jaghanatha, Lord of the World), which was still the centre of worship and pilgrimage; and though the self-immolation of the pilgrims beneath the car had been prohibited, yet the Company's Government still fancied themselves justified in receiving a toll from the visitors to this shrine of cruelty and all uncleanness, up to 1839, when the disgrace was done away by Lord Auckland.

In the year 1836 another journey was made, first to Bombay and then further into the interior, to many places, never visited by a bishop before, and with no chaplain or anything to keep up the sense of religion. At Aurungabad, the utter ignorance of the English officers was appalling. The old Colonel-commandant had not heard a sermon for twenty years, and thought every sentence on the text, "Walk in love," was a personal attack on himself. He refused to attend another service, or to bid the Bishop farewell! And when the Holy Communion was celebrated, n.o.body knew what the offertory meant, and scarcely any one was prepared to respond.

Yet in contrast to these English, a small band of Hindoos, four men, six women, and five children, presented themselves, asking permission to join in the service, and to have their children baptized. They had been once Roman Catholics, but an old Dutchwoman from Ceylon had taught them most of what they knew; and they had a Hindostanee prayer-book, whence they held a service every Sunday, but leaving out the Absolution and Benediction, which they rightly perceived to be priestly functions. Two of them were servants to an English officer, and they were all nearly related. They were perfectly respectable and trustworthy, and looked well dressed and intelligent. The Bishop tried to bring about an application from the Company to the Nizam, to defray the expenses of an occasional visit from a chaplain to the Christian officers and residents in his employ, but he was answered that "it would form a dangerous precedent."

The next step was into the Bengal presidency, always with the same kind of adventures; quaint civilities of the presentation of flowery garlands bedecking the neck and arms, given by the native princes, with a sprinkling of rose-water, and sometimes an anointing with oil; and then an endeavour to stir into Christian life the neglected English military and civil officers stationed in their dominions.

One of these, a gentleman of good birth and repute, actually went on smoking and gurgling his hookah when the Bishop was beginning family prayers, apparently with no more perception that it was anything that concerned him than if he had seen a Mahometan turning to Mecca, or a Pa.r.s.ee saluting the rising sun. Indeed many of these Company's servants had been sent out when fourteen or fifteen years old; and, if in a remote station, had been left without anything external whatever to remind them of Christianity.

This journey extended to the Himalayas, where the Bishop had four months'

repose at Simlah, then in its infancy as a resort for wearied East Indians; and on his descent from thence, his first halting-place was Kurnaul, where he found the church in a state of efficiency, owing, in great part, to an officer whose conversion to a religious life had been very remarkable. Once, when in a large party, where gambling was going on to a reckless extent, he saw one of the players take out a hideous little black figure, supposed to represent the devil, to which he addressed himself with a mixture of entreaties and threats, involving such blasphemy that this officer, utterly horrified, withdrew from the company, spent the night in tears and prayers, and from that time became a religious man. There was also an active chaplain, a large church, and a bungalow, built by the soldiers of an English regiment, the centre part arranged for service, and the surrounding verandah part.i.tioned into little cells, where the soldiers could retire for private prayer or reading. It was called St. John's Chapel, and was in the hands of the chaplain. Here the Bishop remained for two Sundays, and ordained Anund Musseeh, who had been fifteen years a Christian, and had been known to Bishop Heber. The difficulty in his case was the rule not to ordain a person who had a heathen family, since he had not been able to convert his wife. His excellence outweighed the objection, and he was the first Brahmin who received holy orders from an English bishop; but in after- times the heathen influence at home told upon him; and this failure perhaps rendered Bishop Daniel Wilson somewhat over-cautious and backward in ordaining a native ministry.

The next stage was Delhi, where a very interesting interview awaited him.

An officer of Anglo-Indian birth, James Skinner by name, who had raised and commanded a capital body of light horse, had twenty years before entered Delhi with a conquering army, and, gazing on the countless domes and minarets, vowed that if ever he should be able, he would build an English church to raise its cross among them. He had persevered, though the cost far exceeded the estimate, and though the failure of houses of business had greatly lessened his means; and now he came, a tall, stout, dark man of fifty-six, in a uniform of blue, silver, and steel, a helmet on his head and a red ribbon on his breast, to beg for consecration for his church. His sons were Christians, but his wife was a Mahometan, though, he said with tears, that "for thirty years a better wife no man ever had."

