BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL * O WILLIAM ROBINSON Morgan & Scotts Missionary Series Edited bu Dr. George Smith, C.I.E. - EMMANUEL Presented to THE LIBRARY of VICTORIA UNIVERSITY Toronto by Ecumenical Forum PRESENTED TO: THE CANADIAN SCHOOL OF MISSIONS COMPLIMEI^TS OF: STUDUTT CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION U14IVERSITY OF TORONTO. Mill : J f %. c x V EMN <F I \ BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL BY WILLIAM ROBINSON (Salem, S. India) AUTHOR OF "FROM BRAHM TO CHRIST" ; "GOD AND SONS OF GOD " RINGELTAUBE THE RISHI " ; "THE RENT VEIL," ETC. BEING A VOLUME IN MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D., F.R.G.S., F.S.S. MORGAN & SCOTT , LTD.,-, , (OFFICE OF " Ij ft frf *&& <& ") ., 12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS LONDON MCMX o \ Dl/ 32b5 r* - RC2 EMMANUEL MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. Cloth boards, 6/- each CHRIST THE DESIRE OF NATIONS By Rev. EDGAR WM. DAVIS THE VICTORY OF THE GOSPEL A Survey of World-wide Evangelism. By Rev. J. P. LILLEY, D.D. THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA Its Opportunities and Responsibilities. By Rev. WILLIAM MUIR, M.A., B.D., B.L. BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL By Rev. WILLIAM ROBINSON MORGAN AND SCOTT LTD., LONDON PREFATORY NOTE BY GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D., F.R.G.S., F.S.S. HHHIS work, " BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL," has a unique value. There is nothing like it in all the literature of Foreign Missions. It has to do chiefly with India, which has a special claim on every member of the Churches of the United Kingdom and its Colonies. The special value of the volume is that it is written from the inside of things, revealing Hinduism and Caste as they have never before been laid bare, in popular language, in a scholarly fashion, and with literary skill. G. S. 32fa EMMANUEL MORGAN & SCOTT S MISSIONARY SERIES EDITED BY DR. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E. Cloth boards, 6/- each CHRIST THE DESIRE OF NATIONS By Rev. EDGAR WM. DAVIS THE VICTORY OF THE GOSPEL A Survey of World-wide Evangelism. By Rev. J. P. LILLEY, D.D. THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA Its Opportunities and Responsibilities. By Rev. WILLIAM MUIR, M.A., B.D., B.L. BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL By Rev. WILLIAM ROBINSON MORGAN AND SCOTT LTD., LONDON PREFATORY NOTE BY GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D., F.R.G.S., F.S.S. TTHIS work, "By TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL," has a unique value. There is nothing like it in all the literature of Foreign Missions. It has to do chiefly with India, which has a special claim on every member of the Churches of the United Kingdom and its Colonies. The special value of the volume is that it is written from the inside of things, revealing Hinduism and Caste as they have never before been laid bare, in popular language, in a scholarly fashion, and with literary skill. G. S. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE CALL PAGE APOSTOLIC SIMPLICITY ...... 4 EFFICACY OF PRAYER ...... 4 PAUL S FIRST VISION ...... 5 FEW COMPARABLE IN SUPREME DEVOTION . . .6 JEFFERSON S JOURNAL ...... 7 MEN WHO DEFY ARGUMENT . . . . .8 MIXED MOTIVES. . . . . . .11 CAREY S EEMINDER . . . . . .13 CHAPTER II OBEDIENCE TO THE VOICE OF CHRIST TOTALITY OF SURRENDER . . . . .17 ITS OBJECTIVE . . . . . . .18 THE DIVINE FILLING ...... 18 VARIED OPERATIONS OF THE SAME SPIRIT . . .19 SPIRITUAL HUMILITY . . . . . .19 AN INFALLIBLE TEST . . . . , . , . 20 YOGISM DEFINED . . . ;. ;, .!, ;. 20 ITS VALUE TO CHRISTIANS . . . . . 21 THE WAY OF THE MORAVIANS . . ; ; . ; , . 22 W. H. DREW S METHOD . . > , . ; . 23 A GREAT ADMONITION . . . . .24 THE PERSISTENCE OF FAITH . . . . .24 vii Contents CHAPTER III " GO YE THEREFORE " PAGE INTREPID PIONEERS . . . . . .29 ROMAN CATHOLIC FAILURE . . . . .30 THE NEW ENTHUSIASM . . . . .31 THE MORAVIANS . . . . .32 CAREY ........ 32 WHOLESALE APOSTASY . . . . . .33 REIGN OF RATIONALISM . . . . .34 THE OLD WAY AND THE NEW . . . .34 THE TRANSITION . . . . . .35 RAMPANT DEPRAVITY . . . . . .36 ON FIRE WITH PITY . . . . . .37 HIGHER AND LOWER HINDUISM . . . .38 CHAPTER IV THE OLD INTOLERANCE AN IMPREGNABLE INDICTMENT . . . .43 IMPARTIAL INQUIRY . . . . . .44 SEEKING OUT MANY INVENTIONS . . . .45 CONCILIATION IMPOSSIBLE . . . . .45 TYPICAL IDOLATRY . . . . . .46 THE GRATITUDE OF IGNORANCE . . . .47 VICE AS WORSHIP . . . . . .48 PERVERTED TEACHING . . . . . .49 HINDUISM SELF-CONTRADICTORY . . . .49 A DOCTRINE OF DEVILS . . . . .50 ULTIMATE EMPTY DELUSION . . . . .51 A SWEEPING DENUNCIATION . . . . .52 PROOF BY COMPARISON . 53 CHAPTER V . JNEXTRICABLE WEB CASTE"! i t .. .*. J . . . . .57 MONSTROUS AND GROTESQUE . . . . .58 PARALYZING INFLUENCE . . . . .60 viii Contents PAGE RELIGION is CASTE . . . . 60 MORAL CONVICTION WANTING . . . . .61 HINDUISM ALL-ABSORBING . . . . .62 ITS INFERIORITY .... .62 CHINA S ADVANTAGE ... 63 HOPE FROM EDUCATION . . . . .64 No SURRENDER . . . . . . .65 CHRIST v. HINDUISM - . .66 BRANDS FROM THE BURNING . . . . .66 CHAPTER VI THE NEW SYMPATHY THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE HEATHEN . . .72 WOMEN VOTARIES . . . . . .73 AN OPEN SHAME . . . . . .73 MONSTROUS FABLES . . . . . .75 BUCKLE S OPINION . . . . . .76 REVELATION IGNORED ..... 77 QUIXOTIC CONTRACTS . ... 77 PHYSIOLATRY ....... 78 How IDOLATRY GROWS ... 79 THE TRUE REMEDY ... . 80 THE NEGLECTED DYNAMIC . . . . .81 GOING-HOME MISSIONARIES 81 CHAPTER VII CONVERSION HOPING ALL THINGS . . . . . .86 ARTIFICIAL SINS . ... 87 DIVINE DIVERSITY . . . . . .88 WISE TREATMENT . . . . . .89 DIFFERING CONVERSIONS . ... 90 HEROISM OF CONVERTS. . . . . .91 RIDICULOUS TESTS . . . . . .93 VALUE OF TRUST . . . . . .93 THE MIRACLE OF CONVERSION . . . .94 AFTER MANY DAYS . . . . . .95 ix Contents CHAPTER VIII ENIGMAS PAGK AN INORGANIC MEDLEY . . . . .99 AN UNCONSCIOUS SAINT . . . .100 A LOFTY MORALIST ...... 101 THE DEVOUT STUDENT . . . . . .102 TRAVESTY AND REALITY ..... 103 DEGREES OF EDUCATION ..... 105 A GREAT FIELD OPEN . . . . . .106 A TYPE OF HINDU SAINTHOOD .... 107 THE INNER LIGHT . . . . . .108 RECONCILIATION ....... 109 SPECULATIVE RELIGION . . . . . .110 A SOUND WORKING PRINCIPLE . . . .111 CHAPTER IX DOING CHRIST S COMMANDMENTS VALIDITY ....... 115 TERMINOLOGY . . . . . . .115 A RIGHT LEADING . . . . . .116 SANCTIFIED COMMON SENSE . . . . .117 PERSECUTIONS OFT . . . . . .118 DESOLATING IDOLATRY . . . . . .119 MISSIONARY CHURCH is THE HEALTHIEST . . .120 MARCHING ORDERS . . . . . .121 "WORKERS TOGETHER" ..... 122 SHALLOWS AND DEEPS . . . . . .123 SLOW BUT SOLID GROWTH . . . . .124 SIR ALFRED LYALL S PREDICTION . . . .125 NOBLE COUNSEL . . . . . .125 CHAPTER X THE NEED FOR COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS SOWING DRAGON S TEETH . . . . .129 BLIND TEACHING . . . . . .131 TRUE NEED . . 132 Contents FAGB DENYING THE LIGHT ...... 133 A STERILE ATMOSPHERE . . . . .134 LOYAL AND DISLOYAL ...... 135 MATERIALISTIC LAWLESSNESS . . . . .136 THE MISSIONARY S TASK . . . . .136 UNFAIR COMPARISONS . . . . . .137 NEW AND OLD DIFFICULTIES . . . . .138 FESTINA LENTE 139 CHAPTEK XI NOTHING FOR NOTHING THE "GOVERNOR" OF THE ENGINE .... 144 FITNESS FALSE AND TRUE . . . . .145 PRECISION NEEDED . . . . . .146 THE FITNESS OF THINGS ..... 147 THE CHILD LEADING . . . . . .148 THE COMPREHENDING GOD . . . . .149 THE WORKER UPLIFTED . . . . .150 CHAPTER XII THE LONELY LIFE THE REWARD OF LONELINESS . . . . .156 DEVOTION S OFFERING . . . . . .157 PATMOS COMPANY . . . . . .158 INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE . . . . .159 JUNGLE ISOLATION ...... 160 CONSERVATION OF ENERGY ..... 161 THE STRONG CONSOLATION . . . . .161 YET NOT ALONE ...... 164 CHAPTER XIII MISSION INDUSTRIES A MASTER CRAFTSMAN ...... 167 SPADE WORK .... . 168 ADAPTABILITY . . . . . . .169 TRAINING VERSUS TRADING . . . . .170 xi Contents PAGE FAILURES AND SUCCESSES . . . . .171 VAST RESOURCES ... .172 A MOMENTOUS REQUISITION . .172 HANDICRAFT FOUND INDISPENSABLE . . . .173 METHOD IN "TIGER" TAMING. . . 174 THE FAMINE ORPHANS. ..... 175 EDUCATIONAL DIFFICULTIES . . . . .176 THE REVIVAL OF OLD INDUSTRIES . . . .177 CHAPTER XIV THE COMMISSARIAT BASE PHYSICAL SALVATION . . . . . .182 TREASURING THE GIFT OF LIFE . . . .183 DIET WISDOM . . . . . . .184 AUTHOR S JAIL CHAPLAIN EXPERIENCE . . .185 COOLIE INVENTIVENESS . . . . .186 PRIMARY PRECAUTIONS . . . . . .186 MEDICAL COMMON SENSE . . . .187 LIFE-FORFEITING NEGLECT . . . . .188 A SPIRITUAL HANDY-MAN . . . . .189 THE BODY A TRUST . . . . .189 HOT-WEATHER POLICY ...... 190 CHAPTER XV THE CONGREGATION SAVED BY MANY OR BY FEW . . . . .195 STEADFAST AND UNMOVED . . . . .196 THE SERPENT S WISDOM . . . .197 SELF-DISCRIMINATION .... . 197 PAST "DAYS OF SMALL THINGS" .... 198 THE "OLD GUARD" ... .199 THEN AND Now ...... 200 IN PERILS BY MINE OWN COUNTRYMEN . . . 200 RUINOUS BLUNDERING ...... 201 SURVIVAL AND FINAL SUCCESS .... 202 THE TRUE PASTORAL TYPE ..... 203 INDIAN MINISTERIAL BRETHREN . . . 203 THE VALUE OF EXPERIENCE ..... 204 OVER-PLOUGHED FIELDS ..... 205 DARK SPOT CULTIVATION ..... 206 xii Contents CHAPTER XVI HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES PAGE A DIFFICULT SPHERE . . . . . .211 DEALING WITH FROWARDNESS . . . . .212 INCIDENTS OF CAMPAIGNING ..... 213 TRIALS BY THE WAT .... . 214 BAZAAR PREACHING LIMITATIONS . .215 PRIESTLY CONFIDENCES . . . . . .215 OPIUM S SLAVE . . . . . .217 AN IRISH MOHAMMEDAN S COLLAPSE . . . .218 PREPARING THE WAY . . . . . .219 Music, HEAVENLY MAID . . . 219 CHAPTER XVII THE LITTLE FLOCK DISGUISED BLESSINGS ... . . 223 RAIN S TWIN EFFECTS ... . 223 PRIMITIVE ROUGH-AND-READY JUSTICE . . 225 A VILLAGE MEETING . . . . . .227 THE FELLOWSHIP OF BELIEVERS . . 228 A RESPONSIVE AUDIENCE . . 229 WORK PLUS ARREARS ...... 230 TOWN AND COUNTRY CONTRASTS . . 231 PERSONAL SUPERVISION NEEDED . . . 232 To CELIBATE OR NOT TO CELIBATE . . . 232 Two KINDS OF DISTRICT VISITING . . 233 CHAPTER XVIII "FAITHFUL IS HE THAT CALLETH " TRUE FAITHFULNESS .... . 238 FAILURE TURNED CRITIC ... . 238 THE OFFENCE OF THE UNCONVENTIONAL . . 240 To EVERY MAN His WORK . . 241 PATIENT WAITING UNTO HARVEST . , 242 xiii Contents PAGE ANOTHER REAPETH ...... 242 DESIRES AND NEEDS ...... 243 THE OUTWARD APPEARANCE AND THE INWARD HEART . 245 OBEY His VOICE ... . 246 THE TRUTH SHALL PREVAIL . . . 246 THE SUPREME MESSAGE . . 247 CHAPTER XIX DON T ADVICE TO BEGINNERS . . . . . .251 AN UNKNOWN LAND . . . . . .252 AVOIDING STRIFE ...... 252 CHARITABLE WISDOM ...... 253 SALAAMING v. HANDSHAKING ..... 253 RULE BY ELDERS ...... 254 ACCUSING BRETHREN ...... 254 A JUST BALANCE ...... 255 CURRYING FAVOUR . . . 256 BURYING THE PAST . . . 256 CHAPTER XX LUKE A STRAIGHT ISSUE ... . . . . 259 LUKE S SPECIALISM ...... 260 A WINNER OF GRATITUDE . . . . .261 GREAT-HEART, M.D. ...... 261 THE BEST LAID PLANS . . . . .262 PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES ..... 263 RESPECT OF PERSONS ...... 263 VITAL NECESSITY FOR MEDICAL MISSIONARIES . . 264 COALS TO NEWCASTLE ...... 265 TRAVELLING NECESSITIES AND GENEROUS AID . . 265 UNREQUITED LOVE ...... 266 DISEASE, SIN S PARALLEL ..... 266 BOTH ANTECEDENT AND SUPPLEMENTARY . . . 266 xiv Contents CHAPTER XXI PERSIS PAGE A MINISTERING ANGEL. ..... 271 SELF-ABNEGATION IN EXCELSIS . . . .272 UNEQUALLY YOKED ...... 273 SOLITUDE S SELF-RESPECT ..... 274 A GIFT OF TONGUES ...... 274 SILENCE AS A REMEDY .... . 275 THE REST CURE IN ABEYANCE .... 276 SORE STRICKEN ....... 276 THE TRUE METAL . . . . . .277 THE INTUITIVE FACULTY ..... 278 GRACE TO HELP IN TIME OF NEED 278 CHAPTER XXII BY LITTLE AND LITTLE GOD S ANCIENT METHOD . . . . .281 OWNED OF GOD ...... 282 THE MASTER PRAISES, WHAT ARE MEN? . . . 282 SUCCESS DEFERRED BUT SURE ..... 283 THE LAW OF PROGRESS ..... 283 As IN THE BEGINNING . . . . . .284 RIPE UNTO HARVEST ...... 285 CRITICS OF GOD ...... 286 HINDU SLOWNESS ...... 286 Is BRITAIN CHRISTIAN ?..... 287 PRINCIPAL MILLER S WISE WORDS .... 288 AN ESSENTIAL DISTINCTION ..... 288 BY THE SPIRIT ALONE ...... 289 GIDEON S SIFTING ...... 290 GOD OUR REFUGE ...... 290 GLOSSARIAL INDEX 291 xv My soul was shamed and knew its shame, Shiv ! What horrors in thy name In Shrine and Temple have I seen, With no protecting veil to screen. What mortal eyes should never see, My eyes have seen, and woe is me ! " XVI I THE CALL T.S. I "I send tliee to open their eyes, and to turn them from dark ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. . . . Whereupon, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." ACTS xxvi. 17-19. "They that were scattered abroad went, . . . preaching the word." ACTS viii. 4. "Inquire not of the distressed darwesh in his destitution and time of want, How art thou? save on the condition that thou puttest ointment on his wound and settest money before him." Gulistan, Cap. viii. Maxim 64. BY TEMPLE SHRINE AND LOTUS POOL THE CALL A NDREW first found his own brother, Simon -^- Peter, and he brought him to Jesus ; Philip did the same with his friend Nathanael. Andrew and Philip were not only obedient to the call of Christ ; their obedience found its instant expression in service. And if you ask, What makes a Mission ary ? you will find the answer in the example of the man who, because he has found Christ himself, brings his brother to Jesus. This is the earliest and most striking instance of the Missionary Call and Motive. The incident has still the bloom of its early freshness, and its fragrant essence is the expression of all that is holiest in the Christian life. It contains 3 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the first Missionary history ; its august emphasis caariGJt be (iixoinished, and you may not add to its pregnant simplicity. Its modesty rebukes us ; may its spirit energise us, and save us from the inex pressive existence of men who neither seek nor serve ! How often we hear it said : "If the Church would achieve apostolic success, it must come back to apostolic methods and do first things first." Four sentences containing forty words round off into completeness the first record of Missionary work. What pyramids of literature are written in the way of reports which may enshrine a mummy or perpetuate a list of subscribers names ! This is not written in any fault-finding spirit. The yearly report is needed in these days of a complex Christianity ; but the simpler follows more closely our Master s example. It is impossible to read early Missionary lives without being arrested by this supreme fact of simplicity. It may be said that Andrew s act was not an expression of spiritual enthusiasm, and that its motor efficacy was the desire to do his brother Simon a good turn. In the so-called imperfect teachings of our Lord, one, according to the Church of Rome, was that He did not teach His followers the utility of prayer the utility, of course, accord ing to the Church of Rome. The fact remains, how ever much priests may water it down, that our 4 The Call Lord taught men that they ought always to pray and not to faint; as to the utility ;,-i;he ;ga^ab i, e: of the importunate widow surely proves that tlie Master knew the exact and awful value of prayer beyond what any of His critics have ever imagined. If we look at His earliest words, we shall find that the germ of the Missionary aim is covered by the golden rule : " Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." The proper understanding of these words makes the true Missionary of Christ, and this verse is the master-light of all his seeing. Much has been made of the Macedonian vision, "Come over and help us " ; while, with curious obtuseness, that fact of the greater vision on the way to Damascus has been hidden. Here was Missionary work beyond all knowing of it, pregnant with mighty issues : " I send thee to open their eyes ; to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." The great Apostle received his call at the moment of his conversion ; the twenty-seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is but its expression in marvellous service, and shows his equally marvellous obedience to the call. He con ferred not with flesh and blood, and at the end could wish himself accursed if only Israel were saved. "If only": there is no need to expand 5 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the \VOrds * into a commentary. Could they be saved;! fhe ; wjaifready to suffer to the direst hell all that men or devils could do. Looped up with his heart s desire and prayer for Israel is the daily practice of martyrdom ; and the famous list of perils in Corinthians represents the rugged peaks of service none of his successors have attained. That fiery indomitable soul still lights the path of all Missionary feet; few, except the very elect of God, have come within measurable distance of him. You may almost count their names on your fingers : Ziegenbalg, Eingeltaube, Carey, Kircherer, Henry Martyn, Rhenius, Duff, John Hunt, Dober, Livingstone, William Jones, Pat- teson, Chalmers, Hannington, and Edwin Lewis. From America, Judson, who endured more than they all. The names represent a blend of all the Churches that have sent their best sons to this great and enduring service. Some of the names are known all the world over ; the others are not known save to the people to whom they gave the Word of life. Six of the men were great linguists. Lewis was a powerful preacher in three Indian languages ; Ehenius was a heaven-sent administrator, as well as a linguist. Kircherer lived in a native hut, in the days when a notice-board on Dutch chapels in South Africa contained the prohibition : " Dogs 6 The Call and Hottentots not admitted." Ziege.n-b&lg sp^nt four months in an Indian jail, kept .