EDITED BY CANON DODSON, M,A. CANON BULLOCK -WEBSTER, M.A. THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES of Expansion EDITED BY T. H. DODSON, M.A. Principal of S. Paul's Missionary College, Burgh; and Canon of Lincoln Cathedral AND G. R. BULLOCK-WEBSTER, M.A. Hon. Canon of Ely Cathedral WITH A GENERAL PREFACE BY THE BISHOP OF S. ALBANS of Edited by T. H. DODSON, M.A., Principal of S. Paul's Missionary College, Burgh, and Canon of Lincoln Cathedral ; and G. R. BULLOCK-WEBSTER, M.A., Hon. Canon of Ely Cathedral. 1. JAPAN. By Mrs. EDWARD BICKER- STETH. 2. WESTERN CANADA. By the Rev. L. NORMAN TUCKER, M.A., D. C. L. ; General Secretary of the Missionary Society of the Church of Canada, and Hon. Canon of Toronto Cathedral. 3. CHINA. By the Rev. F. L. NORRIS, M. A. , of the Church of England Mis- sion, Peking ; Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of North China. 4. AUSTRALIA. By the Rev. A. E. DAVID, M.A. , sometime Arch- deacon of Brisbane. 5. SOUTH AFRICA. By the Right Rev. Bishop HAMILTON BAYNES, D.D., sometime Bishop of Natal. 6. NORTH INDIA. By the Rev. C. F. ANDREWS, M.A. , Fellow of Pem- broke College, Cambridge, and Member of the Cambridge Mission to Delhi. PADRE NEHEMIAH GOREH. of fSngltsi) tftijurri) IBrpanssum Intita BY THE REV. C. F. ANDREWS, M.A. Of the Cambridge Brotherhood, Delhi WITH ILLUSTRATIONS A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. LTD. LONDON : 34 Great Castle Street, Oxford Circus, W. OXFORD : 9 High Street First printed, 1908 BJ 2500 GENERAL PREFACE 'T'T was said, I believe by the late Bishop r"i Lightfoot, that the study of history was the best cordial for a drooping courage. I can imagine no study more bracing and exhilarating than that of the modern expansion of the Church of England beyond the seas during the past half century, and especially since the institution of the Day of Intercession for Foreign Missions. It is only when these matters are studied historically that this expansion comes out in its true proportions, and invites comparison with the progress of the Church in any similar period of the world's history since our LORD'S Ascension into heaven. But for this purpose there must be the accurate marshalling of facts, the consideration of the special circumstances of each country, race and Mission, the facing of problems, the biographies of great careers, even the bold forecast of conquests yet to come. It is to answer some of these questions, and to enable the general reader to gauge the progress of Church of England Missions, that Messrs. A. R. Mowbray and Co. have designed a series of handbooks, vi GENERAL PREFACE of which each volume will be a monograph on the work of the Church in some particular country or region by a competent writer of special local experience and knowledge. The whole series will be edited by two men who have given themselves in England to the work and study of Foreign Missions Canon Dodson, Principal of S. Paul's Missionary College, Burgh, and Canon Bullock-Webster, of Ely. I commend the project with all my heart. The first volume, which I have been able to study in proof, appears to me an excellent in- troduction to the whole series. It is a welcome feature of missionary work at home that we have now passed into the stage of literature and study, and that the comity of Missions allows us to learn from each other, however widely methods may vary. The series of handbooks appears to me likely to interest a general public which has not been accustomed to read missionary magazines, and I desire to bespeak for it a sympathetic interest, and to predict for it no mean success in forming and quickening the public mind. EDGAR ALBAN. HlGHAMS, WOODFORD GREEN, ESSEX, November 10, 1907. EDITORS' PREFACE ' tRW facts in modern history are more arrest- r ^~l ing or instructive than the rapid extension of the Church's responsibilities and labours in the colonial and missionary fields ; yet, until recently, few facts perhaps have been less familiar to those who have not deliberately given themselves to a study of the subject. It has therefore been felt that the time has come when a series of monographs, dealing with the expansion of the Church of England beyond the seas, may be of service towards fixing the popular attention upon that great cause, the growing interest in which constitutes so thank- worthy a feature in the Church's outlook to-day. The range of this series is confined to the work in which the Church of England is engaged. That story is too full to allow of any attempt to include the splendid devotion, and the successful labours, of other Missions of Christendom. But, for a fair understanding either of the Christian advance generally or of the relative position of our own viii EDITORS' PREFACE work, a knowledge of those Missions is essential ; and it is in the hope of leading some of its readers to such further comparative study that this series has been taken in hand. The Editors have tried to keep in view the fact that, while the wonderful achievements here recorded have been accomplished in large part through the agency of our Missionary Societies, yet these Societies are, after all, only the hands and arms of the Holy Church in the execution of her divine mission to the world. They have directed their work, as Editors, simply to securing general uniformity of plan for the series, and have left each writer a free hand in the selection of material and the ex- pression of opinion. T. H. D. G. R. B.-W. TO MY FRIEND SUSIL KUMAR RUDRA ix AUTHOR'S PREFACE QUCH of what I have written will appear to many as a collection of twice-told tales. My only apology would be : Are they worth telling? do they give a vivid picture? If so, then those who know them will forgive me, and those who do not know them will be glad to read them. I was obliged by the nature of my subject to make selections, and I have followed the prin- ciple of taking what appeared to be of living interest, choosing as far as possible the lives of typical men, both Indian and English, in order to tell my story. The two long concluding chapters call for an explanation. They attempt to state clearly and openly the present problems, and deal with the present situation. The times are critical in India, and only by a frank and open exchange of thought can true lines of action be reached. I have given my opinions, such as they are, without any reser- vation. If the chapters bring to notice dangers in the North of India which threaten the Church xii AUTHOR'S PREFACE and set others thinking about them, they will have served their purpose. They will also help, I trust, to make intercession for the Indian Church more definite. I am under great obligation to Father Long- ridge, Father Gardner, and the Bishop of Nagpur, the writers of the three most fascinating books on Church Missions in North India. Dr. Eugene Stock's History of the Church Missionary Society has been my constant companion in almost every chapter, and my indebtedness to him will be evident. I have also found the Two Hundred Years of S.P.G. most useful and accurate. I would specially thank Mr. P. C. Bonerjea for the loan of his unpublished book on Indian Christian worthies, which I trust will one day see the light. It was a great pleasure to me to read afresh and quote from Mr. Birks' Life and Letters of Bishop French : it would be a boon to the Church if it could be brought out in a " People's Edition." Mr. George Smith, the veteran among Indian mission writers, will see that I have used his parting gift to me when I was setting out for India his Life of Bishop Heber. Last, but not least, I would express my grati- tude to many Indian Christian friends, who have AUTHOR'S PREFACE xiii guided me in my choice of subjects, and criticized what I have written with kindly frankness. If I have gained at all the Indian point of view it has been through their sympathy. I cannot help but wish that it had been possible to go beyond the limits of the Anglican Missions and speak of the noble work of the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and other bodies, and tell the life- story of Lai Behari De, Kali Charan Banerji, and many other Indian heroes of the Faith ; but the form of the present series forbids such an exten- sion of the subject. C. F. ANDREWS. DELHI, Festival of the Transfiguration, 1908. CONTENTS I. EARLY DAYS IN BENGAL II. CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS III. CHHOTA NAGPUR AND MASS MOVEMENTS IV. FATHER GOREH V. THE OXFORD MISSION VI. ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI VII. THE PANJAB AND ISLAM VIII. AMRITSAR AND THE SIKHS - IX. THE FRONTIER MISSIONS X. THE INDIAN POINT OF VIEW XI. THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT - APPENDIX A. MODERN KRISHNA WORSHIP - 230 APPENDIX B. LITERATURE DEALING WITH MISSION WORK IN NORTH INDIA - 234 ILLUSTRATIONS PADRE NEHEMIAH GOREH Frontispiece DR. KRISHNA MOHAN BANERJI - facing page 28 PADRE PIARI MOHAN RUDRA ,, 30 BISHOP WHITLEY - 45 OXFORD MISSION CHURCH, BARISAL ,, 91 DR. IMAD UD DIN ,, 123 BISHOP FRENCH - ,, ,, 126 MISSION CHURCH, PESHAWAR - ,, 149 PADRE THOMAS EDWARDS 153 Handbooks of English Church Expansion NORTH INDIA j* JT JT CHAPTER I EARLY DAYS IN BENGAL mHE history of Anglican Church Missions in North India begins with the efforts made by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The first field of missionary endeavour is interest- ing and typical of the age. The Portuguese had for many years carried on a slave trade along the coast of India. Those who were kidnapped were frequently baptized and called by Portuguese names. Their descendants gained their freedom, but remained utterly ignorant of Christianity, living the most degraded lives. At one time the evil of this practice of baptizing those who had been kidnapped, grew so great that the Madras Government was obliged to pass a law upon the B NORTH INDIA subject preventing the baptism of slaves. A con- siderable number of Indians of this type, who went by the name of " Portuguese," were settled among the tiny body of English settlers on the banks of the Hugli, in Bengal. The chaplain asked for help from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and in 1731 a charity school was opened for them, and we read that " the pupils were clothed in the same manner as the boys of the Blue Coat School in London." They were taught by Padre Aguiere, formerly a Franciscan Friar at Goa. The chaplain took a great interest in the movement, but in the troublous days that followed he lost his life as one of the victims of the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the work came to an end. The Rev. J. Kiernander was the first missionary of the English Church in Calcutta. He was a Swede by nationality, of high rank and family. His two uncles had been colonels in the army of the great Charles XII of Sweden, and had both died fighting bravely at the battle of Pultowa. Mr. Kiernander inherited their chivalrous qualities. Before coming to Calcutta he worked for many years at Cuddalore, near Madras, where his life was constantly in jeopardy while the French and EARLY DAYS IN BENGAL English strove for the mastery. The French, on the whole, treated him well, and Count Lally saved his life when Cuddalore was sacked in 1758. After this he was transferred to Calcutta. It is somewhat startling to read that, although working in Calcutta for over forty years, he never acquired a knowledge of the Bengali language. His work was carried on in a corrupt form of Portuguese, which was the lingua franca all along the coast. Calcutta, as a growing port, was even at this early date a meeting-place of many races. In Kier- nander's congregation were Jews, Chinese, Arme- nians, Portuguese, and Dutch, as well as a small group of Hindu converts, one of whom was a Brahman. Kiernander's name is still remembered in Calcutta as the founder and builder of the "Old Church," which remains to this day in charge of a missionary priest. He devoted his own private fortune to the work. In 1775 Ganesh Das, who had come down from Delhi as Persian translator and had visited England, was baptized by Kiernander. Sir Robert Chambers stood spon- sor at his baptism a fact worth noticing at that period of antagonism to missions. During the closing decades of the eighteenth century the rule of the East India Company NORTH INDIA reached its lowest ebb. Moral interests and the welfare of the people were sacrificed to trade profits. Bengal was almost left to itself so far as the Church was concerned. Scarcely a clergy- man could be found to go out, and the missionary work of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge failed for lack of support. Church life can hardly be said to have existed. We read constantly of Hindu idolatry being openly countenanced and even practised by officials, who married Hindu wives and lived as petty rajahs. Large fortunes were acquired by encouraging the gross superstitions of the masses. Every effort was made to conciliate the Brahmans and to avoid disturbing their ascendancy over the com- mon people. Professor Seeley has named this time the " brahmanizing " period of English rule. Divorced from Christian influence, and sharing in the evils of the idolatry around, English life became unspeakably corrupt. At one time the Directors of the Company, who had every reason for concealing the facts, were obliged to confess in their report : " The vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by scenes of the most tyrannical and oppressive conduct ever known in any age or country." Vansittart tells EARLY DAYS IN BENGAL us how the Company's servants used to flog and imprison Hindus who would not buy or sell at whatever rate was pleasing to their oppressors. It is, indeed, unpleasing and in a measure re- volting to English readers, to bring from oblivion this dark chapter of the past, but it is necessary to do so if we are to understand the early struggles of the Church and the violent opposition to re- ligion as a missionary force. Kiernander died just as the eighteenth century closed. For the last twenty years of his life he was blind and almost past work, and his life was embittered by lawsuits and pecuniary troubles. In January, 1800, the first month of the new cen- tury, Carey and Marshman began their missionary career at Serampur. The Company's officials had done their best to seize them on landing and deport them. For a time they were indentured by a sympathetic Englishman as indigo planters. But the order went out for their arrest, and they were smuggled away from Calcutta by night in a boat and escaped to Danish territory. The Danish Governor, though threatened, refused to give them up. During the next twelve years, various attempts were made by other missionaries to enter the country, but in every case they were NORTH INDIA expelled. One Governor -General wrote with regard to missionary work : " A man might fire a pistol into a magazine and it might not explode, but no wise man would hazard the experiment." While England was awakening to a new earnest- ness and evangelical fervour at home, the Anglo- Indian community in Bengal remained cold and resentful of any evangelizing effort. The change of tone which came about in Bengal by slow degrees was due in the first instance to Charles Simeon. He had the wisdom and fore- thought to seize the one avenue still open for influence, and when home clergy were unwilling to undertake the work of Indian chaplaincies he sent out in quick succession the best and noblest men he had. The need of good men may be judged from the official report of the Governor- General, Sir John Shore, in 1795, in which he stated that " the chaplains, with some exceptions, are not respectable characters : a black coat is no security from the general relaxation of morals." The first of Simeon's friends to set sail was David Brown, whose devoted ministry was for some years the one shining light in Calcutta. He found in Charles Grant, who was Senior Merchant of the Company, a warm supporter and friend. Through EARLY DAYS IN BENGAL his influence Simeon was able to send later Claudius Buchanan, Henry Martyn, Daniel Corrie, and Thomas Thomason, thus making up, along with David Brown, the famous " Five Chaplains." In this way a new religious atmosphere slowly formed in Calcutta itself, and a silent revolution in morals and religion began. Meanwhile in England the conscience of the nation was awakening. The day was past when a learned Bishop could state, with general approval, in the House of Lords that " the obligation to promote the Christian Faith throughout the world ceased with the supernatural gifts of the Apostles." Wilberforce, fresh from the struggle which had ended in the abolition of the slave trade, took up the cause of Indian Missions. In the House of Commons, and by pamphlets and speeches, he urged the repeal of the stringent regula- tions of the Company, and claimed freedom for the entrance of the Gospel. The conflict was carried on with bitterness by his opponents. Sidney Smith attacked Carey and Marshman, as " consecrated cobblers," in the Edinburgh Review ; and every effort was made to pour ridicule and contempt on the new spirit of missionary zeal. A hush came over the controversy when the 8 NORTH INDIA news arrived of the death of Henry Martyn at Tokat in Armenia in 1812. The purity and sacri- fice of his life, and the pathos of his death, moved the hearts of the English people, in a way they had never been moved before, towards missionary work. The words, "Let me burn out for CHRIST," could not be forgotten. Such a life was an un- answerable witness, and sneers at missionaries became no longer popular and plausible. When the East India Company's charter came up for renewal, public opinion was on the side of Wilberforce. The clause providing a Church Establishment in India, with a Bishop and three archdeacons, went through the House of Commons almost unopposed. But the clause giving facilities by law to persons engaged in missionary work to enter and remain in India, was fought over to the bitter end. At 3 a.m., after a whole night sitting, the clause was passed, and Wilberforce could write, " I am persuaded that we have raised the founda- tion-stone of the grandest edifice that was ever raised in Asia." Henry Martyn's death, more than any other single cause, had won the victory. The dull, respectable, comfortable Christianity of the age could never have been stirred to that self-sacrifice EARLY DAYS IN BENGAL and enthusiasm and burning charity which alone could fulfil the Master's great command, had there not been given, at the threshold of the new move- ment, the example of a life-long martyrdom and an heroic death. The closing words of Henry Martyn's journal link his spirit with that of S. Bernard or S. Francis, as a true pilgrim of eternity and lover of the Crucified : "They brought me at last to a stable-room " these are among the last sentences he wrote " my fever increased ; the heat in my eyes and forehead was so great that the fire almost made me frantic. I entreated to be carried out of doors, but was not attended to. At last I lodged my head on the damp ground and slept. Preserving Mercy made me see the light of another morning. I thought with sweet comfort and peace of my GOD in solitude my Company, my Friend, and Comforter. Ah ! when shall time give place to eternity ? When shall appear the new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness ? There, there, shall enter in nought that defileth." Words such as these stirred the chivalry and romance of those awakening days. Poetry had broken the bonds of eighteenth-century dullness, and now Christianity was shown to have a io NORTH INDIA romance and chivalry of its own. No selfish interests of a trading company could withstand such a feeling in the nation, when it had once been aroused ; and the young missionary's lonely death was the means of arousing it. Henry Martyn's life-work was chiefly that of translation, but more than one remarkable Indian opponent of Christianity was brought to the Faith by his saintly example and teaching. Of these Sheikh Salih needs special mention. He was born in Delhi, in 1765, of good Mussulman parentage. His family was one of those, not uncommon among the Mohammedans of North India, which combined martial spirit and literary tastes. We find the Sheikh at one time teach- ing Persian and Arabic, at another acting as Keeper of the Jewels to the King of Oude, at another serving in the Mahratta Bodyguard of the Rajah of Jodhpur. In every place he was an ardent proselytizer for the faith of Islam. At Cawnpore he went, as he tells us, to see the show of a Christian padre being baited in controversy by Mohammedan divines. But the padre was Henry Martyn, and his spiritual earnestness left an impression on the Sheikh's mind which could not be effaced. He was