Part 2 — PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN INDIA. [190]

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN INDIA. [190]

The contents of this book, put forward with all the apparent sanction possible of the sect that employs Mr. Butler, may be looked upon as the quintessence of all that has been or can be said on the subject of missions in Hindostan, by a writer who feels that he has a claim to challenge our attention and command our belief. That it is orthodox in character, according to the notions of his class, cannot be doubted in view of the official position of the author, and the innumerable extracts from the Old and New Testaments, particularly the former, with which its pages are interspersed; quotations the frequency of which, if not reflecting much credit on the reverend doctor by their charity or appositeness, give to the work an air of ponderous learning and holiness that must be highly relished by his brother Methodists. But in justice to the author, it must be said that he does not altogether confine himself to the sacred writers. When the grandeur of the pagan temples or the horrors of Mohammedanism become too great even for his descriptive powers, he freely draws on that profane child of the muses, Tom Moore, whose merits, however, he is careful, in his clerical capacity, to depreciate by assuring us that the author of Lalla Rookh “was for a good part of his life a Romanist”; an objection which he seems to forget might be urged with equal truthfulness against the majority of the gifted minds of the past eighteen centuries, and even against the inspired penmen of the New Testament and the fathers of the church.

However, aside from the attractions of the work in an artistic point of view, we do no injustice in selecting it as a very favorable specimen of this sort of literature, and, recognizing its author as a tried and approved servant of the Methodist Episcopal Church, we shall proceed to gather from its veritable pages a history of his labors, sufferings, and triumphs in the cause of Protestant Christianity.

India, as our readers are aware, is one of the most densely peopled and, in one sense, highly civilized of Asiatic countries. Its population numbers considerably more than two hundred millions, or about one-sixth of the whole human race, speaking many languages and professing various forms of faith. The Hindoos, the original inhabitants, forming the mass of the people, are polytheists, worshipping according to the Vedas and other books considered sacred, their priests being known to the Western world as Brahmins—an hereditary religio-social aristocracy, the most ancient, and at one time considered the most learned, body of men in existence. The Mohammedans, who are said to amount to some twenty-five millions, are the descendants of the conquerors of the eleventh century, and follow more or less strictly the teachings of the Koran. The Brahminical classes or castes, which are numerous, though not enjoying their full immunities since the advent of Europeans on their shores, are still ardently devoted to learning, and indeed, in common with all their countrymen, may be said to develop remarkable mental acuteness and quick perception, though still unfortunately strongly attached to the grossest forms of idolatry. To wean them from these degrading practices, and to introduce in their stead the pure teaching of the Gospel, has been the professed object of the Protestant sects of Europe in sending out crowds of missionaries and innumerable Bibles since the commencement of the century—a work in which some of their brothers in this country have not been behindhand. But American Methodism, until 1856, had no representative in the “land of the Veda,” and the Indians up to that time were ignorant of its peculiar and manifold blessings till Dr. Butler was despatched from Boston to enlighten them. He sailed in April, and arrived at Bareilly in the autumn of that year, where, as he tells us, “his appearance caused a great deal of talk and excitement.” He was accompanied from Allahabad by a native named Joel, wife and child, and, having his own wife and two of his children with him, he commenced his labors. This Joel, who is frequently mentioned in the book, was, it seems, already converted, and when transferred to Dr. Butler by his spiritual guardians they “playfully intimated that Joel had been trained a Presbyterian, knew the Westminster Catechism, and was sound on the five points of Calvinism, and that they would naturally expect him to continue in the faith even though he was going with a Methodist missionary; but,” continues the sly doctor, “I felt assured that these things would regulate themselves hereafter”—and he was right, for, as he tells us in another place, his faithful helper “was destined to become the first native minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in India.” He became in a manner the corner-stone of the vast edifice that was about to be erected on the ruins of heathenism.

We have often heard the anecdote of lending a congregation, but this is the first instance, within our knowledge, of borrowing, not to use a harsher term, a convert; still, we can sympathize with honest Joel in the confusion of mind he must have experienced in discriminating between the Christianity of John Calvin and that of John Wesley, and his mystification at receiving as the Word of God two different and distinct versions of the same law, not to speak of his trying to expound them to his audience in his capacity of first native pastor. Still, he was a beginning, the nucleus of that great conglomeration of religion and intelligence about to be called into existence by the potent spells of the grand magician. Nor was he long left alone. There was a Christian girl, it seems, named Maria, who had formerly been converted by the Madras Baptists, but whom Dr. Butler speedily reconverted to Methodism. “This precious girl,” says the author, “who, of her race and sex in Bareilly, alone loved us for the Gospel’s sake, seemed raised up to encourage and aid us in our new mission;” and with this encouragement, and two such followers, he forthwith set about the conversion of Rohilcund, having first secured “a furnished house, and began to study the language.”