-there by a brutal Governor who assured him-tha-t "-Heaven was very high above his head, and Copenhagen very far off." That most pathetic of all Missionary reading, The Journal of the First Mission to the South Seas, ought to have special study and informed editing. The Rev. J. Jefferson carefully kept the record in plain words, but with an unction that springs from the Acts of the Apostles. This Journal tells the pitiless truth of those trying and perilous days. What searchings of heart, what confessions of unworthiness, what grievings over lapses into sin and over tragedies that numb the heart and make one wonder how such horrors could be ! The men who passed through this fire are for gotten, except by readers who look at Jefferson s Journal. In an old magazine there is an affecting story of a young Wesleyan Missionary, named George Warren, who died at Sierra Leone, " the English man s graveyard," as it used to be called. Before leaving England friends tried to dissuade him from going to West Africa. They used all the arguments the ingenuity of love could suggest ; but at last he said to them: " Do the angels know the way to Sierra Leone ? " 7 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the answer. he, "I would just as soon be carried lay Wigels to heaven from Sierra Leone as from any other part of the world." You cannot argue with men like these. They hear a voice you cannot hear bidding them carry the banner of the Lamb once slain, and they must do it. There is no escape from the needs-be of men Who trample death beneath their feet, And gladly die their Lord to meet. There are always friends who will try to turn a man from his purpose. Pere Du Boy, who died in China in 1769, was told that he would do better to try and convert his own people. His reply was : " I can do only that which God wishes ; I go to China because I am persuaded He wishes it. Whenever it shall please Him to desire another thing for me, I hope I shall desire the same. I have no zeal for one country more than another. If in place of China contrary winds drive me into another country, where Providence marks out another Mission, I shall be just as content. After all that God has done for me, I should be unfit to live if I wavered." Years after Henry Martyn s decease one of his converts, who had lapsed, said with bitter tears to William Milne in Malacca : Were every hair on my body a tongue, I could 8 The Call not fully tell that man s worth " and the reference was to his old teacher Martyn. Surely the same Spirit Who animated men like these can still move the heart and chain the purpose to this great work of God. It may be admitted that the heroic age of Missions is gone, the romance has hardened into organised work ; but the motive of service is as strong as ever, and the instinct for saving souls ought to answer its end in the attempt to save them. Nor need any worker regret that he or she cannot show the splendid muster-roll of services of men like Martyn, Moffat, or Livingstone. The humble workman can show what for him may be better ; and that is the spectacle of a common man possessed by an uncommon enthusiasm. It will be found, in the ultimate value of service, that the highest has not happened in the way of great opportunity. Trafalgars and Waterloos occur once in a century ; but the binding up of broken hearts is a daily experience, and the healing of wounded consciences is work that never ceases. He Who would not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, may be trusted to lift drudgery to its true level ; and the one crowded hour of glorious life" may at the end take its place behind the " sentry go " God s hidden servants have had to do. They have had to keep open the city gates 9 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool all the day long ; and gate-keeping never was a pleasant business. But, in the joy of all the nations getting home, the keepers of the gates will gain their exceeding great reward. They have been fellow-helpers of their Lord and King, doing their best to keep both road and kingdom clean. Now if we are fellow-workers with Him, this partnership must be alive at all points. It is significant to note that no church or creed can close these ever-open gates. The dwellers in God s Eternal City are to come from the East and the West, from the North and the South ; and the Missionary is simply a messenger to help wanderers on their way from nature cults from Hinduism, from Confucianism and ancestor worship home to infinite love. Our Lord has prepared the way, and His servants must keep the road in order. The King s highway of holiness must have no lion or any ravenous beast thereon ; and His keepers must see to it that the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein. It would be ridiculous, human nature being what it is, to suppose that the call comes in the same way to every man. The outstanding instances quoted may mislead a cursory reader into the belief that every man or woman on the Mission -field has come out in the spirit of simple obedience to our Lord s emphatic command : "Go 10 The Call ye therefore." It is notorious that some men have deluded themselves into a belief that they had a call to foreign service because no church at home would have them. The man who fails in England, America, or Germany, is a thousand times a greater failure on the Mission-field. If he cannot sow and reap in his own country, he cannot in China, Africa, India, or New Guinea. Then, a man may be an orientalist, according to notions which prevail, say, at Oxford, to give him the hall-mark of respectable scholarship ; but what is he at the end of it ? If a man knows thirteen languages, Jbut is unable to speak a single sentence of common-sense in any of the thirteen, then his place is not in the Mission-field but in a Museum, where he can spell out epigraphs or read inscriptions on ancient coins. Restlessness is at times a moving factor in the call. This case is hopeful in two aspects : the man may really settle down in a new environment and do excellent work ; or he may leave it and let better men come in. Women Missionaries from Scotland, or Germany, or Denmark are beyond praise. English Societies have not, as a rule, sent out ladies so soundly edu cated. Here again the estimate of a church, or a vicar, has been allowed too much room in the selection of a candidate. It does not follow ii By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool because a woman is an indefatigable district visitor, or a Sunday School teacher, that she is quite adapted to work in China or India. Piety first, scholarship a close second, ought to be the rule in this selection. China and India are the dumping ground of certain " one-horse Missions," as a Missionary, who ranks with the great ones, describes them. It is simple cruelty to send out workers unready and untrained, to starve in a country like China or India. The Missionary referred to had to go from house to house and beg funds the place had a great number of Europeans in it to send home people who had been deluded into the belief that anything was good enough for India. These remarks do not imply that only the rich and noble are called to this service. With but few exceptions Missionaries have come from lowly stock. Williams and Morrison were handi craftsmen ; John Hunt was a farm labourer ; and Kobert Moffat a gardener. Livingstone was a striking instance of a man who was never ashamed of his early poverty and his weary hours in a mill. It must be noted, however, that these men were thoroughly equipped for their work ; but one reason of their success may be found in their humility. When Dr. Marshman was engaged in the most un pleasant task of compelling the then secretary of 12 The Call the Baptist Missionary Society to eat his own words, the doctor quoted the Secretary s words on the title page of the pamphlet : " Dr. Carey is uni versally known to be one of the humblest and most modest of human beings." Carey cultivated humility as he did his garden. A young Missionary lady, an inmate of Carey s house in 1828, puts on record that she saw a shoemaker s last hanging up in the doctor s study ; asking the reason why such a curious orna ment held such a conspicuous place, the doctor replied : "I keep it there simply to remind me what I once was a humble shoemaker." " The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit." In a true spiritual birth there is contained another birth, and that is the supreme desire to serve Christ. Wherever He calls, thither must His servants speed, to do His bidding over land and sea. This question of the call needs not only the Master s clear, unmistakable voice, but also the receptive ear of the listener. It is so easy to mis take the call of a meeting for the call of Christ. In that most searching and microscopic book, Letters on Missions, by William Swan, late Missionary in Siberia, there is a resume of motives which should be all that is needed to an intending Missionary. 13 II OBEDIENCE TO THE VOICE OF CHRIST " I have thrown myself blindfold, and I trust without reserve, into His Almighty hands." WHITEFIELD. "How too did the great movement in England originate? It was from no University, from no Established Church, from no distinguished man. It was in the mind of a shoe-maker, the honoured Carey. For years the idea was within him, as a fire shut up in his bones." HOPKINS. " Do good unto all men. Let your charity begin at home, but do not let it end there. Do good to your family and connexions, and, if you please, to your party ; but after that look abroad. Look at the Universal Church, and, forgetting its divisions, be a catholic Christian look at your country, and be a patriot look at the nations of the earth, and be a philanthropist." HENRY MARTYN. 16 II OBEDIENCE TO THE VOICE OF CHRIST TN the previous chapter it is assumed, if not J- stated, that Christ has spoken to His servant, and that the servant has answered : " Here am I, Lord ! send me." There is no need to speak much upon this fact of expectant and anticipatory obedience. The abnegation of the human to the Divine will has different modes of expression. Paul longed to be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness ; an almost equally fervid soul in one of his letters prays that he may be " lost in Christ " meaning thereby his desire for absolute passivity in the hands of his Lord, willing to go anywhere, willing to do anything, willing just to mark time, and be the veriest coolie for Christ, if Christ wills it. In the old Wesleyan hymn-book is the striking couplet which combines both experiences Here then, to Thee Thy own I leave, Mould as Thou wilt Thy passive clay. T.S. 2 17 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool And in devout Hindu thought you come to the wish of a certain lofty soul, who prays that he may be absorbed into the passive essence of the supreme God. In spiritual reaches of this kind the reader may think that Paul and Wesley and a devout Hindu are practically on the same plane. As a fact they are, so far as regards one-ness of desire ; but Paul and Wesley differ from the Hindu in the vital fact and the ultimate end of the desire. They want to be found, or lost, or absorbed in Christ, that He may direct them to never-ending service. The Hindu desires absorp tion simply that he may gain Nirvana, and be no more tormented by the power of deeds. In the one it is the home-bells of evening calling the world to rest ; in the other it is the clang of the trumpet which summons to strife and victory. It is therefore a matter for earnest and con tinuous prayer to find out what the Master calls upon His servant to do. To ascertain this there must be spiritual Yogism prayer that shall put its finger upon the Divine purpose, that shall feel and know the will of God. The question is one of telepathy ; our Lord taught it twenty centuries before the word became current. The fact and the power of the fact are not only in His parables, but were found in a certain Upper Koom. We have forgotten the glory of that Pentecostal Day 18 Obedience to the Voice of Christ when the followers of our Lord "were all together in one place," and the rushing of the mighty wind of God filled all the house, and filled every heart in it. Here was a call to men and women on an unprecedented scale, but " the Spirit gave them utterance." With all reverence let it be said that crises like these ought to come to every follower of Christ, if the man or woman who follows is alive to His call. That mighty rushing wind did not affect Galileans only ; it captured devout men from every nation under heaven. The same wind of the Spirit has swept over the world in certain alarming facts of history. The accessories have not been an Upper Room, and a host of weeping disciples. National upheavals, plague, pestilence, persecution, and war have been the heralds of the Spirit s advent ; but the fact remains the Spirit has come. It has become the fashion to speak of " the Spirit-filled life," and there are people who claim to be the recipients of this supreme blessing. It is noteworthy that the Bible contains no instance of the personal application of this phrase. The exhortation, "Be ye filled with the Spirit," has in view the great possibility, otherwise the exhortation would not have been given ; but with the accession of the indwelling Spirit there will be that indwell ing humility of the heart in which alone the Spirit 19 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool of God can find His temple. This is referred to because there are people quite willing to serve God in a particular part of the Mission-field which may attract them by its novelty. It may have historic interest, and the glamour of a great name. " What society shall I find at P ? " wrote a would-be aspirant to an old Missionary who had been at P all his working life. He replied : " If you want society, stay where you are." There is no reason why a man should not desire a particular field. If he is sent to the field he wishes, let him thank God because he is sent. If he is found more fitted for another