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CHAPTER XIX
MISSIONS IN INDIA – DO MISSIONARIES DO ANY GOOD?
"Is it not all a farce?" said a Major in the Bengal Staff Corps, as we came down from Upper India. We were talking of Missions. He did not speak of them with hatred, but only with contempt. The missionaries "meant well," but they were engaged in an enterprise which was so utterly hopeless, that no man in his senses could regard it as other than supreme and almost incredible folly. In this he spoke the opinion of half the military men of India. They have no personal dislike to missionaries – indeed many an officer in an out-of-the-way district, who has a missionary family for almost his only neighbors, will acknowledge that they are "a great addition to the English society." But as for their doing any good, as an officer once said to me: "They might as well go and stand on the shore of the sea and preach to the fishes, as to think to convert the Hindoos!" Their success, of which so much is said in England and America, is "infinitesimally small." Some even go so far as to say that the missionaries do great mischief; that they stir up bad blood in the native population, and perpetuate an animosity of races. Far better would it be to leave the "mild Hindoo" to his gods; to let him worship his sacred cows, and monkeys and serpents, and his hideous idols, so long as he is a quiet and inoffensive subject of the government.
If one were preaching a sermon to a Christian congregation, he might disdain a reply to objections which seem to come out of the mouths of unbelievers; it would be enough to repeat the words of Him who said, "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." But I am not preaching, but conversing with an intelligent gentleman, who has lived long in India, and might well assume that he knows far more about the actual situation than I do. Such men are not to be put down. They represent a large part of the Anglo-Indian population. We may therefore as well recognize the fact that Modern Missions, like any other enterprise which is proposed in the interest of civilization, are now on trial before the world. We may look upon them as too sacred for criticism; but in this irreverent age nothing is too sacred; everything that is holy has to be judged by reason, and by practical results, and by these to be justified or to be condemned. I would not therefore claim anything on the ground of authority, but speak of missions as I would of national education, or even of the railroad system of India.
The question here raised I think deserves a larger and more candid treatment than it commonly receives either from the advocates or the opponents of missions. It is not to be settled merely by pious feeling, by unreasoning sentiment on the one hand, nor by sneers on the other. To convert a whole country from one religion to another, is an undertaking so vast that it is not to be lightly entered upon. The very attempt assumes a superior wisdom on the part of those who make it, which is itself almost an offence. If it be not "a grand impertinence," an intrusion into matters with which no stranger has a right to intermeddle, it is at least taking a great liberty to thrust upon a man our opinion in censure of his own. We may think him very ignorant, and in need of being enlightened. But he may have a poor opinion of our ability to enlighten him. We think him a fool, and he returns the compliment. At any rate, right or wrong, he is entitled to the freedom of his opinion as much as we are to ours. If a stranger were to come to us day by day, to argue with us, and to force his opinions upon us, either in politics or religion, we might listen civilly and patiently at first, but we should end by turning him out of doors. What right have we to pronounce on his opinions and conduct any more than he upon ours?
In the domain of religion, especially, a man's opinions are sacred. They are between himself and God. There is no greater offence against courtesy, against that mutual concession of perfect freedom, which is the first law of all human intercourse, than to interfere wantonly with the opinions – nay, if you please, with the false opinions, with the errors and prejudices – of mankind. Nothing but the most imperative call of humanity – a plea of "necessity or mercy" – can justify a crusade against the ancestral faith of a whole people.
I state the case as strongly as I can, that we may look upon it as an English officer, or even an intelligent Hindoo, looks upon it, and I admit frankly that we have no more right to force our religion upon the people of India, than to force upon them a republican form of government, unless we can give a reason for it, which shall be recognized at the bar of the intelligent judgment of mankind.
Is there then any good reason – any raison d'être– for the establishment of missions in India? If there be not some very solid and substantial ground for their existence, they are not to be justified merely because their motive is good. Is there then any reason whatever which can justify any man, or body of men, in invading this country with a new religion, and attacking the ancient faith of the people?
All students of history will acknowledge that there are certain great revolutions in the opinions of mankind, which are epochs in history, and turning points in the life of nations. India has had many such revolutions, dating far back before the Christian era. Centuries before Christ was born, Buddha preached his new faith on the banks of the Ganges. For a time it conquered the country, driving out the old Brahminism, which however came back and conquered in its turn, till Buddhism, retiring slowly from the plains of India, planted its pagodas on the shores of Burmah and among the mountains of Ceylon.