baptized by David Brown EARLY DAYS IN BENGAL 1 1 in the Old Church, Calcutta, just after Henry Martyn had started on his last fatal journey. He took the name of Abdul Masih, " Servant of CHRIST." A beautiful story is told by Corrie concerning the meekness of this fiery Mohammedan soldier of former days. They were going up the Ganges in two boats to Dinapur, when Abdul's boatmen mutinied. He turned to the other Christians on board and said, " Come, let us teach them a Christian lesson." He then got out and began to tow the boat himself. When the boat had gone some distance a Mohammedan merchant appeared on the bank, who was amazed to see a gentleman dragging along his own boat. The merchant asked : " Sir, is it not degrading for a gentleman of your standing to do such menial work ? " Abdul replied, " When I was a Mussulman I should indeed have felt shame, but I have embraced a religion whose Author was meek and lowly of heart, and I am trying to win the boatmen to a sense of shame by acting thus." Then he read to him the conclusion of the fifth chapter of S. Matthew, and the merchant went on his way wondering at such new teaching. As Corrie's companion and helper the Sheikh 12 NORTH INDIA worked with the utmost courage and meekness in Agra. Later on in life he was ordained by Bishop Heber in Calcutta. He died as the sun was setting on March 4, 1827. While he lay in great pain he asked for the story of JESUS at the well of Samaria to be read to him, and said repeatedly, " Thanks be to GOD." One who was by his side sang to him a hymn which the dying man had himself composed : " Beloved Saviour, let not me In Thy dear heart forgotten be ! Of all that decks earth's fairest bower Thou art the fairest, sweetest flower. Beloved Saviour, let not me In Thy dear heart forgotten be ! Old age has come, youth's morn has fled, Life's dawning hopes are cold and dead, The night draws near, the shadows fall ; Out of the deep to Thee I call. Beloved Saviour, let not me In Thy dear heart forgotten be !" With these words sounding in his ears the first Mussulman in India ordained to the Christian priesthood, fell asleep in JESUS. CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 13 CHAPTER II CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS *T*N the early part of the nineteenth century *"^ Calcutta continued for a long time to be the centre of Church development and missionary enterprise. Its great Bishops are prominent figures in the land, second only to Governor- Generals in rank and station, engaged in stately tours of visitation, laying down schemes for the future on a magnificent scale. A brief account of them will connect together a series of impor- tant events. The first Bishop chosen by the Home Govern- ment was Dr. Middleton, the author of a classical work on " The Greek Article." He reminds us in many ways of the eighteenth-century Bishops, learned to the point of pedantry, singularly unfitted to be the pioneer Apostle of a Missionary Church. He was appointed by Letters Patent "Bishop of India, Ceylon and Australia," a somewhat unmanageable diocese in those days of leisurely 14 NORTH INDIA travelling. So timid was the East India Com- pany of taking such an unprecedented step as receiving a Bishop into its administration, that the first Bishop of Calcutta was consecrated privately in Lambeth Palace (May 8, 1814), and no sermon was allowed to be published. Secrecy was kept with regard to his voyage and landing ; but, to the evident surprise of the Company's officials, the Hindus seemed rather pleased than otherwise, and in no way resented Christians practising their own religion. Middleton had the faults of a scholastic career : his tastes were academic and unpractical, and confined to a narrow circle of interests. When the Church in Calcutta needed a spiritual revival, and the Church in the South was developing caste congregations, he was spending months of valuable time in wranglings as to privileges and official status. He regarded himself first and foremost as a Government servant ; and as he had received no instructions as to his relations with missionaries, he looked upon them almost as interlopers and refused either to license them or allow them to preach to English congrega- tions. This position became intolerable even to himself in late years, and he abandoned it ; but CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 15 he remained obdurate to the last in his refusal to ordain any Indian Christian to the sacred ministry. Abdul Masih, who had waited years for the Bishop's coming in order to receive the gift of Holy Orders, was firmly and finally refused, and nothing could shake the Bishop's determination. Dr. Middleton was the only Anglican Bishop at that time east of Suez, and a High Churchman to boot, yet his views as to his relations with the Government were such that he would on no account ordain an Indian, who was fully pre- pared, to the priesthood. In this refusal is seen one of the first of those hindrances to indigenous Church life and development, which form so painful a chapter in Indian Church history. The State connection was purchased from the first at the cost of spiritual freedom, and we are suffering still to-day in consequence. In Bishop Middleton's Biography the follow- ing passage occurs, which is strange reading to modern ears : " There is one erroneous view," the writer says, " of the episcopal office in India, which needs correction, and the prevalence of which in the East was a source of constant em- barrassment to Bishop Middleton. It is not unusual to imagine that the President of our 1 6 NORTH INDIA Asiatic Church is chiefly to be regarded as a sort of ' head missionary,' and that his principal duty is to encourage and keep alive the work of conversion among the natives. To this view of his office Bishop Middleton most firmly and justly opposed himself in the very outset of his administration. The primary object for which he came out was to govern an Established Christian Church, and he conceived that his situation and authority would have undergone no essential change, even if the design of spreading the Gospel among the Hindoos had been aban- doned without exception. . . . He was uniformly anxious to keep the duties of the clergy and those of the missionaries separate from each other." We can scarcely imagine the Apostle Paul taking such a view of his apostolic office, yet the Bishop would have maintained most vehemently his own apostolic succession. On one side however the academic side the Bishop's mind was open and liberal. With the grand ideas of an ecclesiastic of the old school, he launched out into a scheme for what he fondly called a " University of the East." Bishop's Col- lege, named after its founder, was to rise on the banks of the Hugli, and become a centre of light CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 17 and learning for the whole of India. The idea was great, even though the design was wrongly executed. Instead of starting from humble begin- nings, and adapting Eastern modes of instruction to the new institution, he built on a European scale large lecture halls and quarters, and made classics and theology the chief subjects of study. Great enthusiasm over the Bishop's proposal prevailed in England. The Church Missionary Society voted one-sixth of its yearly income, and other Societies did the same. Dr. Mill, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, came out to preside in February, 1821. But the whole scheme was premature. An immense amount of money was spent year by year. Noble missionary teachers came out from England. But the perverse foreign methods continued, and the College was never the success that was expected. In later years a new effort was made inside the city to carry on the pious founder's purpose. For a time, under the superintendence of the Oxford Mission, the college flourished ; but its progress has been a continual source of anxiety, In Bishop Middleton's later years his attitude towards missionaries became much more friendly ; he kept, however, to the end his determination C 1 8 NORTH INDIA never under any circumstances to ordain an Indian Christian. The story of Bishop Heber forms one of the most pathetic pages in Indian Church history. He came out to succeed Dr. Middleton, in the fullness of all his brilliant powers, with a winning personality which kindled enthusiasm in all with whom he came in contact. He was a poet of no mean order. How his famous hymn, " From Greenland's icy mountains," came to be written, is well known. What is not so well known is that Tennyson, whose taste in such matters was severely critical, used often to quote Heber's lines, " Holy, Holy, Holy, LORD GOD Almighty," as the grandest hymn in the English language, and wish that he himself had the power to compose such a poem. Heber reached India in October, 1823, and set to work with an amazing energy, travelling over his vast diocese, confirming the Churches, heal- ing disorders, establishing new mission-stations, doing the work of an evangelist. In April, 1826, he arrived at Trichinopoly in the South, and in the Fort Church " spoke with great affection upon the glorious Dispensation of GOD in CHRIST JESUS, and the necessity which rested upon us CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 19 to propagate the Faith throughout the vast country of India." Shortly after he went to bathe. A sudden chill seized him while he was in the water, and death ensued. The whole of India and Great Britain mourned his loss, and awoke to the sense of his greatness. The two and a half years of Heber's episcopate left a mark upon Indian Missions, and upon the English Church, second only to that of Henry Martyn himself. The Christian enthusiasm of Missions was realized afresh in his ardent labours, his poems, his letters, his speeches, and in his sad fate. The English people, in those dull days of Church life before the Oxford Movement, were stirred to a higher ideal of the sacred office of a Bishop and the sacred functions of a Church. They realized that such a life was far more in accordance with the Acts of the Apostles than the old eighteenth century traditions. During Heber's short episcopate many new ventures in the Indian mission-field itself were undertaken. Corrie was pressing forward in the North, and founding new centres at Agra and Meerut. Burdwan was becoming a strong outpost in Bengal. Benares was occupied and reinforced. Miss Cooke was beginning her educational work in 2O NORTH INDIA Calcutta. Abdul Masih was at last ordained on S. Andrew's Day, 1825 the first Indian Christian to receive ordination at the hands of an Anglican Bishop. More than eighty years have passed since then, and yet the higher office of the Indian episcopate has not been filled by an Indian. How little could Heber have imagined.when he laid hands on Abdul Masih, that so long an interval would elapse ! Are we even to-day within sight of the end ? Two deaths followed rapidly in the ill-fated See of Calcutta, due in a great measure to the culpable delay in subdividing the enormous area of the diocese. Dr. James died after eight months' residence (1827), and Dr. Turner after a year and a half (1829). In 1832 Daniel Wilson was appointed Bishop, on the recommendation of Charles Grant the younger. In the six years that had elapsed since Heber's death the caste difficulties in the South had become acute. There had been no episcopal supervision, and matters had been allowed to drift. Bishop Wilson, on his arrival, took up the question at once, and fixed the Church usage in the famous sentence, " Caste must be abandoned within the Church decidedly, CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 21 immediately, finally." With the revolt which fol- lowed and the secessions which took place this history does not deal. Whatever may have been the losses at the outset in the South, there can be little question that the Indian Christian Church as a whole gained in purity and spirituality by the Bishop's action, and the Northern Missions were saved from the very first from a false position. The future danger in the North, where far the larger number of English are resident, was from another kind of caste distinction the cleavage between English and Indian congrega- tions, and the refusal to recognize equality of race within the Christian fold. Though Bishops and clergy in this matter have protested, and noble Christian laymen have joined in fullest fellowship with their Indian brethren, yet among the bulk of the English laity the state of affairs, owing to the prevailing Anglo-Indian spirit of domination, has been lamentable, and a continual cause of stumbling to Indian inquirers. The year 1833 came, in which the Company's charter was to be renewed. Charles Grant the younger threw all his great influence into a pro- gramme of reform. He assisted in framing the famous charter (which was afterwards the basis 22 NORTH INDIA of the Queen's Proclamation) promising impar- tiality between the English and Indian. He also obtained sanction for the two new Bishoprics of Madras and Bombay. Corrie was appointed to Madras in 1836. For thirty years he had laboured in North India, opening up, where opportunity was granted, new mission-stations. He had been passed over time after time when the Calcutta Bishopric had been vacant, but he had worked steadily on, mapping out the advance posts of the Church. His name ranks almost equal with Henry Martyn's, as greatest among the " Five " who wrought such wonders in the Church life of Bengal. At this period the career of Alexander Duff, the Presbyterian missionary, began in Calcutta. The time was ripe for a great change, and the man was ready also. Rarely have the man and the occasion fitted more closely. The issue at stake was whether English should form the main subject of University education, or whether San- skrit and Arabic should still hold their pre- eminence ; whether Western science should be taught, or the ancient sciences of the East. " Never on this earth," writes Seeley, " was a more momentous question discussed. ... It was CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 23 Macaulay's minute that decided the question in favour of English. . . . The decision remains the greatest landmark in the history of our Empire, considered as an institute of civilization." Much that has happened since then has led us to modify considerably the enthusiasm over Macaulay's triumph, and in the national move- ment which is going on to-day the defects of Macaulay's policy are being understood his lack of appreciation for the greatness of India's past, and his blindness as to the claims of the vernaculars. But when all this is recognized, there can be no question that the compensating advan- tages of the study of English have been enor- mous. It has given to educated India a common language, and made the unification of India and the growth of national sentiment possible. At the time, however, young educated Bengal was wholly with Macaulay. The struggle between the old school and the new was at its height when Duff landed in Cal- cutta. He was only twenty-four years old, but his career had been already brilliant. He realized with the eye of a born leader the missionary possibilities of the new situation, and the oppor- tunities it offered for presenting the claims of 24 NORTH INDIA CHRIST as the great Emancipator of mankind. He scarcely hesitated for a moment. Picking up a smattering of Bengali sufficient to carry on an organization by himself, he " launched out into the deep, and let down his nets for a draught." He established in 1830 an English college for Indian students, in which the highest culture and science of the West should be taught in a Christian setting. All the older missionaries were against the young innovator, and condemned his methods and haste. While, however, the English missionaries were opposed to him, the leading Indians were on his side. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, perhaps the greatest Indian reformer of last century, warmly championed Duff in his venture of faith, and found him high-caste pupils of the best type. After a year's patient, quiet work in college, Duff sprang into fame by a course of lectures on " National and Revealed Religion." Educated Calcutta was in a ferment. The English were alarmed, and some clamoured for Duff's deportation. But the younger Indian thinkers were almost wholly with him. They were tired of the formal round of Hindu cere- monial and the fetters of superstition, which showed no signs of relaxation. CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 25 Duff saw what young India was needing, and grasped the Indian point of view in the change of thought that was taking place. While others were doubting and hesitating he pressed for- ward, throwing the whole force of his sympathy and earnestness into the new movement. The intense spiritual faith of the young prophet of the new era held fast those who came under his influence. He was of their own age, and could lead them onward into freedom. One by one they came out and were baptized men of high social rank, spiritual culture, and intellectual vigour. Never before or after has there been in India such a distinguished band of converts. Duff set them immediately to work in different spheres, and built up the Christian educational movement by their means. With high generosity he gave his own disciples to other Missions, wherever leaders were needed, and the English Church owes to him in consequence a deep debt of grati- tude. Dr. K. M. Banerji, the ablest of all his converts, became a Professor in Bishop's College ; and Mr. P. M. Rudra, who came from one of the old aristocratic families, was ordained to the priesthood, and for many years was placed in 26 NORTH INDIA charge of the Nadiya Mission district of Bengal, with many congregations under his care. Babus I. C. Singha and Bhola Nath Ghose were sent to help in the Panjab. Even to-day, after more than half a century has elapsed, the Indian Christian families descended from Dr. DufFs converts are remarkable in Bengal and in the North. I have again and again been a welcome guest in some Indian Christian family, where culture and refine- ment ruled, and have been told how this or that member in earlier days was a disciple of Dr. Duff in Calcutta. The life of Dr. Krishna Mohan Banerji gives a singularly vivid picture of the spiritual unrest of the times. He was a Kulin Brahman, belong- ing to one of the high families in Calcutta, and received his education at the Hindu College. While at college he came under the influence of a very gifted young Eurasian professor named Derozio, who exercised an extraordinary fascina- tion over his pupils, inspiring them with high moral courage and a passionate love of liberty. Krishna Mohan Banerji carried his teacher's ideas to extreme lengths, and formed a sect called " The Reformers," whose object was to destroy the old belief in Hinduism and build up society CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 27 on a modern basis. The student leaders broke entirely with Hindu custom and usage, and were all of them outcasted by their families. The excitement produced in Calcutta was intense, and their conduct was both admired and hated. But the excesses of the young enthusiasts, and their wild and reckless conduct, prevented any great moral effect issuing from the revolt : they re- mained isolated and unsupported by any large following. It was at this critical moment that Duff appeared in Calcutta. Krishna Mohan Banerji, the leader and the most earnest of the new sect, came under his influence, and a change began to appear in The Enquirer, of which he was editor-in-chief. At last the news appeared in its columns that he had become a Christian and had been baptized by Duff himself, along with some of his companions. He was ordained by Bishop Wilson later (1839), and was placed in charge of Christ Church, Corn- wallis Street, Calcutta, where his sermons and lectures, delivered in Bengali, attracted great attention for a time. For some years (1851 1866) he was Professor at Bishop's College, and left his mark upon the development of Calcutta University. He received his Doctor's degree in 28 NORTH INDIA recognition of his great services and scholarly attainments. The Asiatic Society elected him a member of their body, and he also took an active part in the Calcutta Municipality. There was scarcely any society of eminence in the city of his birth with which he was not associated, and his name was as great in non-Christian circles as in his own Christian community. His life and all his talents were first and foremost, from the day of his baptism onwards, laid at the feet of his Redeemer, and he was instrumental in winning many of the most influential among the educated classes in Calcutta to