place, let him still thank God, and remember George Herbert s words : "I now look back upon my aspiring thoughts, and think myself more happy than if I had attained what I so ambitiously thirsted for." There is an infallible test, which whoever tries shall find it will at once indicate to him how far his heart and will are in accord with the will of his Master. Let him make prayer the test, and work the proof of his sincerity, and there will be no mixture of motive, no division of aim. A page or two back the word Yogism was used to express the discipline of soul which leads to illumination. The Hindu word " Yogam " is the generic term for the eight states in which the devout ascetic meditates upon Shiva the ineffable ; 20 Obedience to the Voice of Christ and seeks union with him. The practice of Yogam has only too frequently led to a refinement of cruelty almost incredible. If a Yogi sets himself to seek God, the patched road of penitence" is the garment he must wear ; and to become a proficient in the eight states means protracted exercise of both physical and mental powers. The eight states are : restraint of appetite ; moral duty ; the rigid position on the tiger skin ; control of the breath ; unwavering stability ; abstraction ; sar- riathi, or the state in which the soul is independent of the body ; and lastly, the profound and un disturbed contemplation of God. Nothing must interrupt this supreme business of seeking the will of God. It seems to be a peculiar power of the Eastern soul to indulge in this long, tireless, and ecstatic contemplation. It has been carried to an awful extreme in the Muslim Brotherhoods of North Africa. We are not immediately concerned with the habit of contemplation per se. It is only mentioned as showing what certain sincere souls will do in the attempt to know God. We may think the mode a mistake ; but there is no question as to the thoroughness and reality of the attempt. A little spiritual Yogism would do the Christian Church service in bringing home and emphasising the fact of self-denial, willinghood, and 21 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool obedience. " Do one thing ; do it well ; do it to-day," is an Indian saying that leaves nothing to be desired in the way of terseness. The Brethren of the Moravian Church are con spicuous for this one thing, they hold it to be the main calling of their Church to proclaim the Lord s death. One of their chief memorial days is August the thirteenth : " The baptism of the Spirit upon the infant Church by the occasion of the celebra tion of the Lord s Supper on that day in 1727." The blessing on this day, which is looked upon as the spiritual birthday of the Renewed Church, showed itself chiefly in a deepened spirit of brotherly fellowship, and a universal feeling of true heart s union with each other in the Lord. One result was the institution of the hourly in tercession (August 27), by which unceasing prayer was offered by the congregation by day and by night. Proofs of the reality of the work were the general awakening among the children (August 17), and the common impulse that moved the community to work for Christ, especially to carry the Gospel to distant heathen races. Here is a practical example of Christian Yogism. We quote another. In 1856, William Hoyles Drew died from cholera. Bishop Caldwell had been Drew s companion in the early days of his career. Caldwell weighed his words, and was a singularly 22 Obedience to the Voice of Christ calm and judicious writer. He says concerning his early friend : " His devotedness to the Mission ary cause to the cause of Christ was fervent and unchanging ; and it arose not from professional zeal, but from devotedness of heart to Christ. He lived by faith not in doctrines respecting Christ, but in Christ Himself, Whom, having not seen, he loved ; and his love was fed by habitual devout- ness. Much of his time was daily spent in private prayer, or in the study of God s Word and devout writers. His chief favourites and constant com panions were John Howe, Robert Leighton, and Thomas a Kempis ; and his habitual feeling may be represented most appropriately by an exclamation of Leighton s which he loved to quote : prayer, the better half of our whole work, and that which makes the other half effectual ! He occasionally combined fasting with prayer, and his manner of life was always remarkably unworldly and self-denied." " Touching bottom things " is a familiar way of putting an essential truth. The bed-rock of pure motive will bear the heaviest burden of service. Let the foundation be well and truly laid, then shall the superstructure stand ; then, in the wise and touching words of Principal Falding to one of his students : "Bethink you, not of failure, but of grace that supports you. Walk worthy of your 23 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool high vocation, in all prudence and in all fidelity- giving no occasion to the enemy to speak reproach fully. Let no man despise you as men certainly will, and especially in India, if you should ever be ashamed of your office or negligent of your duty. Eemember that you may be exposed to temptations to abandon your post as a Missionary. Induce ment may be offered you to forsake your high and holy calling for secular office, for civil service, for commercial or literary pursuits. Oh, remember then how once your heart was fired with holy gratitude and your spirit was overwhelmed with adoring wonder and astonishment at the honour and obligation conferred on you sinful and un worthy as you saw yourself to be when unto you, less than the least of all the saints, the grace was given that you should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." " Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers " possibly originated a distinction made between a narrowing love and a broadening faith : can such be the result of faith faith which works by love, and can only find its true expression in the constant exercise of love ? The phenomenon of an expanding mind with narrowing sympathies, unless the expansion is evil, is non-human. It is a waste of time to discuss the so-called expansion of faith which has outgrown belief in the written Word. That is no expansion, 24 Obedience to the Voice of Christ it is an accretion. Faith in our Risen Lord as it expands will compel our love to keep pace with its growth. If the writer who engendered the sentence means by the word " faith " a creed, then his contention may stand ; for sympathy may grow beyond a creed that men have framed but it should be called a creed, and not faith. Ill "GO YE THEREFORE" " How came the primitive believers, then, by a faith which was strong enough to brave ridicule, persecution, death, and to make Christianity the conquering force of the world ? The answer to the question is the core of the whole matter. The proof to them of Christianity was the possession of it as a life. . . . The Risen One had touched them, and that touch transformed their lives." J. B. " He was so penetrated by the conviction that the immeasurable edifice was not merely the Church of God, but the will of God, that the thousand impediments which met him disappeared before his entranced vision, till it stood before him in its heavenly glory."- Dante, by KARL WITTE. 28 Ill -GO YE THEREFORE" IN launching their barque upon the difficult waters of Missionary enterprise, " Go ye there fore" was the sheet anchor of our Missionary fathers. The words rang like a clarion blast through that earlier, and shall it be said, braver Israel, who through faith subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness. The greatest miracle of modern days is not the phenomenal success of the enterprise, but the fact that it was ever begun. Of the twenty-two priests who came out to India with John de Britto, eleven died on the voyage ; John himself was half murdered at Goa by his fellow- countrymen, who could not bear his rigid scrutiny into their shockingly immoral lives. The Governor of Goa would have justly punished these scandalous cowards, but John would not give them away. Ziegenbalg at Tranquebar had to suffer unspeakable things even among quiet Danes. China claims its share of distinction, but with 29 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool a difference. Missionaries were at first welcomed there ; but from a quaint old letter, written from China in January 1712, it is evident that the Catholic Mission was played out. The Chinese being " a wise and understanding people, masters of reason, and learned in natural philosophy," had no further patience with Jesuits. These, it is admitted, "lived unblameable." 1 The Portuguese padres at Macao are scandalous beyond expression, and are a great obstacle to Christianity. Most of them are better mathema ticians than divines." The letter goes on to state that the Jesuits called the other priests " asses of God " ; but the greatest offence was the attempt at preaching down China-idolatry and preaching up Europe-idolatry. The Chinese say they have more reason to worship China saints than Europe saints, of whom they know nothing. It will be easily perceived that Morrison in going to China had a heritage of crime and misdeed, done in the name of the Christian religion, that must have appalled him. Jesuit duplicity of the most unblushing kind had closed China. The last paragraph in the letter quoted above contains a specimen of the length the Jesuits allowed them selves to go. " At a great solemnity, when they choose doctors of law and others to serve the emperor in places 30 "Go Ye Therefore" of trust, out of the College of Confucius in Canton, Padre Tonglang, Prior of the Jesuits, and tagon or messenger from Court, assisted at the sacrifice to Confucius, and dipped his finger in the hog s blood that lay upon the altar ; of which being accused by several persons French gentlemen he presently answered like a Jesuit, that though he assisted as a China mandarin, he said the prayers of a Christian all the time of the ceremony." No wonder Christianity sat uneasy upon the Chinese, and led to the exclusion of foreigners, except a few factors in certain parts. The new crusade had to begin in the face of frightful obstacles. There was not only invincible prejudice in China and India, but moral and spiritual barrenness at home. Dutch chaplains in factories on the coast-line of India, in Batavia and Ceylon, paid some attention to slaves and outcasts. Ziegenbalg and Plutschau, however, were the real pioneers of Protestant Missions in India. They reached Tranquebar in 1706. Twenty-six years later Moravians began work in the West Indies. Zinzendorf, while on a visit to Copenhagen, heard of the lost condition of slaves on those islands, and the congregation at Herrnhut felt that the Gospel alone could help these destitute souls. Leonhard Dober, a potter, and David Nitschmann were willing, if necessary, to become slaves them- By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool selves to save the slaves. On August 21, 1732, Dober and Nitschmann set out, each with eighteen shillings in his pocket, on foot for Copenhagen. After overcoming the greatest opposition in that city, they set sail, and, landing in St. Thomas, December 13, declared on the very same day the Gospel of God s love and Christ s death in broken words to the astonished negroes, who clapped their hands for joy. The Danish Missionaries went out upon the gracious command of King Frederick the Fourth. The Moravians had no earthly king to help them on their way ; and notwithstanding Zinzen- dorf, they must have been as poor in worldly goods and gear as the disciples who carried neither scrip nor purse but the King of kings was with them, and Dober and Nitschmann went to certain victory. Sixty-two years later England entered upon this crusade. If ever human being was filled with the Spirit, that man was William Carey, a saint of saints, and a man great in the realm of spiritual things as Burke was in politics and of infinitely more use to the world than any politician ever has been or will be. For years Carey had prayed with excessive desire that he might share in the spiritual conquest of India. From every human standpoint it seemed to be a forlorn hope. In spite of the continuity of their efforts, through two hundred and fifty years, the Jesuits had given up "Go Ye Therefore" the task. Their labours were futile, they were as men beating the air ; for sixty thousand of their so-called converts were compelled to turn apostate and become Moslems in one day by Tipoo Sultan, the Tiger of the Carnatic. It was this wholesale apostasy that compelled the Abbe Dubois to ex claim in the grief and bitterness of his soul, " Oh, shame ! to think that not one out of this great host had the courage to die for his faith." Dubois believed it was impossible for any Hindu ever to become Christian. And yet in the earlier stages of that Mission, Christian Indians had died for the faith, and won the crown of martyrdom. In Ceylon the people under Dutch rule had been coerced into an observance of Christianity. They were Christian of the type we understand when an article is labelled "Made in Germany." They were Dutch State-made ; and the result was that when Great Britain, at the ceding of Ceylon, declared that the Singalese were free to follow their religious convictions, the State-made Christians went back to their primitive cults and devil worship. " What ! " said an old Tamil man of Jaffna, in reply to a Missionary who had pressed upon him the claim of Christ, " Do you think the tamarind fruit, which the iron hook of the Dutch could not sever from its parent stem do you think that fruit is going to fall at your gentle words ? " T.S.