If there is something absurd in the commencement of a Methodist church with only a Presbyterian and a Baptist, the idea conveyed in the last sentence is excessively ridiculous. Can we imagine a heaven-appointed minister, filled with holy energy, so eager to christianize the heathen and elevate his mind that he leaves his distant home and two of his (four) children in tears, penetrates into the heart of the enemy’s country, and, having made his “comfortable arrangements,” established his wife and family, and procured two ready-made helpers, quietly sits down for the first time to learn the language of the highly astute and observant people to whom he is sent to preach, and consequently ignorant of the prejudices and doctrines against which he would have to combat? We are not surprised therefore to hear that for several months after the establishment of the mission Mr. Butler’s congregation, as he delights to call it, did not increase perceptibly. Says Dr. Russell, a Protestant and the correspondent of England’s leading journal: “So long as a Christian minister can argue with a Moulvie or a pundit with patience and ingenuity, he will be listened to with interest and respect; he will be permitted to expound the Scriptures, and to warn his hearers against the errors of their faith, provided that he refrains from insulting, contemptuous, and irritating language; but if he be a mere ignorant, illiterate zealot, without any qualification (temporally speaking) except a knowledge of Hindostanee and good intentions, he may be exposed to the laughter, scorn, and even abuse of the crowded bazaar in consequence of his manifest inability to meet the subtle objections of his keen and practised opponent. From what I have heard I regret to state my conviction is, that no considerable success, so far as human means are concerned, can be expected from the efforts of those who are like the ancient apostles in all things but their inspiration and heavenly help.”[191]

In May, 1857, the Sepoy rebellion, caused to a great extent by the conduct of just such “illiterate zealots” and the criminal neglect of the East India Company, broke out, and the terror extending to Bareilly, the foreign women and children were ordered to be sent to the mountains for safety, Dr. Butler being advised to accompany them. After “prayerfully considering” this message, he resolved not to go, not to abandon his post in the hour of danger; but, with the inconsistency of poor weak human nature, from which even missionaries, it would appear, are not exempt, he tells us that “before going to bed we arranged our clothes for a hasty flight should any alarm be given.” As the doctor is an advocate of the superiority of married over single missionaries, we give literally his own account of the domestic scene that followed the warning, which, to say the least, is very complimentary to his amiable spouse:

“As soon as the adjutant had gone, I communicated the message to Mrs. Butler. She received it with calmness, and we retired to our room to pray together for divine direction. After I had concluded my prayer, she began, and I may be excused in saying that such a prayer I think I never heard; a martyr might worthily have uttered it, it was so full of trust in God and calm submission to his will. But when she came to plead for the preservation of ‘these innocent little ones,’ she broke down completely. We both felt we could die, if such were the will of God; but it seemed too hard for poor human nature to leave these little ones in such dreadful hands or perhaps to see them butchered before our eyes! We knew that all this had been done on Sunday last at Meerut, and we had no reason to expect more mercy from those in whose power we were should they rise and mutiny. But we tried hard to place them and ourselves, and the mission of our beloved church, in the hands of God, and he did calm our minds and enable us to confide in him. On arising from our knees, I asked her what she thought we ought to do? Her reply was that she could not see our way clear to leave our post; she thought our going would concede too much to Satan and to these wretched men; that it would rather increase the panic; that it might be difficult to collect again our little congregation if we suspended our services; and, in fact, that we ought to remain and trust in God. I immediately concurred, and wrote word to the commanding officer.”

But all flesh is weak. Notwithstanding the result of this combined appeal for “divine direction,” the doctor knew better, and, instead of imitating his wife’s brave determination in that trying hour, he hearkened to the counsel of a Moonshee, and Methodism, while it retained its missionary, lost its first and, it may be surmised, its only chance of having a martyr. “Being a Mohammedan,” he says, “with more worldly wisdom than consistency, and having a pecuniary loss in the suspension of my lessons in the language, his warning had much weight with me. I had then to settle the question raised by the commanding officer whether our resistance to going, under those circumstances, was not more a tempting of, rather than a trusting in, Providence? I hated to leave my post, even for a limited time. Yet to remain looked, as he argued, should an insurrection occur and I become a victim, like throwing away my life without being able to do any good by it; and the Missionary Board would probably have blamed me for not taking advice and acting on the prudence which foreseeth the evil and takes refuge ‘till the indignation is overpast.’” Was there ever as prudent an apostle or one so entirely anxious to avoid (after death) the reproach of his superiors by the exhibition of too much courage? Not that he cared for his personal safety, by no means, but the thought of the censure he would have incurred for not having taken more care of his precious life could not be endured. “Still,” continues this intrepid contemner of ‘wifeless priests,’ “had I been alone, or could I have induced Mrs. B. to take the children and go without me (a proposition she met by declaring that she would never consent to it, but would cling to her husband and cheerfully share his fate, whatever it might be), I would have remained. But then, to all the preceding reasons, the reflection was added that Mrs. B.’s situation required that if moved at all it must be then, as a little later flight would be impossible, and she and the children and myself must remain and take whatever doom the mutineers chose to give us.” What one of the “wifeless priests” would have done amid similar circumstances, those at all conversant with the history of Catholic missions in every portion of the world—and there is no part of it but has been hallowed by their footsteps—can be at a loss to determine; but then, those short-sighted celibates have never allowed family or other human ties to come between them and their manifest duty to their Master. The result of the lady’s sickness, so indelicately introduced, we think, as a cloak for her husband’s cowardice and hypocrisy, was, we subsequently learn, the increase of the Methodist “congregation” of India by one member known by the sobriquet of the “mutiny baby,” and it is pleasant to consider that, despite the disasters of the times, the conversion of the country was thus progressing, even though slowly.