embrace Christianity. If there had not been the fatal barriers of English prejudice and State connection, there can be little doubt that Dr. Banerji would have been raised to the episcopate, and have thus become a greater power even than he was in moulding and fashioning the Church life of Ben- gal. But principles of indigenous development and self-government had not then advanced so far as to make such a step possible, and the opportunity was lost. The failure to recognize his great gifts and those of others of his time has had a markedly deterrent effect on the advance of the Church in Bengal in indigenous DR. KRISHNA MOHAN BANERJI. To face page 28. CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 29 life. When it is said to-day that there are no Indian Christians of sufficiently high calibre to be made Bishops, it must be remembered what the treatment of the noblest and highest Indian Christians has been in the past. Continual sub- ordination is not a good soil for the growth of originating and governing powers. Soon after the arrival of Bishop Wilson in Cal- cutta in 1833, the Nadiya and Krishnagar district in Lower Bengal was the scene of a remarkable religious movement, which for a time seemed destined to spread far and wide, and attracted great attention. A reaction against the tyranny of the Brahmans had already begun in the country before the Christian missionaries arrived. A strange new sect appeared, half-Moslem, half- Hindu, called the Karta Bhoja (" Creator Wor- shippers "), following the same lines as many of the Hindu reforming movements. The district was already famous as the first centre of Chai- tanya's preaching in the sixteenth century. In 1833 a number of the new sect were baptized and began to preach Christianity as the one true religion. In 1838 a mass movement took place, in great measure due to social unrest and revolt from Brahman dominance, and Bishop Wilson was 30 NORTH INDIA called in to help, as fifty-five villages were ready to embrace the faith. Mr. Krishna Mohan Banerji was sent with Archdeacon Dealtry, and both were deeply impressed with the possibilities before the Church. The gurus, or religious teachers of the new sect, were themselves seeking for baptism. In less than two years three thousand were added to the Church. The movement for a while flourished, but after- wards the early indigenous and self-propagating spirit signally failed. The German missionaries who were in charge did not realize the vital value of independence and self-support, and conducted the Mission on the old paternal system, which destroyed initiative. The caste difficulty also sprang up among the half-instructed converts, and was tolerated by the missionaries for a time. The Church members of higher origin called themselves " Hindu Christians," " Mussulman Christians," and these two sections looked down upon the shoe- makers and refused to eat with them, calling them " Mochi Christians." Padre P. M. Rudra was sent down to them from Calcutta with two other leading Indian Christians, and by their efforts a reconciliation was effected within the Church ; but the Mission has never recovered from its lack PADRE PIAKI MOHAN RUDRA. To face page 30. CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 31 of wise guidance and discipline at the first, and its early promise has never been fulfilled. It should be added that there has been slow but steady progress in recent years. It was in the later years of Bishop Wilson's long ministry that the development of Zenana mission-work began. He himself had strongly objected to unmarried lady missionaries. " I imagine," he wrote, " that the beloved Persis and Tryphena and Tryphosa remained in their own neighbourhoods and families." But, fortu- nately for India, the Bishop's illustration from Scripture was not regarded as final, and Miss Cooke's great work, begun in 1822, was carried on by a noble succession of workers. In the 'fifties Duff threw all his own enthusiasm and experience into the work of women's education, just as, twenty years before, he had struggled for his English-teaching college. The highest families in Calcutta opened their houses one by one, and the Zenana missionary movement, which has done so much to transform India, began its course. Bishop Wilson's great longing, which he was never able to see accomplished, was for the founda- tion of a Bishopric of Agra, with a Missionary Bishop who might superintend the rising vigorous 32 NORTH INDIA Missions in the North. French had begun in that city, in 1851, his great educational work, and along with Pfander had met the Mussulmans in a controversy which became famous all over the North of India. Delhi, in 1854, was made a centre of S.P.G. work under Mr. Jennings, and two remarkable converts, Professor Ramchandra and Dr. Chimman Lai, had been won to the Faith. Meerut was rapidly developing into an important mission-station. The work on every side was being pushed forward, and the Metropolitan's visits were few and far between. But more than twenty years had to elapse before a new bishopric was founded in the North-West. The centre had then changed from Agra to Lahore. Daniel Wilson's episcopate closed as the last echoes of the terrible Mutiny were dying away. He was in his eightieth year, and had been for some time utterly unable to cope with the vast work of Metropolitan and Bishop. Bishop Cotton (1858-67), who succeeded him, was formerly one of Arnold's younger masters, whose character is sketched in the famous Tom Brown's School Days. He was also at one time Head Master of Marl- borough College a Broad Churchman of the schoolmaster type. During his short episcopate CALCUTTA AND ITS BISHOPS 33 he developed his sympathy with Missions, and became a wise and trusted adviser and helper of each new missionary on his way up to the front in the North. He is known in India to-day by name, first, on account of the Bishop Cotton Schools for English children, whose religious training is of such vital importance in a non- Christian country ; and, secondly, on account of the famous Collect for Missions, which is recited daily in India as a part of the Eucharist, Mattins and Evensong, and runs as follows : "O GOD, Who hast made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and didst send Thy Blessed SON JESUS CHRIST to preach peace to them that are afar off and to them that are nigh, grant that all the peoples of this land may feel after Thee and find Thee ; and hasten, O heavenly FATHER, the fulfilment of Thy promise to pour out Thy Spirit upon all flesh ; through JESUS CHRIST our LORD. Amen? This is the only material addition or alteration allowed in the Book of Common Prayer which has been imposed upon the Indian Church, and a debt of gratitude is owed to Bishop Cotton for this precedent. After an all too brief tenure of office he, like Bishop Heber before him, met his D 34 NORTH INDIA death by drowning while on a Visitation tour in East Bengal. Robert Milman (1867-76), the nephew of Dean Milman, who succeeded Bishop Cotton, was an earnest High Churchman of a very different school from Dr. Middleton. Between the two periods the Oxford Movement had taken place with all its wonderful spiritual results, and the new High Church Metropolitan was heart and soul with the missionaries and the missionary cause, realizing to the full his own apostolic office. His episcopate brings us to a new scene and a remarkable move- ment, the story of which will be told in the next chapter. CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 35 CHAPTER III CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS *T*N the eighteenth and early nineteenth cen- r ^ turies, when England had scarcely awakened to the missionary call, different centres on the Continent of Europe were filled with evangelical zeal. The most famous centre was that of the Moravians at Herrnhut, where the whole com- munity was fired with one missionary spirit, and every family had its representatives in distant lands. Halle, Basle, and Copenhagen were other centres. It is noticeable that the English Mis- sionary Societies in early days received their first workers from the Continent, so great was the dearth of men at home. Few influences have left so great a mark on the mission-field as that of Johannes Gossner, whose ministry, beginning in the Roman priest- hood in the beautiful Tyrol, was continued, after 36 NORTH INDIA his excommunication by Rome for " liberalism," in the Evangelical Church at Berlin. He lived a celibate life of the utmost frugality and self- denial, and his heart was filled with a burning enthusiasm for the conversion of the non-Christian world. His whole congregation became inspired by a like passion, and from one single church there were started Missions on the Gold Coast, in Java, in New Guinea, Macassar, and India. Gossner was a mystic, living a life of prayer and faith, absorbed with an overmastering thought, "The world for CHRIST." In 1844 his longings turned towards India, and he sent out a band of four young Lutherans to Calcutta to found an Indian Mission. They looked to Thibet as a mission-field, in the first instance, but as they could come to no clear decision, they waited continually upon GOD in prayer for guidance. While walking one day down the narrow lanes of the great city, they noted a strange type of face among the passers-by, differing markedly from the Bengalis round. They asked who these people were, and were told that they were Kols, who came from a country of hill and jungle, called Chhota Nagpur. They asked next from the mis- sionaries in Calcutta if any evangelization had yet CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 37 been carried on in that district. On finding that they were an aboriginal people, entirely untouched by the Gospel message, they thanked GOD and took courage, and went forward, knowing that their prayer had been answered and their work appointed. The four went out in faith, and settled down at Ranchi (1845), now the cathedral city of the Chhota Nagpur diocese. They had no fixed sup- port or income, and lived in the utmost poverty in a small bungalow together, spending just what their saintly pastor and his congregation could afford to send them. They built with their own hands their Mission school and church, helped by some famine orphans whom they fathered and educated. One of the four brethren died in the first year of their work, but another came out to join them. For five years there was not a single convert, and they gave themselves more and more to prayer. Then a strange incident occurred which was the beginning of the great development that followed in future years. Four of the Kols came to the Lutheran brethren, saying that they had heard of a great Teacher, and desired to see JESUS. They were invited to stay to the daily service, 38 NORTH INDIA \ and were deeply impressed but still unsatisfied. They wished, they said, to see JESUS Himself, repeating constantly that they could not rest until they had seen Him With their own eyes. One of the Lutheran brothers went with them into an inner room and shut the door, and prayed fervently that they might be guided to the Light. They went away quietly, and no more was heard of them. Some time afterwards the same men reappeared, and asked again to be allowed to be present at Divine Service. At its close they came forward with great joy in their faces, saying, " Now we have found JESUS ; now we are satisfied ; now we desire to become Christians." They remained faithful to these first instincts, and were well instructed during their catechumenate, and then baptized. The forward movement had begun. Year by year the numbers who came in to be taught grew greater, and a harvest seemed almost immediately prepared for the reaping. There were other beside purely spiritual causes at work, and a desire to better their degraded position entered in very largely as a motive force among the Kols who flocked to the German missionaries. Yet this desire itself had a good and noble side, and was CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 39 not without spiritual value. It marked a distinct rise above the level of their former life. But suffering was to come first. The year of the Mutiny arrived, and the Sepoy regiment stationed close to Ranchi joined the mutineers. The European officers and civilians made good their escape, and then looting went on far and wide. The Lutheran brothers had determined to stay quietly at their posts protecting and guard- ing their converts. But to do this was to bring into terrible danger the Indian Christians them- selves. The only escape for them all lay in scattering themselves and becoming lost among the aboriginal population. The order was given ; the pastors and their flock alike scattered, and thus preserved their lives. During the long months that followed many of the new converts died of starvation, and nearly all lost their pro- perty, such as it was. One Indian Christian leader maintained in the jungle, for many weeks, one hundred Christian children during the rainy season of the year. Every convert had to under- go terrible hardships, but none denied CHRIST. After a period of the greatest anxiety, Ranchi was recaptured from the mutineers ; but the whole mission was wrecked. The Christians came 4O NORTH INDIA straggling in out of their hiding-places, miserable, half-starved, and utterly destitute. The disaster that had fallen was more than the home resources of Gossner and his congregation could remedy. He wrote on December 4, 1857, to the Church Missionary Society as follows : "BRETHREN, "It is not unknown to you that I have, by the grace of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, been endeavouring to do something towards the pro- motion of the Redeemer's kingdom in India. But entering now on my eighty-fifth year, and feeling my strength failing me ... I propose, in the LORD, to transfer the said Missions to the care of the Missionary Society of the Church of England." This request of the aged German pastor was again and again repeated, but the Church .Mis- sionary Society hesitated to take the step. At the same time they most generously sent out .1,000 to help the strained financial position. The death of Pastor Gossner came in the midst of all the home difficulties of the Mis- sion, and then troubles soon began. A new committee ruled, who sent out younger men of CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 41 a different type and school of thought to the earlier missionaries whom Pastor Gossner had chosen. The latter still clung to the desire of ultimate union with the English Church, and such ideas were strengthened both by the precarious- ness of supplies from Germany and also by the uncompromising attitude of the younger mis- sionaries. At last, an irreconcilable breach occurred, and the older Lutherans appealed to Bishop Milman of Calcutta to come down. He came not a moment too soon. The Christian harvest in Chhota Nagpur, though ripe for the sickle, was wasting away owing to unhappy divisions. The older men were completely cast off. Even the home committee sided against them. They had nowhere to turn except to where Pastor Gossner had himself pointed them. Bishop Milman, at first, made every effort to bring about a recon- ciliation, but the breach was too wide to be healed. He at length acted with that firmness and decision which alone could bring order out of chaos. The younger Lutherans went their own way, the older missionaries united with the Church of England (1869), and from that time forward progress again became possible. It is a 42 NORTH INDIA x happiness to record that entirely friendly relations were restored in later years, and both branches of the Mission have developed in a remarkable degree, having each its own sphere of action and its own method of work. There was much heart- burning at the time on account of the step Bishop Milman felt compelled to take. But there can be little question, in the light of after events, that it was a wise one. The number of converts who came to the Bishop with the older Lutheran brethren was, roughly, about 7,000. There was an immediate need of fresh workers if such a large number were to be shepherded adequately. Jabez C. Whitley, an S.P.G. missionary, who had worked with Winter at Delhi, was the first to be sent. He was deeply touched at the welcome given him by the old German brethren. In union with them the work of reorganization began. Great care was taken to continue the system of village eldership the leading Christian in each village acting voluntarily as elder of the village. Out of these, picked men were taken and trained for the diaconate and priesthood, and in this way the lines of an indigenous and self-supporting Church were laid down from the first. When Bishop CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 43 Milman paid his second visit, after an absence of four years, he found five candidates, both intellec- tually and spiritually prepared, for the sacred gift of ordination. In the new church which had been built in the interval, he ordained the firstfruits of the Kol Christians. Peace and order were now reigning instead of division and confusion, and the Bishop's heart was deeply moved by the progress that had been made. A system of primitive discipline received his heartiest sanction. In every church a rail was put up at the west-end to mark off those who were under penance. Their names were read out publicly after the Nicene Creed, and a solemn warning was given to the faithful not to resort to their company, until the time of penance had expired. When that time came the penitents were absolved by the priest, after public con- fession, in the presence of the whole congregation. They were then welcomed back into the fold with great joy. The spirit of self-help and voluntary work on the one hand, and the primitive system of discipline on the other, strengthened the young growing Church in those early days, and saved the large ingathering from sinking back to the old pagan level. 