-3 33 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool This sturdy old Tamil resisted the coerciveness of the Dutch, and despised the mild sway of the English. The fine old Mission at Tranquebar had become paralysed by Rationalism. The wave of supreme indifference in Europe affected the lonely workers in India. They were broken in spirit. The hundredth anniversary of the Mission was celebrated in such a way that the men wrote : " Our churches are empty, and Baptism and the Lord s Supper are despised." This was in Tranquebar itself; in other places where there were no irreligious Europeans things were better. The "holy masters" of Leadenhall Street were opposed to Mission work. It is quite true they had sent chaplains to India, and had given free passages to Missionaries and stores in certain instances ; but their attitude to Christian work from 1792 to 1830 was scandalous, notwithstanding the efforts of Charles Grant. Things were in this condition when Carey and his brethren set the example of simple and direct obedience to the command of Christ by going forth to teach. In writing of India, special gratitude ought to be given to the memory of Andrew Fuller. At the time, great ideas were fermenting in the minds of men. In France these brought about the horrors of a revolution ; perhaps an 34 "Go Ye Therefore " odious means to a necessary end. In England, thanks to the Wesley and Whitefield revival, a moral revolution was effected. The leading bishops severely let the new expansion of Christian service alone, and did not transmit Apostolic gifts with the Apostolic succession. Archbishop Wake in 1719 wrote to the Tranquebar men: "May Almighty God graciously favour you and your labours in all things " ; and he congratulates them, "0 happy men ! who, standing before the tribunal of Christ, shall exhibit so many nations converted to His faith by your preaching ; happy men ! " In spite of the prevailing indifference, John Eliot and Brainerd worked among American Indians ; John Wesley went to Georgia ; and White- field "went out to wearisome and perilous rides through the wilderness of the New World : across its dangerous creeks and rivers, through its huge forests, that he might minister the Word of life to a handful of colonists or to a group of negroes, to a schoolful of children as well as to the great multitude in the rising cities on the coast." Itinerants, like Boardman and Pilmoor, had gone forth, and there were other instances of men in the irregular forces of Christ s army who left home and kindred and friends for His sake ; but excepting Eliot and Brainerd, none had taken up the solemn obligation of work among heathen 35 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool races as a really distinct and not an incidental work. Indifference in England was intensified in India. The condition of Calcutta at the time Carey went out is typical of Madras and Bombay at the same period. Schwartz is said to have described Madras as Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one. The Eev. C. B. Lewis, in his Life of John Thomas, writes of Calcutta : " Europeans had their work carried on, their assemblies and routs, on the Lord s Day the same as any other clay ; and a man, when he arrived in India, showed what he would have been in England if there had been no restraint there. Duelling was very frequent, and was encouraged by the example of some of the chief persons in the settlement. Deism was the fashionable profession ; yet, for the sake of gain or for other motives as ignoble, the idolatrous cere monies of the natives were encouraged by the contributions, and honoured by the presence, of the representatives of Protestant England. Drunkenness, gambling, and swearing were almost universally practised." The motive impelling these pioneers was some thing more than the " expulsive power of a new affection " or the enthusiasm of humanity. To use a favourite expression of those days, these " oper ated " ; but the vibrant, dominating note in the call 36 "Go Ye Therefore " that came to them was the fearful future to which they believed Hindus were irrevocably doomed. For years a popular hymn in Missionary assem blies was The heathen perish ; day by day Thousands on thousands pass away : Christians ! to their rescue fly : Preach Jesus to them ere they die. Wealth, labour, talents, freely give, Yea, life itself, that they may live. It is recorded of Henry Martyn that in "frail and feeble health, with a heart half -broken by an attachment which he believed it was his duty to surrender at times lifted up by high hope or calmed by a Divine peace, but again perturbed by the remorse of a sensitive conscience and the humiliations which dog a repressed and perverted nature he went to Asia because the people there were infinitely more miserable than himself." The writer quoted seems to have had intimate knowledge of Martyn ; but from the impressions of friends like Mrs. Sherwood one does not gain quite such a gloomy view of him : " His fidelity was forcible by its justice and intrepidity, and penetrat ing by its affection." He had the power of holy love. The ground of Missionary effort may have shifted, but the motive remains as strong as ever. With a 37 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool wider knowledge of Hinduism than our fathers had though it may be seriously questioned if we really know more of it than they did the motive is stronger and the call to work more binding upon followers of Christ than ever it was. There are Christian people among whom the opinion prevails that Hinduism is good enough for Hindus, because they have inherited the system from a remote antiquity. To talk like this begs the whole question. Much frothy stuff has been written on the " Higher Hinduism," which presumably was discovered by Max Mliller and some Sanscrit scholars. Latent Christian ideas are found in its teaching and we willingly admit this is true ; but the Higher Hinduism affects India much as a butterfly would light upon a pyramid. The butterfly is there, and this is all you can say ; it merely touches the immense mass of stone on which it rests, but does not affect a particle of the material composing the pyramid. Quite in another category is the massive force of the popular Hinduism of the man in the street. This was what Carey and his confreres had to face ; this is what every Missionary in India must reckon with, and find his true account of faithful service in trying to overcome. IV THE OLD INTOLERANCE " Should he whose heart is unclean, rubbing his body with earth equal to a mountain, bathe till death with all the water of the Ganges, still he will not become clean." From the SUDDHI TATWA. " I have never seen a Hindu procession which was not a picture of Hell." THE ABB DUBOIS. " The great majority of the population of India consists of idolaters, blindly attached to rites and doctrines which, considered merely with reference to the temporal interests of mankind, are in the highest degree pernicious. In no part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable to the moral and intellectual health of our race." MACAULAY, Speech on the Gates of Somnath. 40 IV THE OLD INTOLERANCE " A NEW catholicity has dawned upon the * world. All religions are now recognised as essentially Divine." This expression has quite the flavour of South Place, Finsbury, and in that accommodating centre it was minted. It is perhaps fortunate for the human race that South Place, Finsbury, does not absorb the common-sense of the universe. In discussing the old Intolerance or the new Indifference, let us try to be honest to the claims of both. The former judged all religions by the Bible ; the Book of God was the standard to which they were referred. Early Missionaries used this test, and it is admitted their logic was only too triumphant. In the rebound from their whole sale denunciation has grown the belief that Hinduism is good enough for Hindus, Confucian ism for the Chinese, Animism for savage races, since "all religions are Divine in their origin By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool because of their ability to minister to the aspira tions of men." " Aspiration " is one of those loose words that belong to loose thinking. To assert that a thing is Divine because it gratifies a man s desire, is to make righteous every offence in the Penal Code. "Here I am, God help me I can do no other" expresses the attitude of the older Missionaries towards Hinduism ; and in this aspect of their work there is infinitely more to be said for them than against them. Dubois lived among Hindus thirty-five years, adopted their dress, ate the same food, and knew them with an intimacy no other authority can claim. Bernier is described by Mill as " the faithful traveller." It must also be kept in mind that Ward saw most of the evil things he describes ; while to this hour the horrors of the daily sacrifices at the Kali Ghat, Calcutta, may be seen. Missionary publications a hundred years ago began to expose the horrors of popular Hinduism. The attestations of writers of books on India went to swell the general testimony against it. Jugger naut received special attention from the Baptist Missionaries and Claudius Buchanan. There is no need here to enlarge upon its nameless horrors ; they are the commonplaces of Mission History. From this cruel and corrupt source the Directors 42 The Old Intolerance of the East India Company in seventeen years, 1813-1829, received a profit of 99,205 15s. At Gaya in sixteen years the net profits amounted to 455,980 15s. At Allahabad in the same period profits totalled 159,429 17s. 6d. At Tripathy in seventeen years the profits are returned at 205,599 10s. 3d. This Judas gold was obtained from the " Pilgrim Tax," and from the ghastly processions which year by year gathered at the temples above named. Dubois, in his Mceurs et Institutions des Peuples de rinde (tome ii. p. 369), gives a description of these processions as he saw them. The description will not bear translation, and for this reason does not appear in the first English edition of Dubois. John Poynder, Esq., in 1830, denounced this unnameable traffic at a General Court of Directors of the East India Company. The speech fills a volume of one hundred and fifty-seven crown octavo pages, "containing evidence in proof of the direct encouragement afforded by the Company to the licentious and sanguinary system of idolatry." Mr. Poynder further pledges himself that he can completely verify the facts about Hinduism that he quotes. It is a pity that the advocates of the Higher Hinduism cannot be compelled to read this reasoned and impregnable indictment of popular, or, as it is also named, "Puranic" Hinduism. 43 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool There is no question of Missionary intolerance here ; the book bears the imprimatur of a pro prietor of the Company. No wonder the horrors of the Mutiny followed traffic of this kind ! Meanwhile workers in India had been pro gressing in an accurate knowledge of Sanscrit and other languages. In 1850 appeared in Urdu An Investigation of the True Religion. It is an eminently fair and reasonable comparison of Hinduism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity. It was not written for the sake of controversy and contention ; the writers disclaim all intention of causing pain to anyone, and the reader is entreated in the fear of God to examine the work from beginning to end, and then decide upon its merits. This is the middle way between intolerance and indifference. Let it be reverently said, that was the way of Christ, Who despised no man and despised no man s belief. If the man was bad, by repentance and faith he became a new creature in Christ Jesus ; if his belief was childish or impure, then it was cleared of error and filled with the light of the knowledge of the Son of God. In Vedic Hinduism there is an undoubted concept of God ; but men have sought out many inventions, and this revelation is completely lost in Puranic Hinduism, hidden or destroyed by revolting cere- 44 The Old Intolerance monies and by substituting the creature for the Creator until they were given over to a reprobate mind. Some Missionaries now maintain that there must have been a primitive revelation, but that there was an arrested development of the idea ; and, losing sight of the original fact, the people wandered into the endless mazes of error and superstition. Flint shows that a primitive revelation is untenable. Some of the Puranas are summaries of the impious and iniquitous doings of the gods, in which lying, deception, theft, cheating, and shock ing uncleanness indicate their character. It is quite out of place to suppose for a moment that Hindus are as bad as the Puranic deities they ignorantly worship. They, as a rule, are better than the creeds they profess ; and the Mission ary s task among them is neither to reconcile Hinduism with Christianity, nor to give the sanc tion of the law of God to beliefs and practices opposed to that law. These might be possible if the so-called Higher Hinduism were followed ; but it is not by at least ninety-nine per cent, of the people. Any attempt to bring popular Hinduism into line with the Gospel of Christ is absolutely impossible. The two are contradictory, and must for ever remain so. What is the experience of the ordinary, every- 45 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool day Missionary as regards popular Hinduism, the Hinduism of the people ? Every morning of my life, except when in camp, I pass the favourite Swami of the city in which I live. He is known as the Buddha with the broken crown, and has reposed in placid contentment where he is, say, for one thousand years. Mohammedans once threw him down a well, and his head was broken off at the neck ; long, long after he was drawn up out of the well, and his head was cemented on to his neck. There he sits in bland and peaceful meditation, having known only one interruption in his long period of perfect repose. There he sits in drenching sun, in rain, storm, and wind, placid as a lagoon and still as the sphinx, if the people would only let him alone. He is the most popular god in a city of seventy-six thousand people. Not a soul among his troops of worshippers regards him as Buddha, Saivite women smear sacred ashes upon him as the destroyer ; Vaishnavas place upon his forehead Vishnu s trident as the Preserver. These are all women, and their sisters of other cults place garlands round his neck, burn lights in front of him, pour oil upon his head, and one woman is always near him not the same woman, but one out of the various sects ; she sweeps the platform on which he sits, sweeps the ground beneath, and The Old Intolerance in the way of vigorous, continuous service shames many a Christian. One may not pass a scene like this without a prayer that the unknown God whom they ignorantly worship may be declared unto them. There are women Missionaries at work among these women, and they testify to the fact that the worship is based on gratitude. The worshippers prefer their battered, ancient stone god to any other ; their great-great-grandmothers worshipped him, and what was good enough for women one hundred, or one thousand, years ago, is good enough for them. You may not impeach their sincerity or their faith. It is blindness, but grateful blindness, that prompts this worship. The woman will candidly tell you that for her to approach the Supreme is an impossibility. " We only have to do with the smaller gods and goddesses, and this Swami meets all our need. We decorate him, show him reverence, keep him clean, and his resting-place is our shrine, our temple." It becomes apparent that the god they worship is not the God we worship. The habit of custom dominates India, and as a rule the only devout people in it are the women. Salvation, as Indians understand it, is the cessation from existence, not salvation from sin. In India the strange pheno- 47 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool menon is daily manifested of a man religious, but still indulging in vices we cannot describe. " The odour of sanctity " wraps him round, and in its embracing amplitude all things are possible to him he is a holy man. On the other hand, you find a man who deliberately tells you he believes in no god, yet he is as pure in life as if he were still a child. Fakir filth is about the commonest description you will hear ; and it covers such a reach of vice that no wonder some men deny all religious obligations, and elect to be without the worship of a god which leads its votaries to such vileness. The Higher Hinduism, when resolved into its constituents, is found to be no better than the lower. Theosophists use phrases current in India, and put into them meanings the words in any significance will not bear ; sthuli, linga, sarirathi, yoni, sakti, and other words used by a brilliant lady lecturer as the expression of spiritual processes, are no more connected with these than common physical acts, which are natural in their place to any animal, are to be identified with the processes of a soul in its approach to God. It needs an apostle with the acumen of St. Paul to bring back the conception that flesh is flesh and spirit is spirit. No one can attempt to minimise the infinite difference between the two states. You may hear The Old Intolerance our Lord s most solemn words, "Ye must be born again," quoted as a proof of transmigration. Conversion has no more to do with the Hindu belief of change into varying births than has the earth life of a worm to do with the undying life of the soul. One can only wonder how such a pretender as the late H. P. Blavatsky ever caught one of the brightest intelligences among Englishwomen, and persuaded her to become the champion of the Neo-Hinduism. Take it how you may, call it as you will high, low, new, old, pure or impure, worship of pure intelligence or worship of all that is vile you find Hinduism illusive as the mirage of an African desert, yet as ponderable as the solid earth. Not a gleam of mercy shines in its amazing tolerance. Hence misconception, and a conflict