The church was of Greek architecture, shaped as a Greek cross, with porticoes with flights of steps at each extremity except the east, which formed the chancel, and at the intersection was a dome and cupola. It was paved with marble, and the whole effect was beautiful. After the consecration a confirmation followed, and the first to receive the apostolic rite were the n.o.ble old Colonel himself and his three sons.

Twenty years later this fine building was filled with dying men, and shared in the horrors of the siege of Delhi; but it has now returned to its rightful use, and as a church of martyrs.

Indeed, all the places that the Bishop visited in this excursion have since been a.s.sociated with the Mutiny. Cawnpore was not much more satisfactory than when Heber had visited it; an irreligious commandant and a dissipated regiment had done much harm; and an imprudent letter of one of the chaplains had led to a quarrel, in which the clergyman unfortunately put himself in the wrong. Happily, a new commanding officer and better conducted regiment had replaced the first, and the ill- feeling was so entirely removed that the Bishop wrote, "Never did I enter a station with such despondency, nor leave one with so much joy." And thus he prepared Cawnpore for that which was in store for it!

His visit to Allahabad was chiefly memorable for his horror at the large resort of pilgrims to bathe in the Ganges, and at the tax by which a Christian government profited by their pagan superst.i.tion, with all its grossness and cruelty. He brought home a little ticket, with the number 76902 stamped on it, such as was issued to the pilgrims, and made a strong appeal to the Governor-General, as well as to persons in England.

The next year both this tax and that on the pilgrims to Jaghernauth were suppressed. Here he heard of the death of Bishop Corrie, after having held the see of Madras only a year and a quarter, but having spent many years in India, and worked there for a whole lifetime, in which he had seen the very dawn of missionary efforts, and had watched the English Church spread from a few scattered chaplains to three bishoprics.

Lord Auckland and his sisters were more sincere friends of Christian efforts than any Governor-General had yet been, but these were trying times. Mr. Bateman, his daughter's husband, fell ill, and his wife was obliged to return to England with him; the Bishop's other chaplain died, and also some of his best friends. On going, a few years later, to consecrate a church at Singapore, he visited Moulmein, and was introduced to Dr. Judson, with whom he was very much struck.

The great work connected with Daniel Wilson's name, as that of Bishop's College is with Middleton's, is the building of the Cathedral of Calcutta. "What do you say, my four children," he writes, "to your father's attempting to build a cathedral to the name of the Lord his G.o.d in this heathen land?" It had been the desire of Bishop Middleton, but there had been too much to do during his nine years, and it was only now that at last the times were ripe. Subscriptions were opened, and the Bishop devoted a large amount of his income to the fund; plans were drawn up, land granted freely, and on the 9th of October, 1839, the first stone of St. Paul's Cathedral was laid by the Bishop.

Just at this time there was a most remarkable move made towards Christianity. Krishnaghur, 130 miles from Calcutta, was the great centre of the worship of Krishna, one of the manifestations of Vishnu. Here two missionaries of the Church Missionary Society had been at work; and when the Bishop was there in 1837, he described them as having made "a little beginning," by keeping schools and holding conferences with the people, but they had then no adult convert. A year after a message was brought by a native, entreating for further help. There were 1,200 seriously inquiring into the doctrine, with many candidates for baptism, and at many places around it was the same. In the year 1840, the Bishop set forth to visit the spot and the adjacent districts, where almost all the villages seemed to be actuated by the same impulse. The missionaries did their utmost to distinguish between mere fashion and hope of gain and a true faith; but after all their siftings, large numbers were ready for baptism, and the hope was so great that the Bishop was full of thankful ecstasy, and could hardly sleep from agitation, joy, and anxiety. One hundred and fifty converts were baptized at once, at a place called Anunda Ba.s.s. The examination was thus, the Bishop standing in the midst:--

"Are you sinners?"

"Yes, we are."

"How do you hope to obtain forgiveness?"

"By the sacrifice of Christ."

"What was that sacrifice?"

"We were sinners, and Christ died in our stead."

"How is your heart to be changed?"

"By the Holy Ghost."

"Will you renounce all idolatry, feasts, poojahs, and caste?"

"Yes, we renounce them all."

"Will you renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil?"

"Yes."

"Will you suffer for Christ's sake?"