44 NORTH INDIA Ten years of steady persistent work, carried on by an increasing number of workers, deepened the characters of the Kol Christians, and now at last an orderly development seemed certain, when a new trouble began. A large staff of Jesuit missionaries appeared, who entered into the agrarian disputes of the people with their Hindu landlords, and persuaded Christians and non- Christian Kols alike to join their mission, prom- ising their support. The Jesuits worked with unremitting self-sacrifice and devotion, but em- ployed the method of baptizing every one who came to them, with little or no instruction or moral change of life, in the hope of obtaining their children, and influencing them in their schools. In a few years they declared 50,000 converts, many of whom were drawn from the other Missions. In the face of this very strongly staffed and organized Mission, the Anglican clergy were like scattered units under no central direction and con- trol. The time had clearly come for a Bishopric of Chhota Nagpur. After many years of most wearying delay, the Rev. J. C. Whitley was con- secrated Bishop in the Ranchi Church (May 23, 1890), by the Bishops of Calcutta, Bombay, and Photo by] [J. Russell & Sons. BISHOP WHITLEY. To face page 45. CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 45 Lahore. It was a great joy to all that the con- secration was permitted in the central church of the new diocese, and was not held 7,000 miles away in England. By the consecration of the Bishop, the or- ganization of the growing Church in Chhota Nagpur was complete. Now at last the Kol Christians had their own Father in GOD, living in their very midst, speaking as one of them- selves their own language, himself, by his twenty years' residence in and out among the people, almost a native of the country. To a primitive people, whose simple ideal of social life is loyalty and obedience to a chief, the spiritual gain was very great indeed. The Bishop became at once their great Father, who could sympathize with them in their village homes, and whose visits were looked forward to with eager enthusiasm. In no country in the world, perhaps, does the supreme value of the episcopate stand out more clearly than it does in India. Loyalty to a central person is an instinct among India's great unlettered rural population. Further- more, India is a land of traditions, a land in which the past counts for more than the present. To be linked with the Church of all the ages, to 46 NORTH INDIA be in a direct historical succession from the Apostles themselves, to share in the inheritance of all the saints and martyrs of old time, these are ideas singularly vivid to the Indian mind when once clearly presented. One of the saddest facts to look back upon in the history of Church Missions in North India, has been the continual delays and legal hindrances with regard to the formation of new bishoprics, and the lack of direct personal leadership in consequence, which has so often involved grievous spiritual loss. The next great step forward was the arrival of the Dublin Mission Brotherhood, and the lady workers connected with them, in 1891. This reinforcement gave an added impetus to the work, and made the more careful shepherding of the converts possible. The enormous num- ber of tiny villages, out of which the Christians were gathered, made frequent visiting most diffi- cult, and yet imperative if discipline were to be maintained. Only an organized staff of men at headquarters could hope to carry out continuous superintendence. But even more necessary for the future was the training of the younger generation. Just as the mission schools of CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 47 S. Aidan, the Venerable Bede, and S. Dunstan, saved the Anglo-Saxon Church from going backward, so it has been in Chhota Nagpur. The schools, both for Christian boys and girls, have marked the permanent occupation of the land for CHRIST, and have strengthened the line of advance. Such remarkable progress has been made since the schools were opened, that now a college, in which University degrees are obtained by the children of primitive unlettered aboriginals, has been established. While the Dublin missionaries placed them- selves entirely at the service of the Bishop, and were ready to undertake any work that was given them to do, they asked, if possible, for a special and difficult field, which should be peculiarly their own. They were entrusted with the Hazaribagh district, which lay in the northern part of the diocese, and had hardly yet been touched by missionary effort. In addition, they offered to undertake the higher educational work among Indian Christians. It is impossible to go further into the history of this Missionary Diocese, though questions of supreme interest arise as to the present and the future. It will be best to sum up the 48 NORTH INDIA results by making two quotations, each repre- senting one aspect of the work. Speaking at the S. Andrew's Dinner in Calcutta, and summing up his Indian experiences, Sir John Woodburn, who was at the time Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, made the following utterance with regard to the intellectual awakening of the converts : " While speaking of Chhota Nagpur, I was thinking of the surprise that awaited even so old an Indian as myself. We are accustomed to hear and speak of the savage tribes of the hills, as almost irreclaimable from the naked barbarism of their nomad life. What did I find ? In the schools of the missionaries there are scores of Kol boys, rapidly attaining University standards in education. It was to me a revelation that the savage intellect, which we are apt to regard as dwarfed, and dull, and inept, is as acute and quick to acquire knowledge as that of the sons of generations of culture. It seems incredible, but it is the fact, that these Kol lads are walking straight into the lists of com- petition with the high-bred youth of Bengal. This is a circumstance so strange even to me, so striking, so full of significance for the future, that I could not refrain from telling you of CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 49 this last surprise of this wonderful land we live in." The second quotation is from the conclusion of Dr. Eyre Chatterton's inspiring book on the Dublin University Mission. He refers to the spiritual awakening which has taken place, and its possible results : " When we pass from the North, which is still non-Christian, into the central and southern parts of Chhota Nagpur, we find ourselves in an entirely different atmo- sphere. Here, in the midst of a great aboriginal population, are thousands of Kol Christians, and many heathen Kols still pressing into the Church. No one who has ever been among them can doubt that, however unworthy may have been the early motives of many in embracing Chris- tianity, in embracing it they have found LIFE: moral, intellectual, spiritual. What effect is their remarkable conversion likely to have on mission work outside their own race on the other races of India ? At once we reply, without hesitation, far more than any one could have possibly imagined twenty years ago. Even now some of the Kol converts are being used for work as catechists among the Gonds of the Central Provinces, as well as in Calcutta and Assam. As E 50 NORTH INDIA education spreads among them, it seems likely that what S. Paul said of his converts of Corinth will prove true of them, and the weak things of the world will be used by GOD to confound the things that are mighty." As the mass movements towards Christianity will not come before us again in a detailed form, it will be well at this point to face clearly and candidly the problems which they involve, and to inquire carefully what may be and what may not be legitimate with regard to them. Are we at liberty, with our Christian standard given us in the Gospels, to accept comparatively low forms of motive in the first instance, in dealing with the lower races ? Do motives which appear low to us appear in the same light to them ? Are they not, in the case of the lower races, the only primary motives which do appeal ? Are we permitted to make the lower races Christians first and raise them afterwards ? Can we, at least, when a move- ment has begun among them, through a definitely religious conversion of the two or three quite exceptional men, go on to accept the mass who have no religious conviction, but who follow a lead that is given them like a flock of sheep ? In the Chhota Nagpur Mission this last illustra- CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 51 tion seems to give the picture of what happened. The first advances towards Christianity seem to have been made by a few exceptional men among the Kols ; the motive as described in their case seems to have been genuinely religious ; then followed the rush of so-called converts and the flooding in of mixed motives connected with land and other secular matters. The Kols undoubtedly expected by means of the Mission to obtain a rise in social status and prosperity, and this expecta- tion proved true. But a mere rise in social status was not the only result. Their whole life, body, soul, and spirit, seems to have been raised after their inclusion within the Christian Body. They are now intellectually and morally stronger than they were before, and many of them are doing devoted and unselfish missionary, work to-day. In the Krishnagar mass movement the same result does not seem to have taken place. A large ingathering came first, but then a falling off and relapse into heathen practices began. There are " black spots " in mission-work to-day in India where a mass movement, due to mixed motives, has first made great advance and then failed. Such failures must be taken into consideration as well as the very marked successes. 52 NORTH INDIA What is needed in the Church is a scientific working out of the actual experimental results of mass movements what motives have been strong in this or that case, what have been the results following, what methods have been em- ployed, what amount of shepherding was possible, what indigenous growth has taken place, etc. Such literature needs to be written from the critical rather than the emotional standpoint. Then it may be possible to get to some general principles and settled modes of action. At present different Missions take different courses. Some Missions accept any and every motive, so that numbers may be first added to the Church and then, after baptism, be trained and schooled in Christian surroundings and in Chris- tian ways. Others adopt what is practically the same line of development, but deceive themselves as to what is really going on, and in their eager- ness for converts overlook what is the strongest motive behind the so-called conversion. The result in both cases is the same very large accessions ; but in the second case the danger of such accessions is greater, because the situation has not been frankly faced from the outset, and more spiritual growth is presupposed than has CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 53 really taken place, and grievous miscalculations are likely to be made. A kind of mutual self- deceit takes place, which is a fruitful ground for religious hypocrisy. A third section of missionaries accept large numbers when they come forward for baptism, but demand a long catechumenate. This at first sight seems the wiser course to take, but there are considerable practical difficulties in the way. The marriage question becomes an extremely complicated one. Can catechumens marry with the baptized ? Can they give their daughters (who are not yet catechumens) in marriage to heathen ? Can a Christian marriage be made in the catechumen stage ? Idolatry being intimately connected with non-Christian marriage, such questions loom large. Further still, the individual initiative being extremely weak in these lower races, a prolonged catechu- menate (in which the individual belongs neither to one body nor the other, but stands in a pre- carious isolated position between the two) is a fruitful source of heart-breaking disappointment and confusion. A fourth section of missionaries apply with more or less strictness the individual tests of 54 NORTH INDIA real conversion, and take in converts one by one, refusing to allow, as far as possible, any motives of material advantage to intervene. At first sight this course, while disregarding quan- tity, would seem to ensure quality. But this expected result does not always happen. The smallness of the numbers brings with it restric- tions and limitations as to marriage, occupation, etc. There is no large community of Christians with a varied life within its own borders and abun- dant opportunity of intermarriage, but a small and feeble body with great pressure from the outside world and narrow resources within. Such a body becomes necessarily very dependent on the foreign missionary, and is often pauperized by his kind- ness. It also tends in India to become a kind of close community outside the life of the nation, and to develop anew something of the caste- spirit. The above is by no means an exact analysis of the different methods and their results, but it may serve for a broad outline. To turn back to Chhota Nagpur : the Jesuits took frankly the first position here sketched : with them it was everything to get large numbers baptized, and they openly assisted in the land disputes in order to gain their object, CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 55 their justification being that, once within the Church, the multitude could be properly shep- herded. The Lutherans probably disguised from themselves, in the early days, the secular motives which were making whole villages of the Kols flock into the Church. They gave less temporal aid and protection than the Jesuits, but, at the same time, were not altogether discriminating in their methods. The English missionaries have been much more careful and discriminating, and have admitted far fewer numbers to baptism. They had the advantage, however, of receiving at the start a very considerable Christian popu- lation on which to work. If their results are at present the most satisfactory in quality, it must not be assumed that this would have happened had strict " Anglican " methods been employed from the first : in that case it is just possible that the Church might have remained too narrow and confined, and that the difficulties of a small, close community would have appeared in all their force. We need, as has been said above, to have before us an examination of the effects of different methods of work among the masses in different fields, with an equally careful inquiry into the 56 NORTH INDIA innate vigour and initial capacity for improvement in the different peoples affected. To take some mission-fields for example : What is the com- parative progress in the English Missions and the Roman Missions in Uganda in the Univer- sities' Mission and the Scotch Missions round Lake Nyasa in the S.P.G. and C.M.S. and Baptist Missions in Tinnevelly in the Roman Missions and the China Inland Mission in China ? What accounts for the extraordinary difference in the history of the Anglican Missions in Korea, which almost up to the present time have been a com- parative failure, and the Presbyterian Missions in the same country, which have been an extra- ordinary success, and which now equal, if not excel, Uganda in the power of self-propagation ? Further still, in order to make the investigation complete, the question will have to be asked Is Japan, where no mass movement towards Chris- tianity on a large scale has occurred as yet, more favourably situated to-day on account of the high respect for the Faith among non-Christians, than other countries where rapid accessions have lowered for the time being the estimate of the Christian Church in the eyes of the educated classes ? A study of our LORD'S own injunctions and CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 57 methods will go hand in hand with such investiga- tions and enquiries, as a guide and corrective. It may be that we shall be left in doubt as to the exact course to be pursued. The spirit rather than the letter of CHRIST'S teaching will have to be followed. Two points call for consideration. On the one hand there can be no question that, as the Ministry proceeded, our LORD concentrated His attention more and more on choice souls, from whom He demanded complete self-sacrifice. When the conscience of man was developed and individualized, then everything was done by CHRIST to strengthen individual responsibility. But there is also recorded, in every Gospel, CHRIST'S dealing with the multitudes, who were " as sheep having no shepherd " ; and His com- passion in this case appears to be not merely for the individual souls but for the multitudes them- selves, and He treats them and deals with them in the mass. The parables of the Drag-net and the Marriage Supper may be read in a similar manner, though here we are on more doubtful ground. Last of all, it is interesting to note that, while in the second Gospel the missionary com- mand is in a measure " individualized," indi- vidual belief or disbelief being the criterion, in the 58 NORTH INDIA first Gospel the command seems to refer primarily to the nations : " Go, disciple all nations, baptizing them [i.e., the 'nations] . . . teaching them " [i.e., the nations]. There seems, therefore, some justification, from our LORD'S own words, for " putting to school " the backward races, admitting them in the mass within the Church, if they are ready to come, in order that, once within the Christian Body, they may be leavened through and through with the Christian life. At the same time, when dealing with self-conscious and responsible indi- viduals, who have reached the stage of being able to make a full self-conscious choice, we must, if we follow our LORD closely, emphasize to the full the individual responsibility and sacrifice required to enter the kingdom. To whom much is already given, of him much must be required. A possible analogy, familiar to every parish priest among the poor in England, may help to make the thought clearer though the analogy must not be pressed. When I was working in a College Mission in South London, a continual anxiety and trouble to me was the receiving into the Church by Holy Baptism of the little children of parents who were leading a life of absolute CHHOTA NAGPUR, AND MASS MOVEMENTS 59 indifference to the Faith. The motives which brought the mother with her baby to the font were often of the lowest description. The phrase, " having it done," was common in the district. Yet in order to welcome the little helpless children within the arms of the Church, who would be a true Mother to them, teach them virtue, school them and train them in a higher life, we were always ready (except in extreme cases) to receive and to baptize those who came even from the very worst families, thus gaining, as it were, a hold upon them which could not be obtained in any other way. We acted on the principle that within the fold of the Church there was at least hope of advance and growth ; outside, in the atmo- sphere of the world of sin around them, there was no hope at all. May not the backward races, which have not risen as yet to self-conscious- ness and independence of thought and action, be treated as the " infants " of the great race of man- kind, and received by "infant" Baptism within the arms of Mother Church, on the one only condition that the Church herself stand sponsor, being pre- pared to shepherd and instruct them according to their need and to be responsible for their bringing up ? May not this be done, while at the same 60 NORTH INDIA time a high standard of sacrifice and individual choice remains for those whose position in society is such that they are " children " no longer, but "men," possessing a developed personality? From those who have much already may not much be required, in comparison with those who have had no chance in life at all and who have never risen in the social and intellectual scale ? FATHER GOREH 61 CHAPTER IV FATHER GOREH EN ARES stands out among the cities of India as the " holy city." Of immemorial antiquity, built on a rising spur of land round which the sacred Ganges flows, it has been the goal of aspiration and the haven of devotion to pious Hindu souls in all ages. The depth of sentiment, reverence, and affection which has gathered round this city of pilgrimage can hardly be understood in the West. Here had come in his old age Dinkarpurth Goreh, the ex-President of Nawab AH Bahadur, to spend his last days in meditation and retire- ment from the world, accompanied by his son, whose heart was also given to the spiritual life. Nilakantha Goreh was the latter's firstborn child, brought up in this home of piety and quiet peace, the object of his father's spiritual care from his earliest years. The family was one of the highest Brahman families in the land, and 62 NORTH INDIA the priestly duties were most scrupulously per- formed each day in the household. Nilakantha's father gradually retired more and more com- pletely from worldly affairs, as his own father had done before him. When his wife died he built himself a little hut, and lived there as a recluse, never leaving it except to go on pil- grimage. Nilakantha, his son, was his one link with the outer world ; on him he poured the most tender and devoted affection, and gave him the most careful training in the Sanskrit Scrip- tures, so that he became, when quite young, a " Shastri," or Doctor of Sanskrit Divinity. The young scholar, by his own ascetic life, and the far-famed spirituality of his ancestors, became well known in the higher intellectual circles of Benares as a spiritual leader of the future. He was shy and retiring, calm and gentle in manners, with a singularly keen and subtle intellect trained in the great philosophic systems of Hinduism. The Rev. W. Smith at this time was preaching with stammering lips the message of the Cross within the sacred Hindu city. To the Shastri, the feeble knowledge of Sanskrit, the ignorance of the deep things of Hindu philosophy in the Christian padre roused at first only contempt. FATHER GOREH 63 Why should he come with his crude material ideas to the spiritual centre of the East ? Nila- kantha's zeal overcame his shyness, and he visited Mr. Smith at his house. " I heard," he wrote of himself later, " that the Christian padre was a man of great piety, and the foolish thought came to me that I would show him the great beauty of the Hindu religion and convert him. I say ' foolish thought ' now, but then I believed it was an in- spiration from the gods, and so did my father. I came away greatly disappointed, for he would not argue, but referred me to the New Testament." He tells us later how the reading of the Sermon on the Mount was the turning-point in his life. After reading that, all contempt for Christianity vanished, and he started to pray earnestly for light, which came little by little. " The New Testa- ment," he writes, " once despised, now became the absorbing study of my life. I began to feel my own sinfulness as I had never done before." Now began the struggle to break with the caste associations in which his whole life and being had been hitherto entwined. Every family influence was brought to bear against his new faith, with all the heart-breaking and crushing force which Hinduism is able to wield. " At this period," he 64 NORTH INDIA relates, " I felt as though I were a thief in my father's house. ... I felt that the