of testimony as puzzling and as difficult to hold as Penelope s web. The more you weave the more you unweave ; and the contractions are as exasperating as the scrub of an Indian jungle, or the grass, which cattle will not eat, of certain fields. Walk through a field and see for yourself. Waving grass, but as full of spear points as a seashore is full of sand, and the lancet points of this grass penetrate to your skin, no matter what clothing you wear. Hinduism is like this, and its own Mahabharat says of it : " Contradictory are the Vedas ; contradictory T.S. 4 49 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool are the Shastras ; contradictory the doctrines of the holy sages." Take the much quoted formula, Ekdm deo a advaityam " One God without a second." " Oh," says the Western theologian, " this teaches the doctrine of one God" and he wraps himself in the garment of absolute certitude. Hinduism teaches monotheism. Does it, indeed? The formula teaches absolute and illimitable pantheism. The correct meaning is : " There is one God, and nothing else. God is all, and all is God." The whole universe, heaven and hell, light and darkness, virtue and vice, are God. There is no need to point the effect of a jumble like this. The formula, without pressing it to ultimate issues in the way of personal conduct, denies the personality of God, denies the existence of man and the universe as separate from God. It also annihilates the freedom of the will, and, as for our human consciousness, this goes the same way as our will. We have neither the one nor the other. We quote no shocking instances, though every Missionary finds them, of men misled into unspeakable iniquities by this belief. " Karma," or the power of deeds, destroys freedom, and leaves the Hindu powerless to act for good or ill. He is the merely passive instrument or vehicle by which deeds act, and 50 The Old Intolerance he is no more responsible for them than fire is for a building it may destroy, or water for a man it may drown. The effect of this teach ing is precisely what one might expect. Men confound good and evil ; however vile or virtuous the deed they do, they assert it is the act of God. It is with wonderful ingenuity Hindu thinkers point out that God exists in two states, Nirgun and Sargun. The first of these two words means that which has no qualities or attributes. God is in this state when creation does not exist, and nothing can be affirmed of Him. He is then called Brahm, which is neither masculine nor feminine, but neuter. At last this quiescent inertness becomes Sargun, endowed with qualities, and the desire to create arises in Him. How we are not told ; and the responsibility for our not knowing is found in Maya illusion, which now moves in Him and He becomes possessed of consciousness. He per vades and creates, He is identified with all things, and all things come from Him. In the Sama Veda he himself says : "I am one, I will become all things." It therefore comes to pass that such a thing as human personality cannot be ; life is but a dream, and the universe a figment of the imagination. " As dolls dance in a puppet show, so man is made to dance at the will of the Divine. By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool There is no soul, no joy, no sorrow : all is Maya empty delusion." By a simple progression the result of such belief is disastrous. Everything, in the heavens above or on the earth beneath, every thought of the mind, every act of the body, be it an act of devotion or of nameless impurity all is Maya. Saint of holiest sanctities, sinner of filthiest deeds, are both Maya ; and, so far as personal responsibility is concerned, both are in the same boat. Dr. Mullens, who knew Hinduism profoundly, could retain no measure of words in denouncing it. He was intolerant because he had to be so ; and he declares, after a summing up that would do credit to a King s Counsel : " The whole universe is a gigantic lie, and the liar is the supreme Brahm." Popular Hinduism makes God the author of sin and righteousness. It regards existence in this world as an evil, good or bad ; therefore your actions are all evil. Hinduism destroys responsi bility, because it affirms that " in all things man acts not freely, but under the compulsion of an inevitable necessity." As for interminable nature, religions, local cults, barbarous superstitions and practices, fetishism, worship of trees and animals, their name is legion ; and the endless variety of these objects of worship 52 The Old Intolerance indicates that need of the soul which Christ alone can satisfy. The outward manifestations of Hindu cruelties flourished in all their horror when our fathers came to do Christ s work in India. With few exceptions among Englishmen, none thought it worth his while to interfere, In South India, Mohammedan conquerors let Hinduism go its own way ; except Tipoo, who sometimes made Brahmins into Mo hammedans by the simple process of mutilating them : but beyond this he let them alone, and whilst no Missionary should make it his chief work to be antagonistic, he is bound to make no com promise with Hinduism. He may be silent about it if he chooses, and give his whole time to preach ing the truth which is in Christ Jesus ; but on the peril of his own soul he may not attempt to minimise the difference between Emmanuel and Brahm, or between eternal right and wrong. The Missionary who sets himself the superhuman task of extracting truth from Puranic Hinduism is trying to find a grain of wheat in a cartload of chaff; and the grain of wheat may not be there after all. Incarnation they are all prepared to admit yes ! but what incarnation ? The name of the great fact, what does it mean for a follower of Christ ! and what does it mean to a Hindu ! There 53 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool is no possible basis of comparison ; and any Christian apologist who tries to find an analogy, say, in the legendary birth of Krishna and the birth of the Saviour of men, can and ought to find no place in India. 54 THE INEXTRICABLE WEB 55 " I doubt whether anyone who has not lived among Hindus can adequately realise the astonishing variety of their ordinary religious beliefs, the constant changes of shape and colour which these undergo." LYALL. "The Puranas . . . are full of contradictions and extravagant tales ; and what is most extraordinary, it is declared at the end of each Parana that it is superior to all the rest." Examination of Hinduism. " In the Tantras, elevated by Shiva above the Vedas, he announces the Bam-mata, or worship of the female energy personified, to be superior to all other systems." Examination of Hinduism. "And found no end, in wandering mazes lost." MILTON. V THE INEXTRICABLE WEB /CONDITIONS are less complicated in other ^ great Mission-fields. China, Japan, and Africa can show no supreme hindrance to the reception of the Gospel such as you find in India. Caste has so far not had the attention of a hint. India is kept from Christ on account of it, and it blocks the way of the Lord in every con ceivable aspect. It is the supporting wing of Hinduism, and is actually a fort whose outworks surround the inner citadel with massive and impregnable walls. It hinders and baffles every approach. Excuses of tribal custom and privilege are made for it. It is pleaded that caste is a purely social arrangement ; also that the Kingdom of God con sists not in meat and drink so the gamut runs. Pride of race is one thing, caste in India is another. Bengalis have instanced the village squire in the principal pew of an English church 57 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool as a being quite apart from his tenants, who sit behind him. You cannot say there is no obser vance of caste in this arrangement, but one supreme fact differentiates it from caste in India. In England the distinction is purely social. The squire has pew and house, because he can pay for both ; the tenant has a smaller house and a humble pew, because his means do not permit him anything better. Let him get the means, and he can be as well housed and seated as the squire any day. Another matter to be kept in mind is this, squire and tenant are men who can meet on equal terms in the renting of a farm, or the discussion of crops, or in familiar intercourse. They have grown up in the same village, are sons of the soil who bear mutual burdens. Here all dispute about caste in England ceases. It is a mere accommodation of differing degrees of wealth. The squire will dine with his tenants, and they with him ; he knows, and they know, that in the house of God the rich and the poor meet together, but the Lord is the Maker of them all. They meet on the equality of a common manhood in all the affairs of life. To compare this with caste in India would be farcical if the Indian arrangement were not so pathetic. Its absurdities are monstrous and gro tesque ; its tenacity is indestructible ; its influence 58 The Inextricable Web universal. It is as rigid as a bar of Sheffield steel, and yet as flexible as a snake, with all the danger of the lively snake thrown in. It would be ridiculous to hint at caste prohibitions in India. They already fill three imperial octavo volumes, and the fringe is only touched. Outcasts even have a caste system, and among Pariahs there are at least sixteen caste divisions. Dealing with certain prisoners belonging to a gipsy tribe, a young police officer found that among people re turned on his charge sheet as " Known Depredators/ or in jail parlance as " K. D. s," were thirteen separate castes. They would not eat together, would not shelter each other, would not intermarry, and were as isolated, each tribe from the other, as if they had been geographically ten thousand miles apart. Yet they all live within a boundary of three hundred square miles. These instances are by no means extreme cases ; on the contrary, they are the most familiar things of Missionary life in India. Caste is the clearest and most pronounced ex pression of Hinduism. Were it not for caste, Hinduism would perish in its own absurdities. It is caste that pervades and vivifies Hinduism in its infinite progression from vedism to devil-worship, and from demonolatry to gross phallic abominations. It has tentacles calamitous for all it touches. It 59 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool has paralysed Mohammedanism as a converting force in India, and now the Hindu lamb and the Muslim lion lie down together. Years ago one looked at stretches of well culti vated coffee lands in the hill districts of South India. But the coffee estates have perished, and parasitic growths of Lantana and other creepers have choked the cultivation and stifled the trees, until you now look upon the wildest and most impenetrable jungle. So thickly are these creepers interlaced, that no animal except a snake can penetrate them, and no bird can fly through them. This is by no means a misleading illustration of caste where it cannot destroy it can adapt ; it is as elastic as gas and insinuating as fluid. Much has been made of "a fair and honest attempt to relate our Christian teaching to the ideas which underlie the religious thinking of Indian people." What is their religious thought ? Get as far back to its origin as you can, and you will find that the early concept of sin is almost completely made up of infringement of caste rules, and this advances you another step in the problem. Caste is of its very essence religious ; and a Hindu s religion, in nine cases out of ten, is his caste. The Yedic hymns and prayers are in a marked degree clamant on the ground of personal welfare and aggrandisement. Indra is asked to 60 The Inextricable Web destroy adversaries, and the consciousness of sin is found in the small number of hymns addressed to Varuna. One Vedic scholar (Weber) writes of them : " The religious notion of sin is wanting altogether." Max Mliller says the consciousness of sin is prominent ; and yet a third writer declares there is " singularly little trace of moral conviction, moral enthusiasm, and zeal for righteousness in the Vedic hymns." In Manu s laws it will be found that the most tremendous penalties follow infraction of his rules for the various castes. Kule 249 is a familiar example. " That fool who, having eaten of the sradda, gives the residue of it to a man of the servile class, falls headlong down to the hell named Calasutra." Apart from this the trans lator, Sir W. Jones, remarks upon Manu s laws : They " abound with minute and childish formal ities ; with ceremonies generally absurd, and often ridiculous." The man has yet to arise who will define Hinduism and its twin sister, caste. An inclusive definition is impossible ; and no amount of skill in the manipulation of words can wrap up in a sentence, or a paragraph, the vast congeries of beliefs and cults contained in this name. On one hand, you seem to have breadth without boundary ; on the other, you have a bristling fence of prickly 61 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool limitations which, like the proverbial thistle, no man can touch with impunity. One thing is noticeable : Hinduism will take into its embracing arms any cult and any being. You may see in some temples images of Europeans which are gods in the making. On the lower roof of the Tanjore Temple a prominent bust is that of an old Danish captain in the three-cornered hat of two or three hundred years ago ; another temple in an adjoining district has a full length statue, roughly cut but recognisable, of an Englishman in a tall hat. How the stone came there no one now can tell ; but the moral it points is plain enough. Let a man come out prepared to accommodate his teaching to caste requirements, and his message to Indian religious thought, and the reward of his expediency may be a niche in a similar temple. Edwin Lewis says : "I have never yet met a Hindu, even the best of them, concerning whom I have not felt, c If that man were a true follower of Jesus Christ, he would be an immeasurably better rnan." : And this sums up the whole case ; for Lewis had mixed with all sorts and conditions of Indians. It is impossible for an outsider to speak of China ; but it is manifest that conditions there are not so difficult as in India. Absence of caste 62 The Inextricable Web means half the battle, although there are traces of this in the Buddhistic community, or that part of it which seeks " The Western Heaven," as it is named, through a long series of transmigrations. Many years since, the writer met, in a congre gation to which he was for the time preaching, a Chinese Christian lady and her husband. She had been in Mrs. Chalmers s School in Hong-Kong. The contrast between her and Indian Christian women was startling. This woman from China was impressive, and marvelled at the backward ness of her Indian sisters in initiative. They pointed out to her that she came from " Sinim," where caste was unknown, and that she entered upon life untrammelled by its prohibitions and abominations. Beliefs in China, according to Dr. Muirhead, may be reduced to a simple formula : " Self- reformation, self-development, and self-abne gation." Wise rules all of them for the conduct of life. si sic omnes ! Apparently these cults can be resolved into something approaching an entity, and from the strategic point of view this is great gain. In India the position resembles the Bhurtpore sieges in 1805 and 1827. The fort was an immense wall of mud, burnt hard by an Indian sun, but at times softened by rain. Lord Lake attacked it four times, and the cost of these united 63 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool assaults is said to have been the weight of the fort in currency. The fort absorbed all the shot and shell that could be poured into it. Had the wall been granite, cannon-balls would have pulverised it ; but these fell dead into the half- baked mud. There