Moved by all these considerations, the author left Bareilly with his family, and proceeded to the assigned refuge in the mountains, some seventy miles distant, with surprising alacrity, considering that for many days after everything remained quiet in the neighborhood. But what a hegira was that, so full of perils, adventures, and even miracles, performed, of course, by him alone! In his narration of the journey he rises above himself, and becomes almost apocalyptic in style. At one time, when the bearers showed an unwillingness to carry Mrs. B. and the children further, this was his noble device:

“But in spite of urging, there stood my men. It was an awful moment. For a few minutes my agony was unutterable; I thought I had done all I could, but now everything was on the brink of failure. I saw how ‘vain’ was the ‘help of man,’ and I turned aside into the dark jungle, took off my hat, and lifted my heart to God. If ever I prayed, I prayed then. I besought God in mercy to influence the hearts of these men, and decide for me in that solemn hour. I reminded him of the mercies that had hitherto followed us, and implored his interference in this emergency. My prayer did not last two minutes, but how much I prayed in that time!”

No wonder that his heart was glad at the result, particularly at the fact that the men not only took up their valuable burden cheerfully, but forgot to ask for their hire when their task was accomplished, which to any one acquainted with that class of men in the East certainly savors of the supernatural. “The divine interposition in the case will appear more manifest,” he modestly continues, “when I add that even the ‘bucksheesh’ for which the bearers were contending they started off without staying to ask for or receive.” The ladies who met the party at the first halting-place were astonished, and one of them, Miss Y., asked: “Why, what could have happened to Mrs. Butler’s bearers that they started so cheerfully, and arrived here so soon without giving her the least trouble?” “Ah! she knew not,” ejaculates the self-contained missionary, “but I knew, there is a God who heareth and answereth prayer!” But let not this remark be misunderstood. That initial lady, if at all in the flesh, was a Christian, and must have believed in the efficacy of prayer. The true meaning is that she did not know what a holy man Dr. Butler really was, and of what special graces he had became the favored recipient. Poor Miss Y., how we commiserate her ignorance!

While the civil war lasted, the refugees remained in the mountains at Nynee Tal, a pleasant summer resort, where, for a rent of $225, our missionary and family had no difficulty in securing the inevitable “furnished house,” and, save an occasional scarcity of milk for the baby, suffered no great inconvenience from want of the necessaries and even luxuries of life. Food was readily and cheaply supplied by the natives, and the Nawab of Rampore, though an infidel, generously furnished them with food and money. Still, in this comfortable shelter, and while his brother missionaries were exposed to all sorts of dangers, our hero was rivalling Nana Sahib in the fierceness of his denunciation and maledictions; for, while the rebellious Peishwa was petitioning his tutelary gods to destroy the English, and send them en masse to the infernal regions, the American Christian was invoking the Deity, in all the forms peculiar to Methodist camp-meeting exhorters, to weed out, root and branch, the very people to whom he had been commissioned, and upon whose hospitality and forbearance so many of his co-religionists depended for safety. The utter want of decency and common humanity exhibited by many of the Protestant ministers during and subsequent to the war cannot better be illustrated than by transcribing the following gratuitous account given in this book of a visit to the deposed Emperor of Delhi while in prison:

“A day or two previously, my friend, Rev. J. S. Woodside, missionary of the American Presbyterian Church, was here. He went to see the emperor, and took the opportunity of conversing with him about Christianity. The old man assented to the general excellence of the Gospel, but stoutly declared that it was abrogated by the Koran—as Moses and the law were abolished by Christ and the Gospel—so, he argued, Mohammed and the Koran had superseded Christ and every previous revelation. Brother Woodside calmly but firmly told him that, so far from this being the case, Mohammed was an impostor and the Koran a lie, and that, unless he repented and believed in Christ alone, without doubt he must perish in his sins. He then proceeded to enforce upon his bigoted hearer the only Gospel sermon which he had ever heard; and Brother Woodside was the very man to utter it!”

Surely this Woodside, who could thus wantonly insult a feeble old man, the fallen monarch of two hundred millions of subjects, heathen though he was, must have been one of the ignorant zealots alluded to by Mr. Russell; and the writer who could mention him with unctuous satisfaction runs the risk of being considered little better.