Thus India is a land of missions, and has been from the very beginnings of history. It was traversed by missionaries of its ancient faith ages before Tamerlane descended the passes of the Himalayas with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other; or Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, laid his bones in the Cathedral of Goa. If then Buddhists and Brahmins, and Moslems and Romanists, have so long disputed the land, there is certainly no reason why we should condemn at the very outset the entrance of Protestant Christianity.
Beside this great fact in the history of India place another: that there is no country in the world where religion is such a power, such an element in the life of the people. The Hindoos are not only religious, they are intensely so. They have not indeed the fierce fanaticism of the Moslems, for their creed tolerates all religions, but what they believe they believe strongly. They have a subtle philosophy which pervades all their thinking, which digs the very channels in which their thoughts run, and cannot overflow; and this philosophy, which is imbedded in their religious creed, fixes their castes and customs, as rigidly as it does their forms of worship. Religion is therefore the chief element in the national life. It has more to do in moulding the ideas and habits, the manners and customs, of the people, than laws or government, or any other human institution. Thus India furnishes the most imposing illustration on earth of the power of Religion to shape the destiny of a country or a race.
Whether there be anything to justify a friendly invasion of India, and the attempt to convert its people to a better religion, may appear if we ask, What is Hindooism? Is it a good or bad faith? Does it make men better or worse – happy or unhappy? Does it promote the welfare of human beings, or is it a system which is false in belief and deadly in its effects, and against which we have a right to wage a holy war?
Hindooism has a thousand shapes, spreading out its arms like a mighty banyan tree, but its root is one – Pantheism. When an old fakir at the Méla at Allahabad said to me, "You are God and I am God!" he did not utter a wild rhapsody, but expressed the essence of Hindoo philosophy, according to which all beings that exist are but One Being; all thoughts are but the pulse-beats of One Infinite Mind; all acts are but the manifestation of One Universal Life.
Some may think this theory a mere abstraction, which has no practical bearing. But carried out to its logical consequences, it overthrows all morality. If all acts of men are God's acts, then they are all equally good or bad; or rather, they are neither good nor bad. Thus moral distinctions are destroyed, and vice and virtue are together banished from the world. Hence Hindooism as a religion has nothing whatever to do with morality or virtue, but is only a means of propitiating angry deities. It is a religion of terror and fear. It is also unspeakably vile. It is the worship of obscene gods by obscene rites. Its very gods and goddesses commit adultery and incest. Thus vice is deified. Such a mythology pollutes the imaginations of the people, whereby their very mind and conscience are defiled. Not only the heart, but even the intellect is depraved by the loathsome objects set up in their temples. The most common object of worship in India is an obscene image. Indeed, so well understood is this, that when a law was passed by the Government against the exhibition of obscene images, an express exception was made in favor of those exposed in temples, and which were objects of religious worship. Thus Hindooism has the privilege of indecency, and is allowed to break over all restraints. It is the licensed harlot, that is permitted, in deference to its religious pretensions, to disregard the common decencies of mankind. The effect of this on public morals can be imagined. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. How can a people be pure, when their very religion is a fountain of pollution? But this is a subject on which we cannot enlarge. It is an abyss into which no one would wish to look. It is sufficient to indicate what we cannot for very loathing undertake to describe.
There is another element in the Hindoo religion, which cannot be ignored, and which gives it a tremendous power for good or evil. It is Caste. Every Hindoo child is born in a certain caste, out of which he cannot escape. When I landed at Bombay I observed that every native had upon his forehead a mark freshly made, as if with a stroke of the finger, which indicated the god he worshipped or the caste to which he belonged. Of these there are four principal ones – the Priest, or Brahmin caste, which issued out of the mouth of Brahm; the Warrior caste, which sprung from his arms and breast; the Merchant caste, from his thighs; and the Shoodras, or Servile caste, which crawled out from between his feet; beside the Pariahs, who are below all caste. These divisions are absolute and unchangeable. To say that they are maintained by the force of ancient custom is not enough: they are fixed as by a law of nature. The strata of society are as immovable as the strata of the rock-ribbed hills. No man can stir out of his place. If he is up he stays up by no virtue of his own; and if he is down, he stays down, beyond any power of man to deliver him. No gift of genius, or height of virtue, can ever raise up one of a low caste into a higher, for caste is a matter of birth. Upon these sub-strata this fixity of caste rests with crushing weight. It holds them down as with the force of gravitation, as if the Himalayas were rolled upon them to press them to the earth.