very trees and walls and bricks were crying shame upon me, and that I could look no one in the face. . . . Had I been a murderer, or a great criminal, the feeling against me would have been less strong. . . . You English cannot imagine what it is for a Brahman to become a Christian. It is very awful'' He adds, " I finally told my father of my change of faith. This was so sad a time so sad and awful that I can sit here and recall all that happened as if it happened yesterday my poor old father's desolate grief at my confession, his prayers, and his tears. My poor father! He even fell at my feet, and begged me for the sake of his grey hairs not to bring so grievous a trial on him. I was very, very sad, and most of all at my father's falling at my feet. He actually did this. He said to me further, ' Your mother is dead ; I have now no one left but you. If I lose you, too, oh ! what will become of me ? ' ' Nilakantha's dearest friend, who was to be baptized with him, left him in the hour of trial, and went back. For a short period, Nilakantha himself wavered and returned. " The image of my father," he wrote, " seems to be continually FATHER GOREH 65 before me. His last look so full of reproach, of sorrow, and of agony, I cannot forget it. It haunts me day and night, sleeping and waking. I must I must return." But his faith itself never changed, and his determination to be baptized grew stronger again. His father now threatened to destroy himself; but even the terror of this could not drive Nilakantha from his purpose. Once an attempt was made to drug him, and every hindrance that human ingenuity could devise was put in his way to keep him at his father's house and prevent his visiting the missionaries. But at last the struggle was over,' the victory was won, and in the cleansing bap- tismal waters his past was washed away and his new life begun. Like Saul of Tarsus, the young convert imme- diately began to witness openly for CHRIST. Mud and stones were thrown at him in the bazaar by his former friends, but peace and joy reigned in his heart, and later in the year a strange thing happened. His father, whose agony had been greatest, and whose opposition had been most vehement, was the first to be reconciled. The old man was himself deeply religious, and he could feel the religious spirit of his son. Out- F 66 NORTH INDIA cast though he was the old man recalled him, and could not bear him to be long away from his own presence. Nehemiah (such was Nilakantha's Christian name) would come to see him in his solitary hut and prostrate himself before him. The father would neither touch him, nor eat from his hand, but he loved to see him. He would talk with him and with no one else. " Do not become a free thinker," he would say, " man cannot exist without religion. You are religious by nature. You have left Hinduism, but Christianity is a religion do not give it up." Beneath the tremendous gulf which yawned between them the aged Hindu devotee and the young ardent Christian there was this common bond of sym- pathy and unity they were seekers after GOD, and counted the world as naught compared with the things of the soul. It is impossible to tell at length the story of his wife, Lakshmibai : how, after struggles and difficulties almost equal to those of her husband, she came back to his side : how a child was born to them, and mother and daughter were both baptized together. Two days later, the frail, delicate lady was taken to her rest. Ne- hemiah gave his tiny daughter into the keeping FATHER GOREH 67 of a devoted Christian family, and from that time forward cut himself off entirely from the world. It was in 1857, while at Calcutta, that the great change came in Goreh's views with regard to the Catholic Church. He had long felt the need of a stronger basis of authority than his own individual judgement. At times his spirit was racked with tormenting doubts. The moral change which had taken place at his conver- sion had brought him from self-confidence to supreme self- depreciation, a quality which re- mained, perhaps, the strongest and most beauti- ful feature in his later life. This very humility brought back old questionings, and he longed for a sure refuge. He tells us how the reading of the Early Fathers under Dr. Kay, of Bishop's College, Calcutta, was a revelation to him. From that time he longed for the monastic life. When he heard of the Cowley Fathers at Oxford, and the possibility of their work in India, he was filled with thankfulness. His corre- spondence with Father Benson, which contributed to the Cowley Mission being started in India and his own working with them, forms, perhaps, the most illuminating part of Father Gardner's Life 68 NORTH INDIA of Goreh. In this correspondence Nehemiah Goreh reveals his own inner spiritual struggles, and also his own conceptions of the spread of the Christian Faith in India. He believed that India could not be won for CHRIST by western- izing the East, but rather by boldly claiming for CHRIST the Eastern ideals of poverty and self-renunciation ideals which find so high a place in the words of CHRIST Himself. When Father O'Neill came out to India, Nehemiah joined him, and they lived together at Bankipur, and elsewhere, up to the time of Father O'Neill's sad death from cholera at Indore. O'Neill was a spiritual friend and guide after Padre Nehemiah's own heart. He gave up every European comfort, and lived among the people, eating their food, living, dining, sleeping as they did, leading a life of poverty which made him one with the poorest. Nehemiah was never happier than when sharing his companionship. " How can I speak," he writes, " of that saintly man ! He taught me more than any one else about the Catholic Faith. I have a strange peculiarity. It is this. Without necessarily knowing the person, I love him with an absorbing passion. I got to love Dr. Pusey so, though I did not know FATHER GOREH 69 him." It was this same spiritual kinship which he found in Father O'Neill, and from the very first his whole heart went out to him in an absorbing passion of love, which was one of the most beautiful things ever witnessed in the Indian mission-field European and Indian, of one heart and one soul in CHRIST, living as brothers together the life of self-renunciation. Padre Nehemiah went to Cowley itself to pass his novitiate in the Society of S. John the Evangelist. The cold of England, and the unaccustomed food and life tried him terribly, and he never could reconcile himself to the Anglican methods of prayer and meditation. This difficulty in follow- ing the Western Offices of the Church was a sore trial to him, and in consequence he was never professed as a full member of the Society, but remained a novice until 1885, when he sent in his resignation. In his humility he would put down his failings in the Society to his own sin- fulness and sloth, but there can be little ques- tion that the difficulty lay rather in an Eastern mind endeavouring to adapt itself to a purely Western system. " I used," he wrote to Father Page, " to get fearfully tired, and then the little time I could spend more profitably in some other yo NORTH INDIA form of devotion, which suited my peculiar state, I was obliged to waste in saying the Offices in an entirely distracted frame of mind." He relates how he would wish to pause over some thought which came to him in the recitation of a psalm or chapter, but instead, he was compelled to hurry on, till his mind became a blank and spiritual feeling impossible. He had intense pleasure, though (as he frankly confesses) some disappointment, in his visits to Dr. Pusey. He could not understand him, and found conversa- tion with him very difficult. With regard to English Church life he was most distressed by the haste in reciting the Divine Service, and by the lack of the daily witness of religion churches being closed and no worship offered from week end to week end. Religion in England seemed either forgotten, or else rushed through in a formal way. He had discarded long ago the vain repetition of Sans- krit slokas and mantras, but much in Western modes of worship seemed to be of the same character the same carelessness, the same irrev- erence, the same formalism. One of his dearest memories in England was a visit to Cuddesdon. He found there a haven of FATHER GOREH 71 rest and devotion, and spoke often about the college in later days. Canon Furse gave him a little picture of S. Francis of Assisi, and this he always kept with him in India along with his crucifix. Those who have themselves been students at Cuddesdon will be glad to have this incident brought to their notice. On one occasion while in England, he gave with great diffidence, his own impression of mis- sionary work as it was then being carried on in India. He pointed out how the luxury of English life, with its continual round of gaiety and sport, was a stumbling-block to a frugal, self- denying Eastern people, whose ideal of religion and spirituality was the contempt of riches, and withdrawal from the world; the missionaries, living much in the same way as Government officials, were too identified with the conquering race and its worldly pomp and prestige, and therefore could not give that vision of humility and sacred poverty which would win the spiritually-minded among Indian religious leaders. For these and other reasons he pleaded for a missionary celibate life, lived for the people and among the people, in absolute poverty and renunciation of the world. He asked for more simplicity, and less organiza- 72 NORTH INDIA tion, more of the East and less of the West in methods of work. While Nehemiah Goreh lived himself the life of poverty, and loved to work among the simple ignorant villagers, he was engaged without inter- mission on intellectual work in defence of the Faith. Some of his apologetic writings have become classics in Indian Christian Theology. He was an original thinker. Two names stand out among the higher educated Indians who were brought to a decision for CHRIST by his instrumentality. Safdar Ali, was a Mohammedan mystic, who had sought for many years, by a life of sanctity and meditation, and withdrawal from the world, to obtain mystical union with GOD. He could not rest or find peace in Islam, and describes himself as like one dying of thirst in the desert of life. For days at a time he would sit wrapt in silence, taking no food, waiting for a vision of the Truth which never came. Around him were a body of disciples, filled with the same longing as their master. He had read the New Testament, but had never met a Christian ascetic. At last he heard of Padre Nehemiah, and sent word to Benares. The Padre set off the same night, and FATHER GOREH 73 they embraced each other warmly when they met. The two then sat down upon the ground the Mohammedan Sufi inquirer, and the ex-Brahman Christian priest and the discussion began. It was continued for many days, and while the in- tellectual points were discussed and answered, the spiritual personality of the Christian ascetic impressed the inquirer more than any argument, and Safdar AH at the conclusion named Goreh his own murshid or spiritual guide, and was baptized. In later years Safdar Ali helped to bring to a knowledge of the Faith the most learned of all Indians who have come to CHRIST from Islam the famous Dr. I mad ud Din of the Panjab. Pandita Ramabai, the Brahman widow, was the second notable convert. She had been highly educated from childhood in Sanskrit literature by her father, and had wedded an Indian gentle- man who died shortly after their marriage, leaving one little daughter. The Pandita went to England and returned and became a member of one of the reforming Hindu communities. For a long time her opposition to Christianity was bitter, but she was won over at last by Padre Nehemiah. " His humble, sweet voice," she writes, 74 NORTH INDIA "pierced my heart. Oh! what a mighty power he has. I think no one could have turned my heart from the Brahman religion but Father Goreh." The Pandita is now known through- out India for her Widows' Home at Poona. Its history has been one of the triumphs of faith and prayer, somewhat similar to the work of George Miiller in Bristol. In 1905 and 1906 the Home was the scene of a remarkable spiritual revival. The Pandita is still living and guiding the insti- tution. The last year of Father Goreh's life forms one of its most beautiful chapters. He was deeply, ardently hoping for his brother's conversion, and had gone to Allahabad. While walking to the early Eucharist in the cathedral, he had been drenched by rain and chilled through and through, and became very ill. The Bishop and Mrs. Clifford moved him to their own house, and watched over the frail old man with every tender- ness and care. His daughter, who was now a deaconess, came to nurse him, and he had the joy of her companionship during his long illness. Their affection for one another was very deep, and he had often longed in the midst of his arduous labours to have her by his side. This boon was FATHER GOREH 75 now granted. In this last year a deep passion came upon him for his brother's conversion, and he strained his failing health to see him and entreat him again and again to decide for CHRIST. His gentleness and meekness were now even more marked than at other periods of his life. The Cowley Fathers came down one by one from Poona, and he received them with the most touching affection. At last the heat of Allahabad became unbearable for him, and he was taken to Mazagon, Bombay. His health somewhat improved, and he was busily engaged in the revision of the Marathi Prayer Book, and in a reply to the Rev. Luke Rivington concerning the Doctrine of the Real Presence. His brother came to visit him at Mazagon, and for some days all his time was given up to him, while he pleaded with him for the last time. Father Gardner writes with regard to a break in his illness: "I had been ordered home to England. This was the day of sailing. Father Kershaw and I were alone at the Mission House, and he and the choirboys had agreed to accompany me as far as the ship. . . . During our meal together with the boys, Father Goreh came in, and took part in all our fun. I do not remember when I had seen him so 76 NORTH I INDIA cheerful before. It is a very happy last recollec- tion of him. His sweet face was all smiling at the children's prattle." During the time he was in Bombay he was tended with a motherly care by Mrs. Henry Pope, who gave herself up to nursing him. She writes : " He was in constant and severe pain, but always silent, patient, prayerful. When some one proposed at this time that he should answer some public attacks on him made by Hindus, he replied, ' All that is past : I am too ill for that now.' The only person he never ceased arguing with both by letter and by word of mouth was his brother, but he died without the satisfaction of convincing him. He said once, ' I have made one request to GOD for forty-two years, and He has not granted it to me yet.' This prayer was for joy in religion. He longed for it with no common desire, but GOD never granted it to him." His death came very suddenly at last, almost in his sleep, and his saintly life, purified and chastened by continual suffering, was taken up to higher spheres of service. At Christmas-tide last year, I stayed at the Sigra Mission House, Benares, where the steps of young Nilakantha Goreh had so often turned FATHER GOREH 77 to inquire concerning the Christian Faith. I sat, thinking of the past, in the very room where he had knelt in prayer with Mr. Smith, seeking for the light. Suddenly, outside in the compound, there rose from Indian children's voices the Christmas hymn of triumph Ai, sab imandaro. " O COME, all ye faithful, Joyful and triumphant, O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem ; Come and adore Him Born, the King of Angels; O come, let us adore Him, CHRIST the LORD. GOD of GOD, Light of Light, Lo ! He abhors not the Virgin's womb ; Very GOD, Begotten, not created ; O come, let us adore Him, CHRIST the LORD." In the faith of the Incarnation Nehemiah Goreh lived and worked and died. His may not have been the triumphant joy that is vouchsafed to some saintly souls, but deep penitence, and humility, and lowliness of heart were his, the gift of the Incarnate Saviour Who said, "Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls." 78 NORTH INDIA I went on from the Christian Church at Sigra into the city of Benares itself. For hours I stayed watching the stream of Hindu devotees passing through, from temple to temple, performing their round of ceremonies, doing puja with Ganges water, marigold-flowers and rice, at the different idol shrines. Most of the worshippers seemed intent on getting through as many visits to the numberless idols as possible ; yet every now and then among the crowd there might be seen a pathetically earnest face, full of ardent, spiritual longing. Many sadhu ascetics joined the throng, and among them also might be seen faces stamped with earnestness and desire for salvation. The sight stirred one's own heart to the depths, and one longed to be able to hold with them spiritual communion and to help them forward to the light. As the stream of worshippers flowed on and on, one seemed to get a glimpse into the soul of the Indian nation, and to understand better its inextinguishable passion for religion. The crows and sparrows kept swooping down, when a pause occurred, to steal away the rice. At intervals the attendant came round with a broom to sweep away the filth of the dirty water FATHER GOREH 79 and decaying flowers. Cows received the acts of worship equally with the idols themselves. In the " Cow Temple," they were the special object of devotion. How repulsive it was, and yet how full of pathos ! No other country in the world has stronger religious instincts. No* other country in the world has allowed them to go so perversely astray. I went away, saddened at heart, back to the quiet Christian church, to pray and meditate. Christmas Day was near, and I read the words of peace, " Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day ... a Saviour, which is CHRIST the LORD. . . . And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising GOD, and saying, Glory to GOD in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men." And then there came back once more the vision, the pathos of those Hindu faces old men and old women most of them, who had come to find salvation, their objects of worship so hideous Shiva as the bull, Kali with her red tongue and her necklace of skulls, cows and 8o NORTH INDIA monkeys the religious, the spiritual instinct so strong, the material embodiment so gross. There are hundreds of philosophers and men of culture in Benares, the seat of Hindu learning, men who look down upon the vanity of idol wor- ship as only fit for the common people. There is much in the higher ranges of Hindu philosophy that is directly opposed to the idolatrous spirit, and nobly monotheistic. But where are the earnest reformers who are ready to teach the common people ? The Arya Samaj in the North may not possess the Sanskrit erudition of the Benares Pandits, but it is making, and has made, a noble protest against idol worship among the masses, and deserves honour and respect for that protest. Benares is now the centre of Theosophy in the North. I visited Mrs. Besant's school and college, which is crowded with young students, and for which she asks the alms of Christian people in London. In the midst of the great court, in the most conspicuous place of all, is an idol temple, with an idol of the goddess Saraswati, before which the young boys and undergraduates do their puja. Not in this way can salvation be found. Idolatry has ever been and ever will be FATHER GOREH the curse of any country, and the fruitful source of national degeneration. The spirit of India, so noble, so lofty in its higher ranges of thought and culture, will awake one day as from a nightmare dream, and shake off the fetters of evil super- stitions which so long have held it in captivity ! 82 NORTH INDIA CHAPTER V THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA , as an earlier chapter has related, appeared on the scene in Calcutta at a critical educational and religious epoch. His name is linked with that of the greatest Indian reformer of the century, Raja Ram Mohan Roy. The beginnings of the Oxford Mission are linked with the name of his famous successor, Babu Keshab Chander Sen, who for a time dominated the intellectual thought of Bengal by his com- manding personality and oratorical powers. In 1870 he visited England, and his utterances both there and in Calcutta were so inspired with a reverence for the Person and Character of CHRIST that he seemed to be leading his own followers to the very verge of the Christian Faith itself. 