For nearly a year the missionary toils of Dr. Butler were suspended; but when all danger was passed, he returned to his former scene of action, or rather inaction, this time reinforced by two “brothers” from America, who, having been lately ordained, knew as little of the language, religion, and disposition of the natives as he did on his arrival. The reunion took place at Agra, and the trio, with their respective families, of course, proceeded to Nynee Tal, “as we could there best devote ourselves,” says the author, “to the acquisition of the language, and be ready to descend to Bareilly and our other stations, where God had prepared our way, after the reoccupation of Rohilcund by the English Government”—rather a strange precursor, we should suppose, for the servants of the Prince of Peace; but tastes, particularly Methodist tastes, cannot always be accounted for. The “Church in India” also received at this time another valuable member (number four) in the person of a small boy, the orphan of a deceased sepoy officer, who had been found on the battle-field by Lieutenant Gowan, and “made over”—to use his own expression to the superintendent—by that officer. “No man in the East or in America,” observes the matter-of-fact missionary, “has given half as much money to develop our work in India as Colonel Gowan has contributed.... His liberality to our mission work, up to the present, cannot be much less than $15,000.”

Encouragement also came from other official sources. His next step was taken in the direction of Lucknow, “where he was assured that houses could at once be obtained by the assistance of Sir Robert Montgomery,” Governor of Oude, and thither he bent his steps, “escorted by relays of sowars (cavalry), the general considering the precaution necessary.” Of the subsequent history of the missions established in that city, Meradabad, near Nynee Tal, and the old one at Bareilly, the book before us relates little. War, famine, and pestilence, the three great scourges of mankind, seem to have been more effectual proselytizing agencies than the Bible and preaching. The first child in the orphanage established at the latter place was, as we have seen, a waif from the rebellion, and when, in 1860, a dreadful famine occurred in Northern India, “so decided and quick was the calamity, that before the English Government ascertained its extent, and could originate public works to arrest its severity, large numbers of the people had died of want,” and their children were left an easy prey to whoever cared to snatch them up. This specious excuse for the government brings to our mind the history of another famine which happened some years previously nearer home, and which the same rulers failed to alleviate even to the extent of affording free transport for the food provided for the sufferers by the generous people of this country. Though in the latter-mentioned case the victims were Catholics, not Hindoos, the advantage sought to be taken of the calamity by a similar class of men was the same. “The idea came to us,” says Dr. Butler, “that this emergency might be turned to good account by our missionaries seizing on the opportunity thus presented,” and it was therefore agreed among them to solicit the bodily possession of three hundred boys and girls. “I wrote,” he continues, “to the Government; they were only too glad to consent and have the children off their hands.” Of course they were, and doubtless if he had asked for as many thousands, he would have got them as readily. Nor was money wanting for the support of these new protégés. “Responses came pouring in from schools and individuals in America.... Individuals in India also, and government itself,” says the doctor, “came to our help.” Even the Nawab of Rampore, “a Mohammedan sovereign in the vicinity”—who, by the way, owed his position to the English authorities—was put under contribution to the amount of five hundred dollars. Still it was found difficult to introduce Methodism even among these destitute children; for elsewhere he acknowledges that out of nearly one hundred and fifty girls, only about forty have been “soundly converted.” But no effect whatever could be produced on the children not actually starving, even by the free use of money. Here is his own emphatic acknowledgment of the fact, on page 520:

“Every effort was made by our missionary ladies to obtain even day-scholars from among the people, but such was then their bitter prejudice against educating girls that they generally treated the proposal with scorn. The ladies of our Bareilly mission made a vigorous effort in that city to obtain even a few scholars. They went from house to house, hired a suitable place in which to hold a school, bought mats and necessary equipments, offered even to pay the girls some compensation for the time expended, if they would only attend; but at the end of three months they had only succeeded in inducing two children to come, and one of these was unreliable. At length, tired out, they had to abandon the effort as hopeless, until some change would come over the minds of the people in favor of female education.”

The system adopted towards the adult population was more questionable, though equally unsuccessful. Rohilcund and Oude, the scenes of the labors of the American Methodists, were also, it appears, great recruiting depots for the company’s officers, who, as the term of their sepoys expired, formerly allowed them to return home and enjoy liberal pensions, so that a large portion of the male population of those provinces were actually dependent on the company for the necessaries of life. The failure of the rebellion not only caused the breaking up of the sepoy army, but the innocent were made to suffer with the guilty, for the allowance that was paid to the superannuated soldiers for past services ceased and general destitution prevailed. Of this circumstance, the result of base ingratitude, the worthy missionaries were not slow in taking advantage, hoping that, since prayer and exhortation had failed, the more tangible arguments of meat and dollars might at least partially succeed. Previous to the war the “converted” native held, and as we shall presently see for good reasons, a very unenviable position in the community. According to the author, “he was cut off and proscribed by his friends, looked down upon too often by European officials,” and “refused all employment under government.” But this was all changed by Montgomery, the local ruler of Oude, and Governor-General Lawrence, who were favorable to the encouragement of native Christians. “Other officials,” we are told, “did the same. Merchants and traders also sought them, for they saw they could be trusted. Their value rose at once.” “And,” adds Dr. Butler, “the rapid growth of the Christian church in India since that time, and especially of the native ministry, will be fully exhibited in the statistical tables which follow the next chapter.”