should be a fortune in iron in the old mud fort and ditch of Bhurtpore ! In 1827 the place was mined, and then came the end. It could resist cannon-balls, but could not resist gunpowder. Hinduism will perhaps yield in a similar way ; and this is the vital hope of Educational Missions. Years ago a missionary declared that Hinduism was falling to pieces ; but he was premature in his exuberance. There are still earthworks, soft and yielding as the mud of that old fort ; and these take in all the shot and shell of preaching, especially the kind of preaching that tries to reconcile Hinduism and Christianity. Yet quite openly another process may go on : daily teaching in school and the daily ministry of zenana workers, Mission hospitals and literature ; the latter wisely directed, and the other strong in its attempts to cure both body and soul. The ways of sincere Christian service in India are infinite. Workers who know the vernacular, and will talk to Indians, will, in spite of caste, find a ready way to the Indian heart ; and once The Inextricable Web admitted to that, no Missionary need despair of winning souls for Christ. It is in constant seed- sowing that a harvest may be ensured, and the opportunities for dropping seed are innumerable. So many desperate remedies have been prescribed for the salvation of India, that one hesitates to name them. " Christianity for a Hindu must be made acceptable to a Hindu." Did ever any hear a more ridiculous statement : it amounts to this a patient suffering from a serious disease, say cancer, must have only the medicine he likes, and no surgeon must be called to remove the malignant growth. In another book one is gravely informed : "Before India can be Christianised, Christianity must be naturalised." The sentence must have been written for the antithesis. And if you turn it inside out, it means what? Let us try a precisely similar sentence : " Before England can be Christianised, Christianity must be anglicised." Let alone what an Anglican by a play upon the words could make out of it, what does the sentence denote and connote? "Naturalised" means local colour, a concession to local prejudice ; a native growth that has to be cultivated. And the everlasting Gospel intended for every nation, kindred, tribe, tongue, and people is to be treated as though it were an exotic. In this year of grace one would have supposed T.S. 5 65 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool the day of apt illustrations, fondly supposed to be proofs, had gone and gone for ever into merited oblivion. Is the Gospel for which our Lord lived and died to be minimised and shorn so that Hindus may take hold upon Him, and retain their hold upon Hinduism at the same time ? If Christ is to have the pre-eminence in all things, then He must have it over all forms of religion, false or true. The illustration that you can get great crops of American cotton in India is disputable ; but supposing you can, the cotton is American and not Indian ; in certain tracts it has failed to grow, and in these it cannot be naturalised. If Christ is to rule over India then Hinduism and all its works must go. You can neither lessen His light nor illuminate its darkness by any process of naturalising. The humble worker must still go on, even with the forlorn hope of plucking a few brands from the burning, and find his comfort in this that he has tried to do his Master s will. These brands in the day of reckoning and reward may be found worthy of the "Well done, good and faithful servant." It is so easy to cheapen a sentiment, yet it gives one pause to see the words quoted as a reproach. One remembers a fine engraving, and the scene it represents is that of a Lincolnshire parsonage, set on fire by malignant parishioners. 66 The Inextricable Web One child out of the six is missing, a man standing on the shoulders of another rescues the child. Great is the thanksgiving thereat, and the rescued child in after years described himself thus " surely this is a brand plucked from the burning." The brand so plucked was John Wesley. His great service no one can estimate ; but the example points the moral of saving even brands. VI THE NEW SYMPATHY 69 " The people in the house are blind, and there are open wells in the backyard." Tamil Proverb. " We led them to believe that we attached no importance to the difference between Christianity and Heathenism. Yet how vast that difference is ! I altogether abstain from alluding to topics which belong to divines. I speak merely as a politician, anxious for the morality and temporal well-being of society. And, so speaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry . . . is to commit high treason against humanity and civilisation." MACAU LAY S Speech. "A man does not need a looking-glass to discover an ulcer in the palm of his hand." Indian Proverb. VI THE NEW SYMPATHY question has been put : If you strip Hindu- -*- ism of its fungoid growths, can you not reach a measurable amount of purity of faith and morals, and thereby find some truth which will form a nexus between it and Christianity ? This may be termed the New Sympathy ; and as it hits a passing mood, the inquiry deserves the most careful con sideration which prayer and sympathy can give. Vedic Hinduism is ruled out, because Indians do not follow it. Popular Hinduism has still its unspeakable filth, its obscenities on temple walls, upon sacrificial cars, and in symbols worn by worshippers of the Lingo, and the Yoni. Even the trident of Vishnu has an origin attributed to it indecent past belief. All these things claim to be God immanent. Following them there comes a lower deep of Sakti or Tantric worship, the religion of the Five and of the Eight letters ; the adoration of the male and female organs of repro- By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool duction, with all its shameless and unnameable horrors. This mode of worship never had any glaring publicity ; but it is still practised in semi- hidden shrines, where unmistakable traces of it are seen the day after the worship. It is declared by some people to be a thing of the past ; but, there is no mistake about it, it is also a thing of the present. Allied to it, though by no means so gross, is devil-worship ; but the horrors of this particular cult are open. You see the mutilations of the possessed one, and you hear the unspeakable pronouncements that accompany the obsession ; and, whatever doubt you may have had as to demoniacal possession, you lose it all if you live, or camp, in proximity to a village where devil- dances are practised. You have a bright lad in your school, and find something has suddenly gone wrong with him he cannot work, and you know there is a lesion somewhere ; but as time goes on you learn he has been at one or other of these shock ing initiations, and his career is behind him. I venture to say that this is common knowledge to most Missionaries who have been in India beyond the apprentice stage of their work. Following these arrangements come the Dasis, the wives or servants of the gods. There is no temple of any importance in India where these women do not abound. The dancing-girl, as she 72 The New Sympathy is called the Nautch woman is as much the official part of the temple as the priests them selves ; all her life she is dedicated to vice, and it is gilded vice. You find the Nautch woman has the best house in the place, and is wealthy in the accumulation of jewels her numberless paramours have given her. As a member of the temple establishment an income from its resources is hers ; but this is the merest trifle compared with what she earns in illicit ways. As to public obscenities ; one is a symbol which you may see on certain temple gates representing eternity in the form of a ring, which has neither beginning nor end. The mode of this representa tion is incredibly filthy. This is old, and would not be repeated nowadays, so I was assured. But it is repeated, and thirty-four miles away from the place in which this sentence is written, one may see a brand new car, covered by a structure of galvanised iron sheets, in which these horrors are reproduced. The lower panels of the car are clean enough, and represent certain touching scenes in the Ramayan, executed with wonderful skill as to carving. But the highest part of the car, the cornice, has all the old abominations carved with all the skill mani fested in the lower panels. On quite another plane from this scandalous defiance of moral cleanliness is austerity, in its 73 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool way quite as cruel as the other because of the physical suffering it causes. Hook-swinging, in spite of the vigilance of English police superin tendents, still recurs. Ordeal by fire has been seen in a city of 70,000 inhabitants, and with a full staff of European officials in the place. The minor modes of torture are so common in markets that one does not notice them they are there, that is all that needs be said. One sees them as the daily preaching goes on. The reader, if he or she chooses, may verify what has been written in regard to Nautch women, by a reference to Miss Wilson-Cai michael s work, Things as They Are. The simple truth is told in that book, and all reference here to these women is from the standpoint of Hinduism. The women have the sanction of their religion, and it practically amounts to this it is religious for them to be impure. Are they not the wives of Hindu gods ? From the Magdalen s of great cities in Europe and England the approval of their priests differentiates them. This by no means lessens the infinite sadness of their lot, even if the fact is not brought home to them as it is to their unhappy sisters in other lands. The advocates of the New Sympathy will tell you they reprobate these things with all their heart and soul. If this is so, how are they to tolerate 74 The New Sympathy the religious thought of which these immoralities are the expression ? It is not fair to criticise Vedic or Puranic Cosmogony, or rather it is not generous to blame Hindus for its monstrous absurdities, notably in reference to the age of the gods. Buckle writes : " On this, as on every other subject, the imagination of the Hindus distances all competition. Thus, among an immense number of similar facts, we find it recorded that in ancient times the duration of the life of common men was eighty thousand years, and that holy men lived to be upwards of one hundred thousand. Some died a little sooner, others a little later ; but in the most flourishing period of antiquity, if we take all classes together, one hundred thousand years was the average ! Of one king, whose name was Yudhishthir, it is casually mentioned that he reigned twenty-seven thousand years ; while another, called Alarka, reigned sixty thousand. They were cut off in their prime, since there are several instances of the early poets living to be about half a million ! But the most remark able case is that of a very shining character in Indian history, who united in his single person the functions of a king and a saint. This eminent man lived in a poor and virtuous age, and his days were, indeed, long in the land, since, when he was made king, he was two million years old ; he then 75 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool reigned six million three hundred thousand years ; having done which, he resigned his empire, and lingered on for one hundred thousand years more ! " The particular purpose of this quotation is not to ridicule Hindu sacred histories, but to show the opinion of a writer like Buckle upon them. It may be pleaded, in the same writer s words : " All this is but a part of that love of the remote, that straining after the infinite, and that indiffer ence to the present, which characterises every branch of the Indian intellect." Now, the reader will bear in mind, this is not written by a Missionary, and therefore class or professional pre judice cannot come into it. Buckle, except in a few cases, did not believe in the " triumphant reports" of Missionaries; he "most confidently" asserts, " that there is no well attested case of any people being permanently converted to Christianity except in those very few instances where Mission aries, being men of knowledge as well as men of piety, have familiarised the savage with habits of thought, and, by thus stimulating his intellect, have prepared him for the reception of those religious principles which, without such stimulus, he could never have understood." Now, with what is the New Sympathy to con cern itself ? It is freely conceded that there is a 76 The New Sympathy keen human interest in tracing the development of any religion. You may watch its growth from elemental ideas that are the common stock of mankind. You recognise the instinct of worship from the rudest token to the most elaborated forms of physiolatry. The worshipper gratifies his sense of need. Buckle contends that religion is the effect, and not the cause, of civilisation ; but this leaves out of count a revelation. Now, consider the case of a keenly alert congeries of peoples, as Indians are, living in a land where all natural conditions are extreme, perhaps more than in any other land ; where a vertical sun scorches you as it does nowhere else upon earth ; where, in a tract of country fifty miles between the first and the last mile, you get a rainfall of thirty inches at one point and one hundred and fifty inches at the other ; where one side of the horizon is a bare sweep of granite rocks that in the terrific heat almost blind you if you look at them, and on the other side you have the richest tracts of cultiva tion, forest, rice-fields, great patches of greenness, and a smiling river running through them all. The wind and the rain combine their testimony to the uncontrolled power of the elements ; and where is lightning more fierce than in India ! On the eastern side the Bay of Bengal is the gathering-place for cyclones, and at times a huge 77 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool storm-wave will sweep in, drowning a million or two of people. Times of drought recur, and modern observation has reduced these to famine cycles. You see the tantalising sight of great tracts of cultivated fields inland, and you know that fifty cents of rain would save the crop, and the fifty cents do not come. Occasionally come other dire portents earthquakes, eclipses, and epidemics. If the reader will think of these con trasted conditions, and then think of the eternal wall of snow that bounds North India ; if he will further think that people living in such varieties of climate and environment must of necessity have not only a quick sense of fear, but an equally quick recognition of the friendly or non-friendly powers directing all these Nature forces he will see at once how physiolatry must have arisen as the cult of a sensitive and observant people as were the early Aryans, refined by long pilgrimages. Physiolatry by this is meant the worship of the forces of Nature as a starting-point towards a religion is not a bad one. The conscious prayer to the beneficent manifestation of the Power may contain an unconscious tribute to the Power. Vedic hymns, whether of praise or prayer, leave no doubt as to their sincerity. Would that they and the people who used them had stopped there ! The Aryan invaders of India were supremely 78 The New Sympathy ambitious; they became priests, and based their priesthood on Varuna, colour, and divided them selves and the aborigines of India into castes and non-castes simply on this basis. This destroyed the primitive revelation of God, if there was one, and obliterated God, because these priests took His place. Abstract ideas grew into concrete instances, and great warriors, kings, or law-givers, were in vested with Divine attributes. Coming into contact with aborigines brought to light other matters. Wild beasts infested the jungles