Against this oppression there is no power of resistance, no lifting up from beneath to throw it off. One would suppose that the people themselves would revolt at this servitude, that every manly instinct would rise up in rebellion against such a degradation. But so ingrained is it in the very life of the people, that they cannot cast it out any more than they can cast out a poison in their blood. Indeed they seem to glory in it. The lower castes crouch and bow down that others may pass over them. A Brahmin, who had become a Christian, told me that the people had often asked him to wash his feet in the water of the street, that they might drink it!
Caste is a cold and cruel thing, which hardens the heart against natural compassion. I know it is said that high caste is only an aristocracy of birth, and that, as such, it fosters a certain nobility of feeling, and also a mutual friendliness between those who belong to the same order. A caste is only a larger family, and in it there is the same feeling, a mixture of pride and affection, which binds the family together. Perhaps it may nurture to some extent a kind of clannishness, but it does this at the sacrifice of the broader and nobler sentiment of humanity. It hardens the heart into coldness and cruelty against all without one sacred pale. The Brahmin feels nothing for the sufferings of the Pariah, who is of another order of being as truly as if he were one of the lower animals. Thus the feeling of caste extinguishes the sentiment of human brotherhood.
Taking all these elements together, Hindooism must rank as the most despotic, the most cruel, and the vilest of all that is called religion among men. There is no other that so completely upturns moral distinctions, and makes evil good and good evil. Other religions, even though false, have some sentiment that ennobles them, but Hindooism, the product of a land fertile in strange births, is the lowest and basest, the most truly earth-born, of all the religions that curse mankind.
And what burdens does it lay upon a poor, patient, and suffering people, in prayers, penances, and pilgrimages! The faith of Hindooism is not a mild and harmless form of human credulity. It exacts a terrible service, that must be paid with sweat and blood. Millions of Hindoos go every year on pilgrimages. The traveller sees them thronging the roads, dragging their weary feet over the hot plains, many literally crawling over the burning earth, to appease the wrath of angry gods! A religion which exacts such service is not a mere creature of the imagination – it is a tremendous reality, which makes its presence felt at every moment. It is therefore not a matter of practical indifference. It is not a mere exhibition of human folly, which, however absurd, does no harm to anybody. It is a despotism which grinds the people to powder.
Seeing this, how they suffer under a power from which they cannot escape, can there be a greater object of philanthropy in all the world than to emancipate them from the bondage of such ignorance and superstition? Scientific men, the apostles of "modern thought," consider it not only a legitimate object, but the high "mission" of science, by unfolding the laws of nature, to disabuse our minds of idle and superstitious fears; to break up that vague terror of unseen forces, which is the chief element of superstition. If they may fight this battle in England, may we not fight the battle of truth with error and ignorance in Hindostan? Englishmen think it a noble thing for brave and adventurous spirits to form expeditions to penetrate the interior of Africa to break up the slave trade. But here is a slavery the most terrible which ever crushed the life out of human beings. Brahminism, which is fastened upon the people of India, embraces them like an anaconda, clasping and crushing them in its mighty folds. It is a devouring monster, which takes out of the very body of every Hindoo, poor and naked and wretched as he may be, its pound of quivering flesh. Can these things be, and we look on unmoved? Can we see a whole people bound, like Laocoön and his sons, in the grasp of the serpent, writhing and struggling in vain, and not come to their rescue?
Such is Hindooism, and such is the condition to which it has reduced the people of India. Do we need any other argument for Christian missions? Does not this simple statement furnish a perfect defence, and even an imperative demand for their establishment? Christianity is the only hope of India. In saying this I do not intend any disrespect to the people of this country, to whom I feel a strong attraction. We are not apt to hear from our missionary friends much about the virtues of the heathen; but virtues they have, which it were wrong to ignore. The Hindoos, like other Asiatics, are a very domestic people, and have strong domestic attachments. They love their homes, humble though they be, and their children. And while they have not the active energy of Western races, yet in the passive virtues – meekness, patience under injury, submission to wrong – they furnish an example to Christian nations. That submissiveness, which travellers notice, and which moves some to scorn, moves me rather to pity, and I find in this patient, long-suffering race much to honor and to love. Nor are they unintelligent. They have very subtle minds. Thus they have many of the qualities of a great people. But their religion is their destruction. It makes them no better, it makes them worse. It does not lift them up, it drags them down. It is the one terrible and overwhelming curse, that must be removed before there is any hope for the people of India.