We regret that he has not favored us with the details of this astonishing increase in the number of the faithful which so closely followed the distribution of government patronage and pecuniary rewards; but to our chagrin the indefatigable and sanguine missionary, whom we have followed from Boston to the Himalayas, prayed with, in spirit, in the “dark jungles,” and moaned with in unison over the combined sins of the heathen and the Romanist, parts from us abruptly, leaving us the prey of a cruel suspicion that, notwithstanding the generous donations of American friends, the efficient aid of British officials, and, above all, his own sanctified character and wonderful intrepidity, his mission, like so many others undertaken in the same spirit, was, after all, a melancholy failure. In winding up his long history, he tells us:

“The organization of the missions into an annual conference, at the close of 1864, terminated my superintendency, while the toil and care to which body and mind were subject during these scenes, and in such a climate, were so exhausting that release from further service there became indispensable. This release was kindly granted by the bishop and the missionary board.”

Now, what were our reverend friend and his co-laborers doing during the six years that followed the establishment of the three missions which still manage to exist in India? Surely a lively and scriptural account of those toils and cares of which he speaks would, particularly when told in his glowing style, be highly interesting to the public. Chapters of his voluminous book are devoted to descriptions of temples and tombs of the past ages, and some hundreds of pages to a detailed account of the massacres, battles and disasters incident to the civil war, but not a line do we find in which may be traced the efficacy of the gospel as preached by such pious expounders, nor is mention made of a single grown-up convert won to Methodism during the whole time, save through the agency of filthy lucre, the root of all evil. For our further information, it is true, he refers us to certain tables with which he supplements his work, but that is small consolation, for, though we believe in the old saying that figures cannot lie, we are satisfied from an examination of the tables referred to that this veracious character does not strictly apply to those who collated them.

From Table I. we gather that the Methodist Episcopal Church in India, in 1872, had no less than eighteen male and nineteen female missionaries of foreign birth in Rohilcund and Oude, and eighty-six native assistants, with church-members, amounting in the aggregate to five hundred and forty-one, so that every fourteen and a half members had one foreign missionary, or, counting the local preachers and exhorters, every four converts may now enjoy the sole solicitude of one spiritual guide at least! But in Table II., on the next page, the foreign missionaries are increased to forty-six, or one to every dozen actual Christians, and, taking the entire force of foreign missionaries, native pastors, local preachers, exhorters, and teachers, the whole number of “laborers,” more or less dependent on the missionary fund for a livelihood, are reported at the handsome figure of three hundred and sixty-six, two laborers for every three members! But if we deduct the number of teachers returned at two hundred and thirty-four in Table II. from the whole number of members, we find that for every thirty members who are not laborers, and consequently derive no official benefit from the church connection, there are twenty-three who do. Should matters go on as prosperously as they seem to have done for a few years more, we hope to hear that every native convert who is not a pastor, exhorter, or teacher himself will be able to have the sole and separate use of a missionary or an assistant for his own benefit. We expect, also, to find that the exhausting duties of the foreign missionaries in taking charge each of at least one dozen of converts, including the native preachers, exhorters, and teachers aforesaid, will be duly considered by the board, and that reinforcements will be sent to them forthwith. What the eighty-six native pastors and catechists, as returned in Table II., find to do except to preach to each other, we are at a loss to surmise. Perhaps, however, they look after certain individuals classified as probationers and non-communicant adherents, and by the help of which, and the children of the schools, the compiler endeavors to make out a show of figures. The former class he counts at five hundred and twenty, and the latter at seven hundred and thirty-five, which, with nearly twelve hundred children and the helpers, make the sum-total of the officers and rank and file of the church three thousand and sixty-five, “all won for Christ since the rebellion closed.” Now, taking these figures as correct in every particular, we arrive at the following curious calculation, to which we respectfully call the attention of the admirers of Protestant, and particularly Methodist, missions. According to their own showing, there is in India one missionary for every seventy-seven men, women, and children in the remotest degree connected with the Methodist Church; leaving out the children, there is a foreign missionary for every forty native adults, and taking the bona-fide church-members there is one duly commissioned American missionary for every twelve converts! Taking the whole number of Christians at three thousand, we find the annual conversions to have averaged two hundred and thirty, which amount being divided by forty-six makes the exact number of five persons converted every year by each of our countrymen in India. If we leave out the children who as we have already seen, are simply given away by the authorities,[192] we reduce the whole number of yearly gains to one hundred and forty-five, or an average of three annual converts for each foreign missionary; but when we only count the actual church-members, we discover that forty-two native persons are actually converted every year by forty-six American missionaries, and this calculation agrees very nearly with the statement of Dr. Butler, who says in a note to the very table to which he calls our attention, “Conversions during last year, 56.” How many years, missionaries, native pastors, and catechists would be required at this rate to christianize the two hundred millions of heathens in Hindostan is a problem too difficult for our solution.