they still do ; venomous reptiles abounded and they are as much in evidence as ever. Abor igines placated these when they could not destroy them. A shanar climbing a palm tree, any height from forty to eighty feet, might fall from the tree because the girdle that assisted him in climbing had snapped. His fall from the tree was not laid to the account of an insecure girdle, but to the evil influence of a devil hidden in the tree. Un aided reason would lead such to this conclusion ; and he would be a bold man who would say that in all instances an intuition of reason is not a revelation from God. In the case of the shanar, he does not see that he himself may have been to blame for the breaking of the belt ; there was a weak strand in its ligatures, and according to shanar ideas this ought not to have been. 79 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool There is ample room for the exercise of the New Sympathy, but it need take little account of popular or even Vedic Hinduism. Apart from these there are clamant needs, " strainings after the infinite," the desire for a purer worship ; and as for the existence of truth, Christian or not Christian, you find it in the mystic piety of the Saiva hymns, with their intense longing after purity and union with God. In these is an intuition of reason which is a revelation. The piety of the hymns may have been inserted as an afterthought, but there it is. If one remembers that Christian teachers from Alexandria, and Nestorian Missionaries, very early visited South India, and made numerous converts on the eastern and western coasts, a reason for the piety may be found. The hymns in common with other writings are later than the Vedas or Puranas. Before sympathy can do any good, needless and cruel torture must cease. In regard to hosts of people, one feels increasingly the remonstrance : " Why should ye be stricken any more ? Ye will revolt more and more : the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint." Now, the highest and truest of all sympathy is to point Indians, so long and so cruelly afflicted, to their one and only Saviour, Who still speaks : " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 80 The New Sympathy you rest." These words cover the infinite need of India, and answer at once its most clamant cry and its most intense desire. Now let the heralds of His coming preach this message in city, village, bazaar, and street. Let them be content not to measure His power, or fix the date of His appearing. I am certain Christ is in many a bazaar in India; but we, who are His servants, do not see Him because our eyes are holden by our unbelief, and we have neglected the dynamic of prayer direct, continual, and inter ceding. The temptation to give up working because we see no result is from Satan himself. Result or no result, our orders are to occupy till He, our Lord, shall come. There are men who come out because they have to satisfy the clamours of conscience ; yet they are longing after work at home, where they suppose they will see results and enjoy the solace of a cooler climate and the advantages of a pleasant pastorate. Such men ought not to be sent, and the reproach ought to be removed from Missionary work the reproach contained in Rhenius description of men who were " the going- home Missionaries." Physical disablement may mean that a man should return to England, but no other reason should be admitted if the man otherwise is fully fit for work. T.S.-6 8 1 VII CONVERSION " Where thou findest a lie that is oppressing thee, extinguish it." CARLYLB. " The Missionary who knows Hinduism will conquer and con ciliate, where he who is ignorant will suffer. Of such a one it will be said, ( He takes a dwarf to ascertain the depth of the river, with the result that he and the dwarf are drowned. In the warfare we have to wage it is good to remember the wise old rule, Never despise your enemy. We must know him, and lead him a willing captive to the feet of Christ." " Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." JOHN iii. 7. VII CONVERSION HHHE difficulty of knowing Indians and calmly -*- judging them in the light of true sympathy is great. Their history as a people gives a suffi cient reason for it. Before the advent of British rule they were at the mercy of every dominant race in Central Asia ; one instance may indicate the condi tion of things. In the middle of the eighteenth century Delhi was sacked six times in twenty- three years, and the bazaars ran with human blood. No wonder Indians were driven to wear deceit like a garment ; this and caste prevent the Western from knowing the Eastern. In Missionary work one precept must be kept in mind continually. It is the word of our Master : " Let both grow together till the harvest." It is plain that no one can tell the wheat from the tares until both are grown. Yet with some it is an ever- pressing question how to tell the false from the true. We cannot get inside a man s heart and 85 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool know exactly what he is. God alone can do this, and the final judgment on the matter must be left in His hands. The Judge of all the earth will do right. If there be first the willing mind, you may be hopeful the man who possesses it is in a healthy stage of conversion, not far from the Kingdom ; and if his mind grows in willinghood, he will soon be no longer an alien from the commonwealth of Christ, but a living working member of it. There are people who take gloomy views of Indian Christians, and who raise the cry that discipline is constant. This may be accounted for in many ways. One instance may be quoted. Seventy years ago, a Mission settlement was abolished by two young men, neither of whom had been in the country four years. The settlement had been gathered by a pre decessor with infinite pains ; he had wrestled, prayed, had been watchful as a mother over a child ; with fear and trembling he formed the converts into a church, but so far as outw r ard semblance went his work was destroyed in one day by his successors. It was admitted that some of the people were " baptized heathen," some were hypocrites, others were timid and not aggressive ; perhaps half a dozen were loyal but not very intelligent Chris tians. Yet all were treated alike, and the poor little church, because it did not resemble an English church, was abolished. The disbanded 86 Conversion Christians appealed home, and one of the senior men was sent to put matters right ; he found that youthful intolerance on the one hand, and Indian reticence on the other, were leading factors in the mischief. It was not denied there were most serious faults among the Christians ; but as they took the Christian name, it was the duty of the Missionaries to try to make them worthy of it. The older men burnt this lesson into the heart of the younger men, that of all sins in Mission work impatience is the worst. One of the men fifty years after said the memory of it had caused him bitter regret. " We expected too much; and instead of pulling down, we ought in all possible ways to have built up what there was of good." Then, some people have the faculty of creating sins. It is a gift. They make new rules, and if these are not readily adopted and kept, the result is disobedience, quite as serious a sin from their point of view as breaking a command of the Decalogue. These people, after many years unless to the great relief of everyone they have been re tired " get sense," as Indians say ; but at what a price ! and the worst is, it is not they who have to pay the price. You get a worker who thinks he or she has a commission to keep the stars in their courses. 87 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool Because a star shines in one position in England, and you see it from another in India, then that star is wrong. Happily, in spite of the person who would put it right, it still shines. The grace of God manifests itself in many ways ; to assert that it can only shine into men s hearts in one way is to misunderstand and limit the Eternal God. A Missionary writes : " We have in these days great need to beseech the Lord that He may deliver us, in all things, from that malign epi demic, religious lawlessness, which is one of the plagues of our age." It is a mistake to proceed upon the assumption that everything is wrong, and that you only are sent into the world to put it right. You can never make all the world toe your particular line, or expect that every watch and clock is made to synchronise with the particular watch you carry. Your watch itself may be wrong. Then a man or a woman who must be ruled by a fad should adopt the so-called Baconian cipher, or develop a theory on the authorship of the Letters of Junius. " Yes," said a Missionary once to the writer, " this I would not mind, but what would be the next article in their creed ? It would be to compel everybody to swallow that cipher, or adopt their theory of Junius. No, it is best that they should clear out, and let the space they fill here be occupied by people who will have patience, and try Conversion to learn from Indian Christians as well as teach them. I assure you they will have much to learn." Eeferring to poor Indian Christians of lowly origin and but recently separated from a debasing superstition, Bishop Caldwell writes : " When a person evidently understands the obligations he is taking upon himself, and his profession is invalidated by no open sin, I believe I have no right to refuse him the sacraments. He possesses, I believe, the only qualifications for Communion with which man can deal. But it is obvious that among such persons there may be different degrees of piety, and in some the profession of piety alone. Consequently it sometimes happens that I look with doubt and fear on persons whom I feel bound to admit, or cannot exclude." This is the wise and correct treatment for disciples in whom the light is dim but the light is there. Dealing, therefore, with this matter of supremest importance conversion we must clear our mind of much that obscures the word and the fact it represents. In one light, conversion is a final act. But also, if we regard it as a process that is not finished till we are perfect and complete in the will of God, then we shall find it the supreme joy of life to help on the process in every way we can. This mode of viewing it brings us down to the bed- By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool rock of Missionary effort, and teaches us that, how ever low the people may be and however mixed their motives, we have to hold on to them and never let them go until, in God s good time, their motives become pure, and their hearts are made clean by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Hitherto we have spoken of conversion which is but a blind half-seeing, and there are such con versions. The blinding flash that came to Saul on his way to Damascus is an instance of instant and vivid conversion. There is no need to hedge the grand old word round with metaphysical defini tions ; less need is there to fix the amount of the man s emotion. Given an intense tempera ment, the owner of it will feel his conversion intensely, even if he has to go three years into Arabia after it, and at the end of his days declare himself "least of all saints"; in the breezy thoroughness he abased himself but exalted his Master. Among backward classes in India there is this half -seeing conversion; the people behold spiritual truth as the blind man beheld " men as trees walking." Spiritually they are not able to discern the difference between a man and a tree ; but if they make an attempt to see, then our business is to hold on and help their seeing, as our Lord did to the blind men : then gradu- 90 Conversion ally but surely the full unclouded vision will come. He comes from thickest films of vice To cleanse the mental ray, And on the eyeballs of the blind To pour celestial day. People sneer at the old hymn, but Doddridge knew what he was writing. He knew that thick films of vice cannot be removed in a moment patience, time, guidance, and merciful healing by the Great Physician have all to be allowed for ; but at last comes the full glow of celestial day. There is another class of conversion in India, and its nobility shames ours into littleness. It is no extravagance of heroics to say that the price they pay for it proves its splendid sincerity, and here the critic dwarfs into utter insignificance. He says : " Look what it costs to convert a Hindu." But turn the statement round and ask : What does it cost a Hindu to be converted ? We pay something to win him for Christ ; he pays infinitely more that he may be won. A Brahmin when he becomes Christian literally gives up all he has hitherto loved and cherished, that he may follow Christ. Speaking from close knowledge of at least twenty converts, I affirm that these men have not merely to give up their former life, but on entering upon the new life all kinds of difficulties have to be en- By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool countered. They were vegetarians, and there were not wanting Christians who alleged they were keeping caste because they did not eat flesh. Europeans who should have known better expected them to submit to ridiculous tests. One European I knew thought a Brahmin boy, who had become Christian and was living with me, ought to show that he had broken caste by having his food with a horsekeeper. The boy refused such a degrading test, and I asked the European : " Will you yourself do the same, and show you have no caste ? " He declined the test, and later on in life saw how foolish, not to say wicked, it was eating a meal with a low Hindu horsekeeper to prove your sincerity as a follower of Christ ! The offence of the Cross brings its own most serious ordeals, and there is no need for others that men make ; for this unreasonable expectation reduces conversion to an absurdity in the way of useless sacrifice. A Carmelite monk who had been converted once shared my house ; he told this story of his novitiate days. He was a cheery youth no monastery could subdue, and the superior asked him why he did not go more frequently to confes sion. His answer was, he had nothing to confess ; that day he had to eat his dinner off the monastery floor. To translate the instance into English vernacular 92 Conversion understanding : Suppose an English nobleman wanted to go to Communion in his parish church ; suppose, moreover, it was imposed as a condition of communicating that he should dine with his stable- keeper. As an Englishman he might do it ; but suppose he did, what would be the use of it ? And the same may be said of tests equally ridiculous in India. A Brahmin, in all conscience, proves his sincerity when he leaves his Brahminism, without being expected to demean himself in vulgar, un worthy, and fatuous ways. " Surely," the reader will say, " this is ridiculous ; but who would demand an idiotic exhibition like this ? " These things happen, and the incident occurred as it is related. It has no frills, and is otherwise not embroidered. Happily, this occurs but seldom. Where one man will act in this way, there are a thousand others who will use their common-sense, and just quietly wait till the convert proves whether he is pure gold or merely sounding brass. In any case, a sensible man would trust the convert, trust him fully, and believe him to be true till he had proved himself false. If, how ever, you go on the other track, of believing a man is false till you prove him to be true, he will accept your estimate, and you never will prove his genuine ness. This is a cardinal fact all the world over. Suspicion makes the thief. 