Is there not here a legitimate ground for an attempt on the part of the civilized and Christian world to introduce a better faith into that mighty country which holds two hundred millions of the human race? This is not intrusion, it is simple humanity. In seeking to introduce Christianity into India, we invade no right of any native of that country, Mohammedan or Hindoo; we would not wantonly wound their feelings, nor even shock their prejudices, in attacking their hereditary faith. But we claim that here is a case where we cannot keep silent. If we are told that we "interfere with the people," we answer, that we interfere as the Good Samaritan interfered with the man who fell among thieves, and was left by the roadside to die; as the physician in the hospital interferes with those dying of the cholera; as one who sees a brother at his side struck by a deadly serpent applies his mouth to the wound, to suck the poison from his blood! If that be interference, it is interference where it would be cruelty to stand aloof, for he would be less than man who could be unmoved in presence of misery so vast, which it was in any degree in his power to relieve.
Thus India itself is the sufficient argument for missions in India. Let any one visit this country, and study its religion, and see how it enters into the very life of the people; how all social intercourse is regulated by caste; how one feels at every instant the pressure of an ancient and unchangeable religion, and ask how its iron rule is ever to be broken? Who shall deliver them from the body of this death? There is in Hindooism no power of self-cure. For ages it has remained the same, and will remain for ages still. Help, if it come at all, must come from without, and where else can it come from, but from lands beyond the sea?
Therefore it is that the Christian people of England and America come to the people of India, not in a tone of self-righteousness, assuming that we are better than they, but in the name of humanity, of the brotherhood of the human race. We believe that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth," and these Hindoos, though living on the other side of the globe, are our brothers. They are born into the same world; they belong to the same human family, and have the same immortal destiny. To such a people, capable of great things, but crushed and oppressed, we come to do them good. We would break the terrible bondage of caste, and bring forth woman out of the prison-house where she passes her lonely existence. This involves a social as well as a religious revolution. But what a sigh of relief would it bring to millions who, under their present conditions, are all their lifetime subject to bondage.
There is a saying in the East that in India the flowers yield no perfume, the birds never sing, and the women never smile. Of course this is an exaggeration, and yet it has a basis of truth. It is true that the flowers of the tropics, though often of brilliant hues, do not yield the rich perfume of the roses of our Northern clime; and many of the birds whose golden plumage flashes sunlight in the deep gloom of tropical forests, have only a piercing shriek, instead of the soft, delicious notes of the robin and the dove; and the women have a downcast look. Well may it be so. They lead a secluded and solitary life. Shut up in their zenanas, away from society, they have no part in many of the joys of human existence, though they have more than their share of life's burdens and its woes. No wonder that their faces should be sad and sorrowful. Thus the whole creation seems to groan and travail in pain.
Now we desire to dispel the darkness and the gloom of ages, and to bring smiles and music and flowers once more into this stricken world. Teaching a religion of love and good will to men, we would cure the hatred of races, and bring all together in a common brotherhood. We would so lift up the poor of this world, that sorrow and sighing shall flee away, and that every lowly Indian hut shall be filled with the light of a new existence. In that day will not nature share in the joy of man's deliverance? Then will the birds begin to sing, as if they were let loose from the gates of heaven to go flying through the earth, and to fill our common air with the voice of melody. Then shall smiles be seen once more on human faces; not the loud cackling of empty laughter; but smiles breaking through tears (the reflection of a peace that passeth understanding), shall spread like sunshine over the sad faces of the daughters of Asia.
But some "old Indian" who has listened politely, yet smiling and incredulous, to this defence of missions, may answer, "All this is very fine; no doubt it would be a good thing if the people of India would change their religion; would cast off Hindooism, and adopt Christianity. But is it not practically impossible? Do all the efforts of missionaries really amount to anything." This is a fair question, and I will try to give it a fair answer.
"Do missionaries do any good?" Perhaps we can best answer the question by drawing the picture of an Indian village, such as one may see at thousands of points scattered over the country. It is a cluster of huts, constructed sometimes with a light frame-work of bamboo, filled in with matting, but more commonly of mud, with a roof of thatch to prevent its being washed away in the rainy season. These huts are separated from each other by narrow lanes that can hardly be dignified with the name of streets. Yet in such a hamlet of hovels, hardly fit for human habitation, may be a large population. Every doorway is swarming with children. On the outskirts of the village is the missionary bungalow, a large one-story house, also built of mud, but neatly whitewashed and protected from the rains by a heavy thatched roof, which projects over the walls, and shades the broad veranda. In the "compound" are two other buildings of the same rude material and simple architecture, a church and a schoolhouse. In the latter are gathered every day ten, twenty, fifty – perhaps a hundred – children, with bare feet and poor garments, though clean, but with bright eyes, and who seem eager to learn. All day long comes from that low building a buzz and hum as from a hive of bees. Every Sunday is gathered in the little chapel a congregation chiefly of poor people, plainly but neatly dressed, and who, as they sit there, reclaimed from heathenism, seem to be "clothed and in their right minds." To the poor the Gospel is preached, and never does it show its sweetness and power, as when it comes down into such abodes of poverty, and gives to these humble natives a new hope and a new life – a life of joy and peace. Perhaps in the same compound is an orphanage, in which are gathered the little castaways who have been deserted by their parents, left by the roadside to die – or whose parents may have died by cholera – and who are thus rescued from death, and given the chance which belongs to every human creature of life and of happiness.