So much for the wonderful progress of Methodism in India. Let us now glance for a moment at the personelle of the brands thus snatched from the burning.

The ingenious attempt to make the public believe that any form of Protestantism has at length gained a foothold in Asia is more common than honest, and has been repeatedly exposed and censured by sectarian writers of all classes and degrees, many of whom have lived as missionaries in India, and know the truth by painful experience. A few extracts from their works and speeches will suffice to show at once the deficiencies of the would-be apostles, the character of their neophytes, and the absolute falsity of such statistics as we find in Butler’s tables:

“Missionaries have gone out from this country (England) who have dishonored their great cause, and rather confirmed than shaken the superstitions of the people they visited.”—Cunningham’s Christianity in India, p. 147.

“From the want of superintendence, it is painful to observe that the characters of too many of the clergy are by no means creditable to the doctrines they profess, which, together with the unedifying contests that prevail among them even in the pulpit, tend to lower the religion and its followers in the eyes of the natives of every description.”—Lord Valentia’s Travels, vol. i. p. 199.

“A large portion of the sterility of our missions may be attributed to that discord which Christianity (Protestantism) exhibits in the very sight of the unbeliever.”—Rev. Dr. Grant’s Brompton Lectures.

“The numerous missionaries, although they waste years and words, and even money, have converted very few; yet when they have induced one or two apparently to adopt their particular tenets, it is their fashion to make a clamor in the newspapers and by pamphlets, although too frequently they are not sure of their new converts for any length of time.”—Mackenna’s Ancient and Modern India, p. 516.

“Missionaries announcing the conversion of a solitary Hindoo among thousands of unbelievers are themselves frequently members of some straggling sect, and too often the instruments of fanatical bigotry.”—Travels in India and Kashmir, p. 195.

It is needless to multiply further such sketches of the unfitness of the shepherds, for the reader will easily find them, and generally much more strongly drawn, in any impartial work on British India. Let us, however, take a glance at the moral and social status of the spiritual flocks, whose members, before the arrival of Montgomery and Lawrence, found it so difficult to obtain situations. Captain Hervey, in his Ten Years in India, tells us that, whenever a native convert wishes employment as a servant, “he is not taken, because all Christians, with but few exceptions, are looked upon as great vagabonds, drunkards, thieves, and reprobates.” A writer in the Edinburgh Review, vol. xii., assures us that “whoever has seen much of Christian Hindoos must perceive that the man who bears that name is very commonly nothing more than a drunken reprobate who conceives himself at liberty to eat or drink anything he pleases.” The Baptist “converts,” we are assured by Rev. John Bowen, in his Missionary Incitement, etc., are accused of wallowing in every crime that “degrades human nature,” and deserve the accusation. The Rev. Mr. Schneider, writing from Agra, in Dr. Butler’s neighborhood, assures us that the “motives of the Hindoos for embracing Christianity were chiefly the desire of employment and to have their bodily wants provided for.” “It is a fact,” he adds, “that many new converts have, after their baptism, not adorned their Christian profession, and so have ever proved great offences and stumbling-blocks to the cause of Christ.” Of the Baptist converts in the same place, we learn from their seventieth report (1862), that “what with members who have left the station, and others (including paid catechists) who have been cut off for immoral conduct, our loss has been heavy; while in the city of Delhi in the same year sixty-six persons were baptized and seventy-five excluded from the churches.” The author of India and the Gospel, a Protestant missionary of Central India, candidly says: “I have met with native Christians who have been baptized, some on the eastern, some on the western coast, and others at some southern stations—lamentable to say, they were not to be known from the heathen but in name.” Mr. Marsh declared some years ago in the English House of Commons, speaking of Indian converts generally: “They are drawn from the Chandalahs, or Pariahs, or outcasts—a portion of the population who are shut out from the Hindoo religion, and who, being condemned to the lowest poverty and most sordid occupations, are glad to procure by what the missionaries call conversion whatever pittance they are enabled to dole out for their subsistence.” But it appears that the bad character of the Protestant converts has even a more disastrous effect than that produced on the reputation of their sponsors. Mr. David Hopkins, of the Bengal Medical Establishment, in his work on India, asserts, in reply to some overzealous advocate of Protestantism, “the outcasts have indeed joined the missionaries, and have appeared as of their faith; but the conduct of these outcasts has generally proved that they professed what they did not feel, and has considerably influenced the higher orders in their prejudices against Christianity.”