1 In 1 The following was one of his most famous utterances, which was received at the time with acceptance and wel- come, and quoted far and wide by Indians themselves: " If you wish to secure the attachment and allegiance of India, it must be by spiritual influence and moral suasion. THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 83 later years, however, a reaction took place in his modes of thought and life, and although he never ceased to place the " Oriental CHRIST," concern- ing Whom he wrote and taught, at the highest pinnacle of his religious system, his movement drifted further and further away from the Chris- tian Church. It was in the midst of this time of ferment that the Oxford Mission began its work in Cal- cutta in 188 1. Bishop Johnson, who had suc- ceeded Bishop Milman as Metropolitan, was the founder in India of this new effort of the Church, and Dr. King, the present Bishop of Lincoln, was the founder in Oxford itself. To these two Fathers of the Church, along with two devoted ladies, Miss Murray and Miss Argles, is chiefly due, under GOD, the fostering care and supply of resources for the great enterprise. The Festival of the Epiphany, 1881, was the And such indeed has been the case. You cannot deny that your hearts have been touched, conquered and sub- jugated by a superior power. That power, need I tell you, is CHRIST. It is CHRIST Who rules British India, not the British Government. England has sent out a tremendous moral force in the life and character of that mighty Prophet, to conquer and hold this vast Empire. None but JESUS ever deserved this bright, this precious diadem, India, and JESUS shall have it ! " 84 NORTH INDIA real birthday of the Oxford Mission. During the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, the Rev. E. F. Willis, who had been Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon Theological College, was installed as Superior by the Bishop of Calcutta, with the Rev. Wilfrid Hornby and the Rev. E. F. Brown as professed members of the Brotherhood. The Rev. M. F. Argles joined the Community towards the end of the year. The work developed very quietly, and at first was almost entirely confined to the care and training of Indian Christian children, along with quiet talks with educated Indians and occasional lectures. In 1883 the name of the Brotherhood was changed from that of S. Paul to "The Brotherhood of the Epiphany," and the new effort seemed starting with every promise and hope when a double blow occurred. First, Mr. Argles was invalided home, and died a fortnight after his return to England, and then the Superior's health gave way, and he was incapacitated from any further work. The Rev. C. Gore, now Bishop of Birmingham, came out for a short stay, to cheer the remaining Brethren and relieve the strain, and the Rev. P. S. Smith joined the Brotherhood as a professed member. The Rev. H. Whitehead also, who came THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 85 to Calcutta independently as Principal of Bishop's College, gave help in the time of need. After a short interval the new Superior was chosen, the Rev. C. W. Townsend, of Keble, who came out direct from home to take up the duty and respon- sibility. The Rev. C. H. Walker, of Oriel, was admitted to the Brotherhood at the same time. But again the Mission was to be visited with loss. Philip Smith, whose saintly life, though so short, had been a vision of purity and gentleness in the midst of the city, suddenly fell ill and died. Sir William Hunter has described Philip Smith's wonderful depths of affection : how in the poorer quarters of Calcutta the English priest was known and loved, and how Bengalis and their little children would press around him, and he would take the children in his arms and bless them. But another blow was yet to come. A little more than two years later the Superior, Mr. Townsend, who had performed devoted service in those early, formative days, felt obliged to resign and make his submission to the See of Rome. He did everything he could in order that the blow might fall as lightly as possible upon the Mission, but the event brought wide- spread consternation in England, and funds began 86 NORTH INDIA to fail. The Brotherhood met this last disaster with undaunted courage. " I think," wrote one, " our existence as a Mission seems a miracle, after all the losses we have had ; but the analogy of the past is hopeful. Please let all our friends know that everything will go on just exactly as before " ; and Mr. Brown had the late Superior's own authority for saying that it was nothing in the principles of the Oxford Mission which had led him to Rome, but that these had rather restrained him : that if he had been brought up in some other system of thought, such as Cal- vinism, he would have reached more easily his new position. Henry Whitehead at this crisis joined the Mission, becoming a professed member. For nine years, from 1890 to 1899, he served as Superior in the place of Mr. Townsend. During his headship the settled lines of work developed, which may now be briefly described. First and foremost was the life itself which the Brethren lived in the heart of the city, in closest touch and sympathy with the people round them, well known in their white cassocks in the Calcutta streets, their names on every one's lips for they are almost the only English- THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 87 men who live in such quarters. A sketch of the ordered life of the Mission will be given later. Here I would only refer to an incident which goes back to the early days, and shows that the life itself of the Brethren has been of more influence as a witness to the Faith than the " work " as we count " work " in the West. One, who is now doing noble service in the Church has often told me that the vision of the life of the Brethren of the Epiphany saved his own faith at the most critical period of his career. He had come to the state of doubting everything and disbelieving everything, and was ready to throw up Christianity altogether, but one thing held him fast the vision of the devoted life of prayer led by the Oxford priests. For a time he was taken into their house, and lived with them and shared their life. He tells how Mr. Willis used to continue his prayers far into the night, and how sometimes, long after midnight, he would see his light burning ; how, nevertheless, he was always the first to rise in the early hours of an early Indian day and go the round, calling in a deep bass voice to awake the sleeping Brethren. He has the most vivid recollec- tion also of Charles Gore, as he then was, and how tenderly he dealt with his difficulties, and pointed 88 NORTH INDIA him to the one true answer, " He that willeth to do the will, he shall know the doctrine." Those quiet lives of prayer thus lived in the heart of Calcutta brought back his own personal convic- tion of the Truth, and the inspiration of those days never left him. " All that I have of faith I owe to those men ! " these are the words I have heard him say with his own lips. The best analogy I have yet seen which may bring home the fact of the power of the life of the Brethren of the Epiphany in Calcutta is that given by Chancellor Dibdin in 1902. "The history of the Oxford Mission," he said, " has for me a fascination, because somehow, many years ago, I began and have continued to be interested in the history and growth of monas- ticism. And I cannot help seeing here an extra- ordinary counterpart, the proper counterpart in this generation, of the great Franciscan move- ment. The likeness is extraordinary. You may read the record of this Mission and fancy yourself back in the days of S. Francis : a few men, full of the love of GOD and of pity for their fellow-men, going out to work among the great uncared-for populations in great centres, in cities or country. And you have here what was a great feature in THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 89 S. Francis' work, they work in the midst of a people among whom practical infidelity exists. Europe was, in S. Francis' age, overrun with prac- tical infidelity, and this has its counterpart in the working of the religious system in India to-day." It would be impossible to go through the many avenues of influence which one by one were tried, and which gave place to other ventures. Slowly, very slowly, experience was built up. The two central points round which the prayer and thought of the Brethren turned more and more, and which guided them through the labyrinth of miscella- neous duties, were these : 1. The spiritual deepening of the life of Indian Christians ; 2. Intensive personal influence with the educated classes. Indian Christians were a primary care. The Brethren found that while there had been wide- spread movements and conversions in the past, yet in certain ways an ebb tide had been reached. Church life itself had become, in a measure, tainted with the ideas of " pay " and " promotion " ideas which inevitably spread when money comes from abroad, and inferior " agents " (as they are called) are used to do high spiritual 90 NORTH INDIA work. Very few missions in India have escaped at one time or another in their history from this danger, and nothing less than a spiritual revolu- tion is needed when the evil becomes deep- seated. There must be also taken into account the never-ceasing, lowering pressure of a city atmosphere filled with intellectual questionings and feeble moral standards. The young Christian students, often the sons of Indian clergy, who had come into Calcutta for the first time ; the children of catechists, sent up for the school examinations ; the children of Christian villagers, sent in for in- dustrial training these and many others, when they came to reside in the great city, needed to have a high spiritual ideal put before them ; other- wise they would fall. This, then, was a primary work ; and it explains the readiness of the Brethren to come to the aid of the Indian Christian students by means of boarding houses, industrial schools, and at Bishop's College, equally with their readi- ness to undertake the pastoral care of feeble, sink- ing Christian communities at Dacca and Barisal. That this work has not been in vain may be gathered from the sight of numbers of Indian Christians who are living lives of sacrifice to- day. To take an example, one of the Brethren MISSION CHURCH, BARISAL. THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 91 writes from Barisal in 1904: "There are many more signs that the true Christian life is grow- ing, and with it the desire to do work for CHRIST, and not merely for earthly gain. One touching proof of this was given by a Christian boy who was employed as cook for the school. One day he came to the priest, and said he would rather not receive any salary for his work in future intending to do it for the love of GOD." The same spirit is shown in those who come forward for Holy Baptism, and are accepted. " About eight years ago," so the Report runs, " there came to our hostel in Calcutta a bright young boy of about fourteen. With unusual precocity he had passed the entrance examination of Calcutta University, and though our hostel was then full, he looked so promising, we managed somehow to take him in. He went on, and about four or five years ago he was baptized. The difficulty which every student has to face, the sacrifice of being entirely cut off from his family, was all the keener because he was a Brahman of a very high family. But he faced that and became a Christian. With his ability and education there would have been many posts open to him in Calcutta in which he could have 92 NORTH INDIA secured a good settled income, but about a year after his baptism he made the further sacrifice of throwing in his lot with us at Barisal ; and whereas the village boys who come to us have their heads filled with thoughts of being made gentlemen, this young man, who has come down from a higher rank, infinitely their superior in birth and position, adopts their dress and eats their food, and does not take a penny of salary for helping us in our work there." The Report goes on to say that while there are large numbers of .Christians leading good, easy-going, respectable Christian lives, yet it is by the stamp of men such as that described that India will eventually be won for CHRIST. It is interesting to note how the building up of the spiritual life of individuals assumes larger and larger proportions in the plans and develop- ments of the Oxford Mission, and also how the work, in every direction except one, becomes more and more intensive and inward. Lectures, bazaar preaching, clubs, reading-rooms, are given up, and the work is concentrated on its Christian side upon individual Christian lives and scattered Christian congregations ; and on its student side upon hostels, where non-Christian students live, t THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 93 under the personal care of the Brethren, for the whole of their student days. The picture of the dangers and temptations of University life in Calcutta has been drawn by Mr. Longridge in his History, and will repay a careful reading. In such an atmosphere concentration upon a few students out of the many thousands has been found the only means of effectual personal influ- ence and the uplifting of a high moral standard. By far the most important recent development, which took place soon after Father Brown became Superior in 1900, has been the founding of the Sisterhood of the Epiphany. The imperative necessity of this step was seen at once when work among the Christian community in the dis- trict developed. A new spiritual life was needed in the home itself of the village Indian Christians, and the homes could only effectively be reached by Sisters devoted to the work. The beginning of the Sisterhood has been marked by losses. Sister Edith and Sister Hester were both dangerously ill in their first year, and the latter had to retire from all active work. But Sister Edith, who had been at the head of the Lady Margaret Settlement, Lambeth, rallied won- derfully, and was able to take the lead in the new 94 NORTH INDIA Community life. During the last five years, in every fresh station which has been opened, the Sisters have gone and settled. Two and two seems to have become now, as at the first, the normal number for each new mission venture the steps usually taken being the building of a small house, first, for two priests ; then a church, the interior of which is made as beautiful as pos- sible ; and, near at hand, a second house for the Sisters. It is at first sight astonishing to find how the reinforcements are being drafted out from Cal- cutta. Yet one can see the underlying principle in every letter and report, for it is in the district round Calcutta that the unshepherded congrega- tions are chiefly found. " Our great work, the training of Christians," is the phrase that con- tinually meets the reader of the Mission papers. One can almost feel, as one follows the history of the Mission, or has the privilege of meeting the Brethren, that the " intensive " ideal has become a fixed principle in their spiritual outlook, and the Holy Church, " without spot or wrinkle or any such thing," a fixed hope and aspiration always before them. We hear nothing from them of large numbers pouring in to lectures and addresses: THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 95 we hear much of this or that refusal to baptize, until the conscience has been fully awakened ; of the building up, stone by stone, of this or that broken, crumbling congregation ; of the prepara- tion of this or that lapsed Christian for the recep- tion of the Blessed Sacrament, after penitence and absolution ; of the personal touch at Dacca or Cal- cutta with this or that earnest non-Christian student, whose life is being transformed and purified by the vision of the Christian life. On one side alone " extensive " work is being tried with remarkable success. The Epiphany, a weekly religious paper, which was started and cir- culated free of charge to students, in the earliest days of the Mission, has now reached the remark- ably high weekly output of twelve thousand copies. The expense is very great, for postage has to be covered as well as printing, but the reward has been proportionate. An audience of twelve thousand, who are ready to study quietly week by week, and often year by year, the evidences of the Christian Faith, is one that opens out unimaginable avenues of influence. Correspon- dence in connection with the leading articles is continuous, and it is possible to put students, who have never ventured to address a missionary, 96 NORTH INDIA in touch with those who can speak to them face to face concerning the Faith. But perhaps an almost equal value is obtained from the letters of attack on Christianity, which are freely and fairly published in the paper along with its defence. There is scarcely an educational mis- sionary in India who does not study this column, and gain from it a knowledge of the real objec- tions which are in students' minds, and the way to meet them. Such a study prevents a great deal of " beating the air," and sets educational work on right lines, with clear issues to face instead of shadowy phantoms. The vitality of the Epiphany, and the hold it has obtained on the educated mind of India, is due in the main to Mr. Walker, its editor-in-chief. His remarkable knowledge, sympathy, and good humour gained an early vigorous life for the paper, which has made it take root firmly. The circle now reached is even wider than that of the Epiphany readers themselves. For there is no Press copyright in India, and articles dealing with subjects which touch closely the educated mind are reproduced in daily and weekly Indian papers by Indian editors, and at times appreciative articles are written upon them. It is interesting THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 97 to note the change of the centre of gravity of thought in the rapidly-shifting educated world of India. At one time the burning subject will be one of speculative interest merely, at another time one of socio-religious usage such as caste ; at the present time the spiritual aspects of nationalism, and its methods of propaganda, loom large upon the horizon. Each turn of sub- ject is followed by the Epiphany leading articles, and the Christian interpretation is given. Thus new struggles are fought out in the realm of thought, and new victories are won for the Faith. A brief sketch of a visit to the Oxford Mission may conclude this chapter. I arrived early on a December morning of 1906, and kept the rule of silence with the Brethren till the midday meal, after which I went visiting the Calcutta clergy with Father Brown. The children came running up in every street as we rode in and out on our bicycles. There is no Englishman in the whole of Calcutta who is so well known and loved as Padre Brown. At 6 a.m. next morning Prime was said, followed by the daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist in the Mission chapel. The chapel owes its beauty to the piety and loving thought of Henry Offley Wakeman, the Church 98 NORTH INDIA historian, who visited the Mission with Charles Gore at the time of the latter's second stay in 1890. Quiet was kept as usual in the house till after Sext, and then, when lunch was finished, the various outside activities began. Each day the Canonical Hours are kept by the Brethren, and the quiet restfulness of the dim chapel, with the seven lamps burning, enters into the soul. There can be no question wherein the strength of the Mission lies. The second day after my arrival Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, a late member of the British Parliament, came to Calcutta to preside over the National Congress. The request came round from the leading citizens that Cornwallis Street might be decorated in his honour, and very soon " Long live Dadabhai Naoroji " streamed out in the breeze in front of the Mission House, placed there by the students. The Oxford Mission is clearly ready to share the joys as well as the sorrows of the people. The year 1906 was an eventful one in the country : never had the spirit of nationality reached so high a pitch of enthusiasm, and the Oxford Mission was among the first to welcome what was noble in the new spirit. Christmas Day came, my first Christmas in THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 99 Bengal. I shall not soon forget that Christmas Eucharist in the Bengali church, which is one of the most indigenous developments I have seen in India. A Bengali priest, a Canon of the Church, celebrated, with a second Bengali priest to assist. The church was crowded from end to end with reverent worshippers, the little children