Perhaps the missionary is a little of a physician, and has a small chest of medicines, and the poor people come to him for cures of their bodily ailments, as well as for their spiritual troubles. After awhile he gains their confidence, and becomes, not by any appointment, but simply by the right of goodness and the force of character, a sort of unofficial magistrate, or head man of the village, a general peacemaker and benefactor. Can any one estimate the influence of such a man, with his gentle wife at his side, who is also active both in teaching and in every form of charity? Who does not see that such a missionary bungalow, with its school, its orphanage, and its church, and its daily influences of teaching and of example, is a centre of civilization, when planted in the heart of an Indian village?
How extensive is this influence will of course depend on the many or the few devoted to this work, and the wisdom and energy with which they pursue it. The number of missionaries in India is very small compared with the vast population. And yet the picture here drawn of one village is reproduced in hundreds of villages. Take the representatives of all the churches and societies of Protestant Christendom, they would make a very respectable force. But even this does not represent the full amount of influence they exert. Moral influences cannot be weighed and measured like material forces. Nor are missionaries to be counted, like the soldiers of an army. They are not drawn up on parade, and do not march through the streets, with gleaming bayonets. Their forces are scattered, and their work is silent and unseen.
But in all quiet ways, by churches, schools, and orphanages, their influence is felt; while by the printing-press they scatter religious truth all over India, the effect of which, in tens of thousands of those whom it does not "convert," is to destroy the power of their old idolatry.
That more Hindoos do not openly embrace Christianity is not surprising, when one considers the social influences which restrain them. When a Hindoo becomes a Christian, he is literally an outcast. His most intimate friends will not know him. His own family turn him from their door, feeling that he has brought upon them a disgrace far greater than if he had committed a crime for which he was to perish on the scaffold. To them he is dead, and they perform his funeral rites as if he were no more in this world. The pastor of the native church in Bombay has thus been buried or burned by his own family. Another told me that his own father turned from him in the street, and refused to recognize him. These things are very hard to bear. And so far from wondering that there are not more conversions among the natives of India, I wonder that there are so many.
But what sort of Christians are they? Are they like English or American Christians? When I landed in India, and saw what a strange people I was among, how unlike our own race, I asked a question which many have asked before: Whether these people could become Christians? It is a favorite idea of many travellers – and of many English residents in India – that not only is the number of conversions small, but that the "converts" are not worth having when they are made. It is said that it is only low caste natives, who have nothing to lose, that will desert their old religion; and that they are influenced only by the lowest motives, and that while they profess to be converted, they are in no wise changed from what they were, except that to their old heathen vices they have added that of hypocrisy. Hearing these things, I have taken some pains to ascertain what sort of people these native converts are. I have attended their religious services, and have met them socially, and, so far as I could judge, I have never seen more simple-minded Christians. Some of them are as intelligent as the best instructed members of our New England churches. As to their low caste, statistics show, among them, a greater proportion of Brahmins than of any other caste, as might be expected from their greater intelligence.
The work, then, has not been in vain. The advance is slow, but it is something that there is an advance. I am told, as the result of a careful estimate, that if the progress continues in the future as it has for the last fifteen years, in two centuries the whole of India with its two hundred millions of people, will be converted to the Christian religion. This is a spread of Christianity more rapid than that in the age of the apostles, for it was three centuries before the faith which they preached became master of the Roman empire.
With such a record of what Christian Missions have done in India, with such evidences of their good influence and growing power, they are entitled to honor and respect as one of the great elements in the problem of the future of that country. To speak of them flippantly, argues but small acquaintance with the historical forces which have hitherto governed India or indeed Britain itself. It ill becomes Englishmen to sneer at missions, for to missionaries they owe it that their island has been reclaimed from barbarism. When Augustine landed in Britain their ancestors were clothed in skins, and roaming in forests. It was the new religion that softened their manners, refined their lives, and in the lapse of generations wrought out the slow process of civilization.
In Johnson's "Tour to the Hebrides," he refers to the early missionaries who civilized Britain in a passage which is one of the most eloquent in English literature: "We were now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion… Far from me and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."