If we proceed still further, we will find from these reiterated complaints of the influence of Protestantism in the East, how much it perverts whatever sense of natural justice may remain in the heathen, and, by appealing to his basest passions, renders him an object of contempt and mistrust even to his less enlightened fellows—for there are few of the Indian population so mentally obtuse as not to recognize the rankest hypocrisy and mendacity, though they be covered with the garb of religion. How far such men as Dr. Butler is justified in claiming three hundred and fifty thousand native Christians (Protestants) as the result of sectarian teaching and zeal in India is not easily determined. In 1850, General Briggs noticed that the missionaries reckoned but one in every six nominal converts as church members; the Rev. Mr. Ward, a missionary, states that of the number of converts of every sort reported to the home societies not one in ten is actually converted.[193] A writer in the United Service Gazette, who had served as an officer in India in 1856, declared that, though the missionaries reported their disciples by thousands, an omnibus would hold all the sincere native Protestants then in the peninsula, while a later authority, Rev. E. Storrow, in his book on Indian Missions, etc., is not willing to claim more than one-fifth of all the so-called converts as Christians even in his indefinite sense of that term. Following the Storrow method of computation, therefore, and applying it to the doctor’s tables, we arrive at the following results: There are at the present day three hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children in India claimed to belong to the various denominations, seventy thousand of whom Mr. Minturn, in his From New York to Delhi, emphatically says “are mostly of the most degraded classes,” and no less than two hundred and eighty thousand who disgrace the name of Christianity by debauchery, theft, hypocrisy, and immorality of every sort in its most degrading shapes. Of the former we freely accord to Methodism six hundred, and of the latter four times the number.

But Dr. Butler has many arrows in his quiver to be discharged against that target of sectarian animosity, Romanism, and other claims to public sympathy and patronage broadly set forth in his manifold tables. It is the question of education, and on this his figures assume a prodigious magnitude. The Methodist day-schools in India, he tells us, number one hundred and sixteen, the teachers two hundred and thirty-four, and the pupils four thousand four hundred and sixty-two. If these children were all Protestants, it might indeed be a source of some congratulation to his friends, but unfortunately only a little over a thousand of them attend Sunday-school, and the balance, considerably over three thousand, are being “educated” to stigmatize the Methodists themselves as infidels, and to deny the first principles upon which all religion is founded. That this, though a startling view to some persons, is nevertheless a correct one, we have the most indisputable Protestant evidence, and what applies to the Methodists in particular, is general to all the sects in Hindostan; who, collectively, are said in Table II. to be educating one hundred and thirty-seven thousand children, of whom more than one hundred thousand are not brought up in any form of faith known to Christianity. “The colleges of India,” says Major H. Bevan, “receive fanatical idolaters, they disgorge only hypocrites.”[194] The author of Tropical Sketches avers, in allusion to the same institutions, “the results have been great intellectual acuteness and total want of moral principle; utter infidelity in religion, etc.” According to the Parliamentary reports, out of over seventeen thousand pupils educated at the public expense, only three hundred even professed the religion of the state. At Benares, where there are fourteen missionary schools, not one conversion is reported; and the Rev. Mr. Percival, in his Land of the Veda, goes the length of saying that “in almost every part of India the spread of the English language and literature is rapidly altering the phases of the Hindoo mind, giving it a sceptical, infidel cast,” while the Rev. Mr. Clarkson goes further, and adds: “Some have argued that the Indians, by receiving an education which undermines their superstitions, are being prepared for the reception of Christianity. We believe that they are being prepared for occupying a position directly antagonistic to it. Several documents from missionaries at Bombay, Poonah, Surat, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras, and Benares corroborate all that I have stated.... None can doubt that infidelity in its most absolute sense is on the increase. There is no connection between the natives ceasing to be Hindoos and becoming Christians.”[195] Dr. Grant also gives his testimony of the effects of missionary schools: “It is the universal confession,” he says, speaking for his brother missionaries, “that but very few of the children so educated embrace the Christian faith”; and even the orphans, we are told by Count Warren, “when they grow up, all return to the religion of their ancestors.” Lastly, the Indian correspondent of the leading organ of public opinion in England thus sums up the whole question:

“Missionary schools do not make more converts to Christianity than Government schools. A most zealous missionary in India assured me, with tears in his eyes, that, after twenty-five years’ experience, he looked upon the conversion of the Hindoos under present circumstances to be hopeless, without the interposition of a miracle.”[196]

We pause here, for the subject becomes too deeply painful for contemplation, even at a distance. To think that, in this age of boasted civilization and religious progress, one of the fairest portions of the habitable globe, filled with millions and millions of our fellow-men, in many respects at least our equals in natural gifts, should still not only be ignorant of the worship of the true God, but that, through the instrumentality of the ministers of the discordant, jarring Protestant sects, and from their desire to forward their own selfish ends, the natives, instead of being taught the beauties of Christianity, are actually led to deny even the existence of a superior power, and by the miserable examples set before them, are forced to despise and hate the very name of Christ’s followers. We arraign Protestantism of this great crime, and we ask the serious attention of every candid man, no matter what may be his religious opinions, to the authorities above cited in support of our indictment. The British Government, through its armed mercenaries and no less corrupt civil officials, have doubtless inflicted dire and manifold cruelties on the Indians, but the evils perpetrated by the sectarian missionaries of this country and Europe on those unfortunate people are beyond all comparison greater, for they are more far-searching and permanent. Human laws and agencies may strip a conquered nation of its wealth and liberties, but it requires the aid of the missionary and colporteur to rob it of even the semblance of religion and morality, and by the means of what is so falsely called “education,” to plunge it into the depths of unbelief and complete spiritual degradation. This is what Protestant England is endeavoring, and, as we have seen, with some success, to do in Hindostan, and in what the generous but easily-duped people of America are endeavoring to rival it. To christianize, in any sense, the Hindoos has been found an impossibility by the well-paid and well-fed sectarian missionaries, so they are now trying to earn their salaries by utterly demoralizing the people they have failed to convert.