joining, side by side with their parents, in the glorious Thanksgiving. The Bengali women were on one side in their beautiful saris, or veils, the men on the other with their bright -coloured Bengali shawls thrown over their shoulders. The service was choral and in unison, the whole con- gregation joining with one voice ; the setting was a mingling of Bengali music with Gregorian. I could not follow a single word of the language, but was at home in a moment in spirit with that throng of worshippers, and my whole heart went out as I spoke to them in English a few words of Christmas love and greeting, after the Bengali sermon was over. I was a stranger, a foreigner, yet at the end of the service they thronged round me as though I were one of their own people, and I saw family group greeting family group in their own national way with tender affection and simple emotion priests and congregation of one heart TOO NORTH INDIA and soul together. The whole work for twenty years has been built up by Bengalis themselves, and it bears rich promise for the future of the Christian Faith in Bengal. I went on to the largest parish church in Cal- cutta, where English and Eurasian were uniting in their choral Christmas Eucharist. Here the ritual is far more elaborate than at the Bengali service, and includes the full use of incense and lights. This would seem to be a legitimate ex- tension of the outer forms of worship, for the Eurasians are singularly like the dwellers in Southern Europe on certain sides of their char- acter, and the Roman Church has made very many converts from among them, chiefly owing to her ornate ritual. I must not fail to mention one of the noblest chaplains working among the Eurasians, whose church I also visited, Canon Jackson, a name to conjure with in Calcutta. Morning by morning during my short stay with the Oxford Brethren I was privileged to join in the Holy Eucharist that was offered in that quiet chapel, and to see the work of the day begun, continued, and ended in prayer. At one time Wilson would be having an afternoon Christmas party with little Bengali children, the THE OXFORD MISSION TO CALCUTTA 101 students helping him to entertain them ; at another, King would be holding an earnest con- versation with an intellectual inquirer ; at another, Holmes would come in tired out with a round of visits to the English residents, visits which bind the links of sympathy closer between West and East ; at another, the Superior would accom- pany me as a visitor to the National Congress, which was being held in the city. My last memory is of a gathering of clergy, chaplains and missionaries, Indian and English, under the auspices of the Central Society of Sacred Study, whose work and influence has spread to India and is helping us to face our Indian theological problems. The night came, all too soon, when I had to depart, and the Superior would insist on seeing me comfortably settled in the train. The express was crowded, but every one knew Father Brown, from the station master to the luggage coolie, and soon I had my bedding laid out on an empty seat and was started on the thousand miles journey back to Delhi, with a very warm place in my heart for Calcutta and its people, whom I had seen through the kindly eyes of the Oxford Mission. IO2 NORTH INDIA CHAPTER VI ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI *ZJ*LLAHABAD, the Prayag of ancient Indian tv*"^ history, situated at the meeting-point of the waters of the Jumna and the Ganges, is second only to Benares itself as a sacred place of Hindu pilgrimage. At the " Kumbh mela," a religious bathing festival which took place early in 1906, it is estimated that 3,000,000 pilgrims assembled to bathe at the point of land where the two rivers meet. The sadkus, or ascetics, alone numbered 100,000. The scene was one which could never be forgotten, and revealed the latent strength of popular Hinduism as yet almost unaffected either by modern education or by the Christian message. There were the fakirs, so well known in pictures, sitting on their beds of spikes, raising their hands to heaven till their arms stiffened, going through various forms of self-inflicted torture. There was the marvelling multitude, watching, gazing, ador- ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI 103 ing thousands upon thousands of devotees, so patient, so orderly, so eager, with one sole desire in coming, namely, to enter the sacred waters at this most sacred spot at the propitious moment predicted by the Brahmans, and in this way to obtain salvation. Side by side with this India which draws its inspiration from the mediaeval past, an entirely new civilization is springing up with modern ideals. Allahabad is now the seat of Government with magnificent law courts and departmental offices and "civil lines." Here, too, is the Uni- versity of Middle India, with imposing colleges and spacious lecture-halls. The Church has also made Allahabad the cathedral city of the Diocese of Lucknow, and the cathedral is the most beauti- ful in India. It will only be possible to turn to one of the many ventures of faith which the Church is making in this city the building of the Oxford and Cambridge Hostel. The Churchmen within the Student Volunteer Missionary Movement in England had been stirred to undertake new work among the students of India, and were led to choose Allahabad for their centre. At first the new venture was " extensive " in character, and IO4 NORTH INDIA took something of the form of a settlement in London. Games, reading-rooms, lectures, etc., were organized, at which any student of the University who pleased might present himself, and come into friendly intercourse with the young missionaries. But the experience of the Oxford Mission in Calcutta repeated itself, and the efforts soon became concentrated on a hostel, where the closest personal touch with a limited number of undergraduates could be obtained. In Allahabad the dearth of boarding accom- modation in the University has been nothing like so great as in Calcutta, and twice over in its short career a boycott of the Oxford and Cambridge missionaries has been carried on by Hindus, which seemed likely to prove fatal to the work. The more recent boycott must be described in the Warden's own words. It gives the most vivid picture of the new forces which have to be met and conquered in missionary work : "In August last year (1905), political feeling was running very high. Indian opinion had been greatly excited about the partition of Bengal, and was manifesting itself in the organized boycott of everything English. About the same time we ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI 105 had a lecture from an educated Brahman convert, a retired judge, on ' A Brahman convert's reasons for becoming a Christian.' The lecture, while gentle in tone, was a crushing exposure of the case for Hinduism. At the time there were in the hostel some six or seven men who were on the verge of conversion. Hostellers have since told me that they quite expected to see some become Christians. The lecture showed the men who were nearest to Christianity exactly where they were going, and made them draw back. Others, realizing the danger of the conversion for some of their fellow-students, got up an agitation against Bible-reading on the score that it was disloyal to their own religion and unpatriotic. Boycott was in the air, and they induced all the hostellers but two to sign an undertaking not to read the Bible with us. The two abstainers were not themselves reading. At the time twenty-four out of thirty-six men in the hostel were reading with us. So in a couple of days the whole of our direct work was brought to a full stop. This was a sore trial to our faith. The ringleaders were the very two men who had been nearest decision, men of real gifts of leadership, who, if won, would be a power for CEIRIST in India. io6 NORTH INDIA The religious boycott was succeeded by a most determined effort to break down discipline and authority. The whole of this was aggravated by intensely bitter racial feeling. Our relations with the men, hitherto most warm, became sorely strained. We realized that our strength was to sit still : " In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." Meantime many were supporting us by prayer. By degrees, faith and love, and patience, wore down opposition . . . the ring- leader came to me to ask my forgiveness for what he had done. Poor fellow ! he broke down alto- gether, and had to leave my room unable to say a word. He was the first to begin reading again. . . . Now it is over we are glad to have been through the time. It has been a severe testing, and now we have more men than ever reading with us. Over thirty out of the fifty men in the hostel have personal interviews with us week by week for Bible-reading. ... I do not know if any other missionary work gives the direct oppor- tunities that we have, closeted for hours every day over the Bible with educated men, upon whom no pressure is brought of any kind from our side, but who live with us, and want, of their own free will, to understand the Christian Faith , ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI 107 Whether such abundant opportunities shall end in conversions or not, depends chiefly on your prayers." It is a great joy to be able to add that one of the leading students mentioned above has now been baptized with all his family. My own most recent experience of Allahabad was a visit to conduct a " Quiet Day " for the C.M.S. clergy of the diocese at the time of a conference of unique importance. For many years, both in the Panjab and in the United Provinces, the foreign missionaries have been feel- ing more and more keenly the need of developing indigenous Church life under indigenous leader- ship. Little by little the lines are being laid down, and though at present the efforts made for self-government are weak and feeble, and the spirit of Indian leadership has yet to be evoked, still there is some progress. The conference on this occasion had met to consider principles, and it will be of interest in England to note those which were regarded as of primary importance at that time. The first was the principle of race equality, the abolition of all race distinction between Indian and European within the Church. The second was the principle io8 NORTH INDIA that evangelistic work belonged to Indian and English clergy alike, a fatal distinction having arisen by which Indian clergy were regarded only as pastors, not evangelists. The third principle recognized that workers and funds should be controlled by the body that supplied them. On this there was a difference of opinion, as it placed the English missionary outside the control of the Indian Church Council, and appeared to contra- dict equality of race within 'the Church. A fourth principle insisted that the withdrawal of the English missionary should be contemplated in all Church organization, he being regarded as a temporary loan to the Indian Church, not an essential part. The Warden of the Oxford and Cambridge Hostel, with whom I stayed in Allahabad, came on to Cawnpore later to conduct our united Brotherhood Retreat. Such interchange of re- treatants is one of the happiest results of the cordial relations between the Church Missionary Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the North of India. No two Societies could possibly work more harmoniously together. The only pity is that their organiza- tions out in the field are not completely amal- ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI 109 gamated, so that the Church should be, outwardly as well as inwardly, One Body. The Retreat itself, which takes place in October each year, is a time never to be forgotten for its help and strengthening of missionary vocation. It is also a time of a silent communion of spirit with spirit in the one work, making the life of the One Body a supreme reality. We have now a further bond of union between the Brotherhoods in North India and Burma in the common Office Book of Intercessions which we use daily. The city of Cawnpore, some four hours' journey from Allahabad, is becoming one of the great manufacturing and railway centres of Modern India. Its population, in spite of terrible devasta- tion by plague, is increasing, and new mills are being opened. The work of the Church has steadily progressed, and is now spreading to the district round. The S.P.G. Mission owes its present strong position to the sons of Bishop Westcott. Foss Westcott, during his time in the Brotherhood, made the industrial side of the Mission justly famous. He was chosen to serve on the Govern- ment Industrial Commission, and rendered most valuable service. It was deeply interesting to go no NORTH INDIA over the workshops and see English working-men doing a noble missionary work in training Indian Christian boys to labour with their hands. If this narrative meets the eyes of working-men in England who are missionary-hearted, I would assure them that there is work in the mission- field for them, equal to many an ordained mis- sionary's labours. I went round the city with one of the Brother- hood. He was enthusiastic about the influence of the Westcotts in the city, and told me how in the Plague Riots of 1900 it was they who had saved the situation and prevented bloodshed. I saw the admirable Zenana Hospital, where the doctors and nurses laboured through the terrible times of plague, and where Indian and English Christian workers had sacrificed their lives in ministering to plague and cholera patients. Then we went on to the river, where crowds of beggars and evil- looking sadhus clamoured for alms at the bath- ing ghat, and the idols near were strewn with dead and dying marigolds offered by the bathers. When I came back, George Westcott, who is the Principal of the Mission College and a member of the Syndicate of the University, was ready to talk over the prospects of Christian ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI 1 1 1 education, and to discuss the position recently advocated by the Bishop of Madras. It was cheering to witness his strong optimism as to the future effects of the present educational efforts. He also showed me the proofs of a book on the Kabir Sect, the materials for which he had collected with patient labour, and told me some of the sayings of Kabir, who has been called "the Indian Luther of the fifteenth century." At table I met two Indian Christians, who share the Brotherhood life, and are engaged in important literary work. The whole impres- sion of the Mission has been to me that of men and women who are trying to grapple with the varied problems of modern India, and to meet them not on one side only but on many sides, dealing not with one class only but with all classes, from the Englishman of the " civil-lines" and the higher Indian families of the city, to the poor and outcast of the slums and alleys. Space will not allow me to tell the story of our own Brotherhood at Delhi, and a history will appear before this brief sketch is published ; but I would endeavour instead to make some slight amends at this point for a serious deficiency in the present narrative, by referring to the Zenana H2 NORTH INDIA missionary work that is going on in Cawnpore and Delhi and almost every city in India. I cannot speak of it in detail, for the Zenana work has a sphere of its own, and it is almost impos- sible for men to know much about it ; but the value of the work is incalculable, for without it little influence can be brought to bear upon the home, where the centre of the struggle towards a higher faith must finally lie. The work is much more difficult than our own. The women of India are almost entirely illiterate, and have been so for many centuries, with the result that superstitions, bred of ignorance, have become a second nature. There are few opportunities at present in the North for large schools for non- Christian girls. The work of education must go on slowly from house to house, amid a thou- sand interruptions and distractions. But there, in the house, is the stronghold which must be penetrated. It is the women who really believe in the old superstitions ; it is the women who really keep up the Hindu priesthood and the idolatrous ceremonies : it is the women who really keep back their husbands and sons when they wish to come out into the light. A very large proportion of our Christian ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI 113 families in North India come originally from a low social grade, in which they received little moral training during their pre-Christian days. The home life in the past has been degraded by centuries of neglect, and has to be built up again from the very foundations. This is clearly a primary office of the Indian Church, if she is to grow spiritually strong in all her members and become " a joyful mother of children." Here perhaps, among our own poor Christians, lies the highest sphere of usefulness of our lady missionary workers. Without their help the mothers and daughters in the homes cannot effectively be reached. There is also the vital need of schools for the Christian girls as well as for the boys, and for institutions, where those who are orphans and waifs and strays in the sea of Indian life may find a refuge. S. Mary's Home at Delhi is one of the most beautiful examples of this principle carried out in practice. There are con- valescents there, and lame little children, widows and orphans and homeless, all living together a happy family life, with their own chapel and a school near at hand, under the care of a devoted mission -worker. Two years ago I brought down from Rawal Pindi to the Home I 114 NORTH INDIA three children whose mother had just died, and who had been left destitute in an atmosphere of terrible temptation. The little baby sister only lived a few months, but the two elder children are as happy as the day is long in the Home, and one of them is now confirmed. But the side of women's work in India, which carries with it the appeal of untold suffering and misery, is the Zenana hospital work. In the very heart of the city, in crowded streets, and an atmosphere often like a furnace, the ministry of healing is carried on, and the homes of rich and poor alike in every quarter are visited. Here is a single sketch written by one of our Delhi doctors : "Miss Sahiba Ji, please take a sweet! and Dora, not at all subdued by the heat, holds up an empty ' Brand's essence ' tin with a twinkle of fun in her eye : Dora first then she always does come first somehow among the little band of children in the hospital, the leader in any mischief, the pet and ' sweetheart ' as she calls herself of all. Three years since her mother brought her, then a year-old neglected baby, from a distant village. She had heard that the Mission, perhaps, might take care of the child. The mother ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI 115 was determined to get rid of the baby at all costs. ( If you do not take her I will just put her down in the dusk of the evening and walk off.' On suggesting that the police would be put on her track for child desertion, she declared, ' Well, in any case, the bottom of a well will tell no tales ! ' At last the wee girlie was taken over, and she has become a hospital baby. She is now growing up, and has quite made up her mind to ' be a doctor ' when she is a woman, and she is already an adept at rolling bandages. But her chief delight is to ' conduct prayers.' Seated herself in the Miss Sahiba's seat, the other children in the hospital are arranged round to represent the nurses, while Dora leads the singing and instructs them in her own peculiar fashion. The little boy, Chattu, her companion, is almost entirely blind. His mother arrived with him in the famine year, and almost expired on the hospital doorstep, and only survived two days. He has just begun to read the Braille type, and having a fair ear for music makes a cheerful noise with hymns and bhajans in the wards. They will go soon to S. Mary's Home, but the hospital will be very dull when they are gone." Miss Tara Chand, the daughter of one of the n6 NORTH INDIA most revered high-caste converts, who is still working on in his old age as mission priest at Ajmere, was admitted as an Indian member of the S. Stephen's Community, Delhi, and was deeply loved and respected by Indian and English alike. Frail and delicate from the first, her health soon gave way, and after some months of patient suffering she passed to her rest. It is greatly to be hoped that other Indian ladies will be found to fill her place, and make the Community more what it aspires to be, a living branch of the Indian Church itself rather than a helper from outside. In addition to Zenana workers in the different cities, there is now at every cathedral centre in the North of India a growing body of deaconesses ordained by the Bishop for work among the European and Eurasian community. " We act," writes the Deaconess Alice at Lahore, "as sac- ristans, having in our charge the care of the sanctuary, and are present at the daily services ; we get into touch with all members of our scattered congregations, and try to teach them that they are not isolated units but members of a divine society, with responsibilities and duties to each other and to the Church. We find ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI 117 Eurasian Christians living in the bazaar in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish Chris- tian from heathen. There are poor and destitute women to be cared for, and orphan children to be nurtured. There are schools for European and Eurasian children to be staffed with teachers. We come across many terribly sad stories of ruined Christian lives. We hope to have a Pre- ventive Home, as in Bombay ; and the Girls' Friendly Society and Mothers' Union render in- valuable aid." The Order of Deaconesses is being slowly but steadily recruited from the ranks of Indian Chris- tian ladies. One such Indian lady, Deaconess Ellen Goreh, has already been mentioned. Her beautiful hymn, " In the secret of His Presence " is rapidly taking its place among the best known in the English language. It shows what depths of tenderness and devotion to our Blessed LORD may be looked for in the future from the Indian Church, when the sacred ministry of Indian women goes to fill up the measure of the human heart's affection to the Saviour of the world. I would conclude with a picture taken from one of the poor congregations of Indian Chris- tians in Delhi, where our ladies labour so n8 NORTH INDIA devotedly, and where lies in many ways the happiest part of their work. The women are seated on the ground on one side of the church, with the Miss Sahiba among them, the men on the other ; the babies are rolling about, and the little children pass from one side to the other at their own sweet will. The service is over, but to-night the congregation is proud in the possession of musical instruments, three drums and a pair of cymbals ; and the women ask the Miss Sahiba, and the men implore the Padre Sahib, for just one more bhajan, and then children and all join in singing together Jai Prabhu Yesu, PRELUDE AND REFRAIN "JESU CHRIST, be Thou my security, Thou my security, JESU CHRIST. All the sinners that come to JESUS, He will cleanse them from guilt and impurity. 