93 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool This strange miracle of conversion, however it has come to pass, requires at times outward testi mony which the converts cannot give. In India you behold the constant miracle of men becoming new creatures in Christ Jesus. They have not read volumes of ancient divinity, still less have they been won by evidences of Christianity. Whence, therefore, comes this great miracle of conversion ? It does not fall within the compass of lightning revelations, such as came to Paul, and to people who heard Whitefield and Wesley ; neither are the same tests necessary. Wesley had wandered in what he calls legal darkness many years ; but it was not darkness, and it was legal only in the sense that he had tried by austere penances to lift the burden from his soul : and if ever heaven was earned, but not obtained, by works, Wesley had earned it. Sometimes, however, a touch of un familiar emphasis upon well known words will open a man s spiritual vision to a truth he has known all his life, but has never perceived its beauty until the unwonted flash of the emphasised word revealed it. So it was with Wesley in that room in Aldersgate Street where " someone " was reading the preface to Luther s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. In most Brahmin conversions there has infallibly been this "someone." He has finished his work 94 Conversion and gone on his way to the great reward in heaven. Usually when there is someone to speak there is someone to hear, and "thou canst not tell which will prosper " of the spoken or the written word. One thing is absolutely certain, no word of God can fail ; it may slumber in a human heart for half a century, but it will fructify at last. In 1886 an old man came for baptism. He knew the Word of God, though for fifty-three years he had banished it from his mind ; but it obsessed him, and he prayed night by night that an accommodating god would save him from breaking his caste. He said, " Baptize me." I hesitated, and held over his request till the headman of the village testified to his character. "Yes, you may baptize him, he has been in your way all his life ; he was a small boy in the famine of 1833, and a Missionary he met taught him some prayers, was good to him, and he has never forgotten it." "What about his caste?" said I. "That does not matter," said the headman ; "he has for fifty years been out of it." The Great Shepherd of the sheep calls His own sheep out of every land. But all the people in all the lands are His sheep, and He has words for them beyond our knowing wonderful. We are amazed that they do not listen to our creed-bound voice. We tell them this, and tell them that in the way of exact belief ; but above our poor words 95 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool He speaks, and they hear His voice, and the folds get full, so that fresh ones must be got ready. We may count it our greatest privilege to help in the building of a fold. Better is it to build folds than to build arguments. VIII ENIGMAS T.S.-; 97 " If you go gently, the earth will bear you." Indian Proverb. 11 There is no tree that cannot be bored by a beetle." " Light will blind a man sooner than darkness. Are we then to pray that we may be left in darkness 1 Oh no ! but beware, ye who walk in light, lest ye turn your light into a curse." A. W. HARE. "Charcoal will not forsake its blackness though you wash it a hundred times : when fire enters the charcoal, its impurity leaves it." Dialogue between two Sastris. VIII ENIGMAS TT was a candid soul who confessed : " Hinduism * bewilders me ; before I came out, I read all I could lay hold of on this subject, because I thought Missionaries were wrong in their methods. Now I wonder they have any method at all." Not even the omniscient newspaper-man can succeed here, and Sir Alfred Lyall, in his presidential address to the Congress for the History of Religions, said : In India " we are at the fountain-head of metaphysical theology. Other faiths are more coherent, but Hinduism is an inorganic medley of ideas and worships." The mental equipment of the man who has to tackle it should be the best he can obtain. There are still learned Sanscrit sages in India, men who live and think in the groves of Academe. They are impressive figures, and have as a rule bound less charity for all men. The contrast between a saint like this and the ordinary temple Brahmin 99 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool is startling. Swami Bashkara Ananda, of Benares, had the clear open look of a child, and a person ality that haunted you. Every appetite in him was subdued, and he was a hermit even in a crowd of worshippers " never less alone than when alone, and never more alone than in a crowd." Yet he talked to all who went to see him. He had read Augustine s Confessions, which some laborious soul had translated into Urdu. Asked his opinion upon it, the Swami answered : " Oh, the book ! It must have been written by a man who was weary of the world " ; and he could not understand how a man could so lack courage as not to be willing to endure what came to him. The sighings after release, the longings for " mother dear," Jeru salem, seemed unreasonable. It is doubtful if Augustine would have been flattered at the esti mate of his book by a fellow-saint. This man had left Hinduism, and was unchained from all its complicated and never-ending demands. India can still produce saints whom anyone may rever ence in spite of the other so-called saints, fakirs, sannyassis, byraghies, and kasi pandarams, who, compared with him, the Swami, are as vultures to a dove. It is curious how the ascetic Hindu takes to the ascetic Englishman or Scotsman. Ramanuja Cavi-Rayer, perhaps the most learned pundit, 100 Enigmas and certainly the proudest of his time, went to the assistance of the revered William Drew in translating the Rural when he w r ould have gone to no one else in the Madras Presidency. Drew in his preface remarks : " It cannot be sup posed necessary for the sake of Christianity to deny to such works whatever degree of merit they may possess. Christianity requires not the aid of falsehood or of concealment. Nor need we wish to blacken the systems and books of the country beyond what truth will warrant ; for even in the best there is much and pernicious error." Drew and his pundit left the third part of the Rural on "Lust" in its difficult Tamil, because it "could not be read with impunity by the purest mind, nor translated into any European language without exposing the translator to infamy." The two men met on a common ground of moral cleanness, and the third part of this poem never was trans lated until an accommodating German was found competent to do it. Similarly, Dr. John Hay had a pundit the very picture of Swami Bashkara Ananda. In this in stance, the Scottish saint and the Indian saint had a common bond, not only in great scholarship and lofty religious thought, but in perfect simplicity of living and in devotion to one thing, each giving to the world the truth of God as he knew it. They 101 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool translated the Bible into Telugu. The Epistle to the Ephesians attracted the pundit, and Hebrews drew them both to the supreme priesthood of Christ. This particular pundit probably worshipped his brother, the Missionary, next after the Great High Priest, and one cannot wonder. A successor states : " In earlier vernacular lessons I had the same pundit, but was as much out of his great way as a farthing candle is out of the orbit of a star." Having to read the Rural once for an examination, I could find no pundit in the station where I then lived. By some means I know not of, a Brahmin heard of my difficulty, and came to the rescue. He loved the Rural, and what is more, he lived up to the first part of the poem. I became his disciple, and never were lessons so delightful. He broke up that mosaic of enclitics into its con stituent particles, and he worshipped the pure feet of Him who gives rain, light, and air. Medi tation upon the boundless charity of "Him" had purified his soul ; he was not a Christian, but in this aspect of his soul, gratitude to "Him," he was a saint. He was very poorly off at the time, and I had great difficulty in persuading him to let me help his circumstances. It had to be done in an indirect way. He was pledged to teach, to starve, and in the end to die. I was far away when the news of his illness came, and could not 102 Enigmas get to him ; but the last words were an assurance that all would be right at the pure feet of Him who sent rain and light and air. It must be remembered that in India as in England, for any altitude of moral character the price to be paid is just the same. Whatever the phrase, " the simple life," may mean, this life has been lived for centuries before the formula was invented. Like all current phrases, the misappro priation of the words debases their currency, so that they come to define a hypocrite. The simple life may mean anything, from the picture of a shoddy actress who marries a millionaire and proceeds to live the simple life on the best and costliest of everything. A picture paper gave the details of this simple life, and did it with the exquisite irony of the lady attired for the simple life in dresses of fabulous cost. The insincerity of it all is so transparent that it is not possible to find dictionary words to describe it. Reading them, one is thankful not to have to live in England, where surely the other side of the picture is daily seen. In India there are no glaring instances of this kind, although the proverb is common enough: " When the dancing-girl becomes old, she endows a temple " : when the age for impropriety is past, then the exercise of religion begins. 103 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool This among the men instanced is unknown. They became saints when young, and have prac tised Yogam, have schooled themselves into obedience to what they think is the higher will of their being, and have reached it. They are charitable, are gentle to wrong-doers, have keen sight for all leadings to truth, and are no more Hindus, except in nationality, than are English, Scots, or Welshmen. " The All Father ought to have all the children, and would have them if they would but come," is what these men assert. In this matter they appear to know the mind of God better than any creed, and they freely admit that all men are called of God. It is surprising that the possibility of work like this does not appeal to students who are giving themselves to the calling of the ministry in Western lands, but it is a sphere in which the worker must keep to clearly defined limits. I have known workers among educated Hindus who would concede to them all they wished. Compliance of this kind defeats its own end, and it means betrayal. " Go half a mile with a man, and he will go ten miles with you," is a working principle that has its value ; but take care the distance is only half a mile, and not ten miles and a half. It is a mistake, too, to suppose that because a Hindu knows English he is educated. 104 Enigmas In some parts of India the most soundly educated man does not know English. He is learned in Sanscrit, Persian, and certain vernaculars, and to get at him is a great gain. As a rule the English-speaking Indian is so because it pays. He can by its means obtain an official or a mer cantile appointment ; he may become a pleader, or the editor of a bi-lingual newspaper. Once in a Government office, as a subordinate, his chief business in life is to verify bills with codes, grants in aid, pensions, salaries, irrigation, magisterial, public works, legal, medical, sanitary, taxes, regis tration, and so on, through the whole administra tion. The work is hard and the leisure so scanty that the educated man has no time to develop what he acquired at school. He is tired after his day s work. If he is a lawyer he has more time to read ; and as a medical man departmental examinations keep him efficient. In cities like Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Alla habad, or Lahore, this observation will not apply ; the conditions are different. There are universities and colleges in these cities, and the travelling lecturer to educated Hindus can get great audiences in these places. It is entirely different in great cities or towns elsewhere. As a rule, in up-country stations the educated Indian requires all his time for his office and for 105 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool his household necessities, and it is not generous to expect him to respond to anything outside these. On the other hand, there are the detached men, gurus, or teachers, and religious leaders, who have not troubled to learn English, but are linguists all the same in Eastern languages. There is no question about the matter ; among these men there is a great field awaiting the Missionary who is a vernacular Missionary, who has set him self to the task of learning their speech, and as far as he honestly can of thinking their thoughts. To win a teacher of this calibre is no mean victory, and there is no doubt he is waiting to be won, not by concession, and certainly not by mere preaching ; let him know the teacher of Christ in his life and his daily work, in renunciations and obediences, then the guru gets something O O & more tangible than mere words. He knows all about vocables, and can estimate their value. Dr. Pope, the greatest of modern Tamil scholars, tells the story of a Saivite priest who was a saint of saints, clean every atom of him as if he had never left his mother s arms ; but as this instance is quite uncommon, a more familiar example may be quoted, showing amazing receptiveness, and at the same time grievous lapses into sin, but proving at the end discipleship to Christ, 1 06 Enigmas "Twelve years ago, a fakir came to me when I was in camp at the village of the Flowery Foot. He came secretly, and requested me to tell him the difference between El, Elohim, Yahveh/ * Allah/ Deran, and other designations of God. Acquaintance thus begun soon ripened into friend ship. I found he was an accomplished linguist and a subtle dialectician. Much had he pondered upon early Aryan cults, and had striven by long practice of austerity to attain union with Shiva the Supreme. Such is the opening of his story ; one of his cherished friends tells the rest : " Mr. having assured himself of the genuineness of this fakir s confession, baptized him, and kept the new convert near him for some time, in order to help and guide him to a fuller knowledge of Christian truth. A few months after his baptism, being then about thirty-five years of age, he came to S and paid me a visit. He gave me an account of his life, which so interested me that I asked him to come again. . . . He lived with me for some time, and used to accompany me on my preaching tours. " Earlier in his life he had undergone a course of training in Yogism, the effect of which, acting upon a constitution that was never very robust, left its mark upon him for the rest of his life. There is no doubt, too, that it seriously affected 107 By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool his spiritual nature and led him to form habits of thought from which he was never able to free him self. It influenced, too, his conception of Christ s life and teaching in a way that was not healthy. The mysticism that fills so large a place in the Yoga system appealed to his typical Hindu mind the mind of the genuine Hindu who is unaffected by Western knowledge and modes of thought very powerfully. He believed it necessary to the free development of the spiritual faculties of our nature that a man should inure himself to hardship, and should suppress some of the most powerful instincts and appetites of the body. He believed in what he called the inner light a light that could only be seen when the body was kept in complete subjection. His long training in Yogism undoubtedly obtained for him the power of con centrating his thought on the deeper things of life. I used to watch him at time