They are aided in this by the active countenance of the dominant power, by no less than twenty-seven distinct societies, and have at their disposal unlimited funds; a great portion of which is made up of the annual contributions of the people of the United States. Of the five and a quarter millions subscribed by the various Protestant societies of the world in 1871, considerably over a million and a half of dollars came out of the pockets of Americans, as we learn from Table IV., and doubtless money will continue to flow into the coffers of these organizations as long as they can continue to delude the charitable by false hopes and bombastic reports of missionary successes. We are not of those who are disposed to consider the conversion of souls from a commercial point of view; on the contrary, we are rather in favor even of the lavish expenditure of money, if by that means we can win men to Christ and to the inheritance of his kingdom; but when it becomes an instrument to rob the parent of his child, to convert the heathen not through his mind but his stomach, to bring Christianity into disrepute by sustaining the dissolute and degraded, to pervert the mental gifts of Providence by teaching the heathen that all religion is imposture,[197] and by supporting and sustaining thousands of lay and clerical officials who are as destitute of real sympathy for the pagan as they are ignorant of the first principles of Christian charity and responsibility—all of which it has done and is doing in India—we consider that it may justly be asserted that what was meant for a blessing becomes a curse to the donor as well as the recipient.

Dr. Butler in one of his tables shows that the Catholic Church missions, embracing nearly nine millions of Christians, expend less than a million dollars annually, while those of the Protestant sects, ostensibly counting about a third of that number, cost five and a half times that amount, and would have us believe from this that Protestantism exhibits more vitality and zeal in the cause of religion than does the church. But the contrary is the fact. Unlike the sectarian, whose inducement arises out of and is in proportion to the amount of his salary, the Catholic missionary goes forth into the pagan world, without money, friends, or family encumbrances; he forsakes all comforts and material pleasures to preach Christ crucified; his energy is not of the earth, earthy, his inspiration is from a power higher than that of man, and as his life is one long-continued sermon on temperance, forgiveness, and self-abnegation, his success is always in proportion, not to the money employed, but to the sanctity of the preacher. He does not distribute badly translated and often unreadable copies of the Word of God, “in thirty-seven languages” as claimed for the Protestants by Dr. Butler, to persons who can neither read nor appreciate them; but, living sparingly, dressing humbly, and conforming in all respects his daily practice to his clerical professions, he wins to the standard of Christ the rich as well as the poor, the ignorant pariah as well as the learned and disputatious pundit. Even Protestants, missionaries at that, have seen through their prejudices, the uniform success of the Catholic teachers, and while their system does not allow them to imitate their example, they have nevertheless borne unwilling testimony, and therefore more valuable, to the superiority in point of morality and ability of the servants of the church. In India to-day, even Dr. Butler is forced to admit there are close on a million actual practical Catholics, with hundreds of churches, and a ministry of foreign and native priests amounting to seven hundred and seventy-nine, who are supported at an expense to the Society de Propaganda Fide of twenty-eight thousand dollars, while their schools, numbering according to the Catholic Register of 1869 one thousand, contain over thirty thousand native pupils. Dr. Butler has called our attention to his tables, we have given them serious attention, and have even taken his own figures as thoroughly exact, and we have come to the conclusion that he must either have had a very limited appreciation of the perspicacity of his readers, or recklessness of character in thus exposing the hollowness of Protestant professions of progress, superinduced by the complete failure of himself and his co-laborers to vitalize in the far East the decaying body of Protestantism, which is so fast degenerating into materialism and scepticism in the West.

There are one or two points more, overlooked in passing, of which we wish to take note. Dr. Butler has included that part of Farther India in his tables, which will help him to swell the number of his converts, and excluded that part of it in which the Catholic religion flourishes. Include the whole, and you add 500,000 to the number of native Catholics in India. Again, he repeats the unmeaning, silly twaddle which we hear without ceasing from writers of the same sort, that Protestant missionaries make real Christians, Catholic missionaries only nominal ones. Methodist religion consists in emotion and excitement, the most unreal of all things. So far as it is worth anything, there is far more sensible devotion, although of a more quiet and sober kind, among Catholics than among any class of Protestants. But this is not the essence of religion. To be a Christian is to believe the revelation and keep the commandments of God. Whoever says that Catholic missionaries do not carefully instruct their converts in the doctrines of the faith and in sound morals, and endeavor to make them both pious and virtuous, is either a slanderer or the dupe of some slanderer. Let every one who wishes to know the truth read the work of Dr. Marshall, and ponder the evidence he has collected. Dr. Butler’s effort to weaken its influence, like every other attempt of the same sort, has proved abortive.