2 Deep the river, and frail the vessel, Waft me safe to the shore of futurity. 3 GOD of orphans, and Friend of the friendless, Shine in homes of gloom and obscurity. ALLAHABAD, CAWNPORE, AND DELHI 119 4 JESU, shelter me under Thy shadow, Grant me pardon and peace, LORD, and purity. JESU CHRIST, be Thou my security, Thou my security, JESU CHRIST." 1 Those in England who know how deep is the river and how frail is the vessel of life, can help us more than they can understand by their inter- cessions to bring the light of the One " Friend of the friendless " into the many homes of gloom and obscurity in India. 1 The translation is by the Rev. C. Foxley. 12O NORTH INDIA CHAPTER VII THE PANJAB AND ISLAM mWO names stand out clearly in the Panjab, one Indian and one English, each remark- able for learning and Oriental scholarship, and also for a life of ascetic devotion in the service of GOD Dr. I mad ud Din and Dr. French. The former was a descendant of the royal house of Persia, and could count back his direct an- cestors by name for more than thirty generations. His life reveals that seeking after GOD and that intense earnestness of longing for the true light which is found among choice souls in Islam and Hinduism in India. His name is linked more than once with that of Nehemiah Goreh and with Dr. French, and there are certain unmistakable features of resemblance, amid differences of race and early creed. Imad ud Din (" Pillar of the Faith ") began in his very boyhood to have an inextinguishable passion to find GOD, which would not let him THE PAN JAB AND ISLAM ill rest. He would wait upon ascetics in hope of finding the secret of salvation and union with the Divine. As he grew to manhood, his friend Maulvi Safdar AH became his instructor, and night and day he studied the Quran and Mus- sulman traditions under his guidance. There came to him from this study only utter vague- ness and disgust, and he turned elsewhere to find some new help in his religion. At this point he began to read the Sufi mystical writings, and to practise their silent meditations. At times he would go for weeks together and sit near the tombs of the saints, hoping in vain for some mysterious revelation, enduring agonies of hunger and watching night after night in his eagerness to obtain a vision, but only finding vanity and vexation of spirit. At this time a verse of the Quran, which declared that every mortal must once visit hell, became a torture to him, and at last he renounced the world altogether and became a wandering fakir. One mystical Sufi rite required a twelve days' fast and twelve sleepless nights of meditation on the Name of GOD. He sat alone by a river side, and went through the ritual step by step unsparingly. " When the ceremony was over," he writes, " I 122 NORTH INDIA had no strength, I could not even hold myself up against the breeze. The people in the city near regarded me as one of the saints of Gou, and came to touch my knees, but my soul found no rest." He then began to leave off the Mus- sulman routine of prayer, and looked upon all religions as vanity, but whenever the thought of death came upon him his restlessness of soul was terrible, and he would cry to GOD for deliverance. Some years later he heard of the conversion, through the instrumentality of Nehemiah Goreh, of his old friend Maulvi Safdar AH, and he was con- founded and perplexed. He determined to bring him back from Christianity, and for this purpose read for the first time the Gospel story. The Sermon on the Mount held and fascinated him. He could not break away from its influence : it seemed speaking to his very soul. For days and nights in great agitation he continued reading until he became wholly convinced that salvation from sin was through JESUS CHRIST alone, and that He was the only perfect moral Teacher. He went to Amritsar and was baptized, and began at once a life of patient, earnest, scholarly work in defence of the Christian Faith. DR. IMAD UD DIN. To face page 123. THE PANJAB AND ISLAM 123 The fierceness of the opposition he encoun- tered, and his own courageous spirit, may be judged from his answer to a Chitral chieftain who had threatened to kill him with his own hands. " Tell the chieftain," he replied, " that if he were to kill me, I would gladly perish, and from my spilt blood twenty Imad ud Dins (Pillars of Faith) would arise to carry forward the Christian re- ligion." Once in later life he met Nehemiah Goreh, to whom he indirectly owed his conversion. The marks of suffering and search for truth were on both their faces, and they spoke far into the night about the glorious Faith they had embraced. They found (so Padre Nehemiah relates) their Church views fundamentally the same, though the Maulvi remained, in the outward expression of religion, more puritan to the end than the ex- Brahman Pandit. As we read Dr. Imad ud Din's controversial and apologetic writings to-day we feel we are in the presence of one who has escaped " as a brand from the burning," and who must cut himself free once and for all from a bitter past. They are the writings of a by-gone period when men dealt and received blows unsparingly, and 124 NORTH INDIA saw everything in light and shade without the medium of neutral tones and softening lines. Yet, reviewed historically, they are a great work, and his renown is well deserved. Perhaps the most lasting of his achievements was a translation of the Quran itself into Urdu. The name of French is linked by many spiritual ties with that of I mad ud Din. French's ascetic life and apostolic fervour appealed to the Maulvi ascetic, whose own life had been so filled with suffering and trial. The most vivid portrait of French comes from the Maulvi's own pen. Dr. I mad ud Din relates how he could remember him in Agra as a bright, ardent young missionary whom he used to see passing up and down the street, trying to converse with little children and tell them the Gospel story as he walked to bazaar preaching very impetuous and quick in his manner, but with a spiritual look in his eyes that seemed watching a distant scene. Seldom in modern missionary history has there been shown such untiring and devoted zeal, com- bined with so clear a prophet's vision of the future, as is seen in the Life of French. On one side he seemed pedantic, wrapped up in book- learning and theory, almost hopeless in business THE PANJAB AND ISLAM 125 matters ; but on another side he was no visionary or dreamer, rather he was one who threw the whole force of a commanding personality and a triumphant faith into his plans, and actually carried them through or saw them in the way of accomplishment. Dr. French's career is one series of breakdowns in health and new beginnings. As Mr. Eugene Stock has pointed out, from first to last he was a pioneer and founder. In Agra he founded the first great Christian college in the North, and was the pioneer of Christian education in those regions. In 1862 he came back to India to found the Frontier Mission in the Derajat, which has led to a settled policy of missionary outlook towards Central Asia. In 1869 he came to Lahore to found the S. John's Divinity School, which was the first inspiring attempt in the North to train a body of Indian fellow-workers in the ministry of the Gospel men who might some day pass beyond the mountain barriers into Thibet, Afghanistan, and Persia, and even into Arabia itself. In 1877 he was a "pioneer and founder" once more, as first Bishop of Lahore, setting an example of a missionary episcopate which will be an ideal for many generations. 126 NORTH INDIA Ten years later he had completed his great cathedral in the capital of the Panjab, where Indian and English alike were to join together as one body and worship side by side in the beauty of holiness a pioneer work which is a prophecy of the future unity of the Indian Church, when racial divisions have been obliterated. Last of all he resigned his bishopric, and went back as a simple missionary to labour for a few months and then lay down his life in Mohammedan lands, pointing the way as a pioneer to their conquest from the Panjab. Not one of his great prophetic visions has altogether failed : they have only grown clearer with the lapse of time, and some of them are being worked out to-day. There is a beautiful story told by Dr. Imad ud Din of his own last days with the Bishop. Dr. French had called him apart, just before his own last act of Ordination, for a week's retreat on the banks of the Beas River. On arriving in the evening they discovered that they had no food, and went to bed supperless. After a while, the Bishop came and said he remembered having still in his robe-case a piece of bread, which had been placed there a long time ago for use in the Blessed Sacrament, but which had never been used. They Photo To face page 126. BISHOP VALPY FRENCH. [Elliott & Fry. THE PANJAB AND ISLAM 127 soaked it in water, gave thanks, and shared it together, and then went off to sleep. Their meditation during their retreat was on the Sufi saying, " There is a death in which there is no life, and a life in which there is no death." But the story most dear to the Church in India is that of French's nobility of conduct in the Mutiny days at Agra. There was imminent danger of an attack in overwhelming force by the mutineers, and the English were hurried into the fort, but French remained outside. The order came for him to come in and leave the Indian Christians in the city, as food and shelter in the fort was barely sufficient for the English. But no power on earth could make French move a step through the fort gates till every Indian Chris- tian was safe inside. Then at last he entered. In keeping with this incident were his words spoken at the consecration of Lahore Cathedral, where he claimed that for all time Indians should have a principal place in GOD'S House, and should regard it always as their own cathedral. " I plead with you," he said, " with all entreaty, if ever long after my grey hairs are gone down to the grave unbrotherly exclusion be practised here, to call to your and to your children's re- 128 NORTH INDIA membrance this solemn appeal. Let this church be a mother-church indeed, with all the tender- ness and depths of sympathy, the loving place in the arms and heart and home of the true mother : not the chill, distant, jealous regard of the typical stepmother. Let no invidious exclusiveness of race or station find place in this sanctuary." Dr. I mad ud Din preached in the cathedral on the day of its consecration, and was one of the Bishop's most trusted counsellors and chaplains. Henry Martyn and French were very near to one another in their missionary outlook ; and it is of deep significance to note that both the young evangelist and the aged Bishop, after spending their strength in India, passed into the Moham- medan lands to fulfil their last life-work and die. The Mohammedan Missions in India do not end with India itself. The field is open, the soil is prepared in India, not for India's sake alone, but in order that from that post of vantage the central, ancient seats of Islam may be reached and won for CHRIST. One who realized this, and shared the fate of French and Martyn, dying in a foreign land beyond the Indian boundary, was George Maxwell THE PANJAB AND ISLAM 129 Gordon, who has been called the pilgrim mis- sionary. Coming of a wealthy family he literally gave up all for CHRIST, living for the greater part of his all too short life like a Christian fakir, dressing in Indian dress and eating only the simplest, coarsest Indian food. He shared, with Henry Martyn and Bishop French, the inex- tinguishable longing to press forward and carry the banner of the Cross beyond the frontier, into Persia, Arabia, and Afghanistan. With this out- look ever before him he threw himself into the work of training Indian fellow-workers to " endure hardness " and " do the work of an evangelist." He took the younger men from the Lahore Divinity School with him out into the district, and showed them by example how to surmount difficulties and live the life of faith and prayer. More than once he made his way on his camel across the mountains and interviewed the Baluchi chieftains. There were strict orders against pro- ceeding further into Afghanistan itself, and Gordon waited, longing for an opportunity of crossing the border. Meanwhile he founded, chiefly with his own private income, a base for further opera- tions at Dera Ghazi Khan, and worked forward from that centre. K. 130 NORTH INDIA At last the looked-for opportunity arrived. A British force was ordered to advance on Kandahar, and Gordon was accepted as honorary chaplain. He reached Afghanistan, and had opportunities of witnessing for CHRIST during his short stay with the troops. In 1880 he went out again, accompanied by Bishop French. French was obliged to return to India, but Gordon stayed on while the British garrison was besieged. In an unsuccessful sortie some wounded men were left outside the wall in imminent danger. Gordon at once obtained some Indian bearers, and went out to bring them in. The Afghan fire was so hot that an officer who was with Gordon advised retiring. But the brave missionary persisted, and just as he reached the spot where the wounded lay he was himself shot down and succumbed in a few hours. Thus he died pointing the way forward. Henry Martyn lies buried in Tokat, Gordon in Kandahar, Bishop French at Muscat. Slowly the way is being prepared and laid with the graves of saintly men who have passed on from India. Vexilla Regis prodeunt. All that has been written above has dealt with the Old Islam, either of the orthodox or of the THE PANJAB AND ISLAM 131 Sufi type the Islam of the old Arabic learning and the old Persian mysticism ; but in India to- day we are face to face with an entirely new development of the faith of the Prophet, which eagerly embraces modern science and modern social ideals, and aims at the highest Western culture, combined with a simplified creed and doctrine. I have visited many times the city of Aligarh, the centre of this New Islam, and have been much impressed by the silent changes which are taking place in Islamic thought and practice. The college contains nearly four hundred students, and the school another six hundred. The definite aim of the present College Council is to establish a system of education exactly similar to that given in the best public schools in England. The whole institution, down to the debating society and col- lege cricket club, is on the model of the West. The students, who come from the highest Mohammedan families, and from places as distant as Zanzibar and Java, become for the most part frankly liberal and modern in their religious views, and when their college days are over they are often poles apart from the Mohammedans of the older type. J sat down after a cricket match to afternoon tea 132 NORTH INDIA in an undergraduate's rooms in Aligarh, and could almost have imagined myself back in Cambridge. The talk, the manner, the very furniture and pictures were Western. The staff itself is also predominantly from the West even the Professor of Arabic is a European. I met three or four old University acquaintances who do all their work in English, and are there for the purpose of teaching English manners and customs. There is a large mosque, attendance at which is parallel to college chapels. The more thoughtful and progressive of the college students with whom I talked were in sympathy with the " New Islam," though one who interested me most remained a strictly orthodox Mussulman. A recent writer on Pan-Islam, in a leading Indian review, ends a long and extremely interest- ing article as follows : " There is already harmony in belief existing between the Jews and Mussul- mans. Between a Unitarian Christian and a Mussulman there is still less difference. So these three world religions can be united without much difficulty." Briefly stated, the new Islam seeks to establish that Mohammedanism is simple, non- miraculous, and undogmatic, and that it contains only one fundamental article of belief, namely, THE PANJAB AND ISLAM 133 the unity of GOD as declared by Mohammed. It attacks Christianity as irrational, unscientific, and dogmatic, and proclaims its own freedom from dogma and superstition. It is willing to regard the injunctions of the Prophet as to social and family relations as suited to the age when the religion appeared, and not necessarily of ultimate authority. This is very different from the spirit of the last generation, and it is little wonder that maulvis of the older type regard Aligarh with disfavour. Yet every year the great college grows in popularity, and the proposal is con- tinually brought forward that it should be con- verted into a University. Where all this will end time alone will show. The new Islam will not spread very rapidly in India, as education is most backward in the Mohammedan community as a whole. In our own Delhi College, for instance, at one of the greatest Mohammedan centres, the old capital of the Moghul empire, our Christian students already outnumber the Mussulman. The edu- cation of Mohammedan girls is at a standstill, while over seventy per cent, of our Christian girls can read and write. Yet even with so small a percentage of education, bigotry is dying 134 NORTH INDIA down, and the new Islam is spreading. I have heard the latest modern textual criticism quoted against the Christian Faith in the Bickersteth Hall at Delhi, and the attack highly approved by maulvis of the old school, who little realize that such criticism applied rigidly to Islam would undermine their own position. The whole atmosphere in the large cities of the Panjab is changed from the famous time when the present Bishop of Lahore, Dr. Lefroy, used to with- stand abuse and clamour and could hardly get a hearing. The hard dogmatism of Islam is depart- ing, and there seems little positive religion to take its place among the younger generation. I would repeat, the movement will not spread very rapidly, and the old type of Mohammedan controversy, such as Dr. Imad ud Din's books represent, has still its part to play in India ; but it is time that the new Mohammedan theories were met, and a clear and candid apologetic of Christianity were written on modern lines. In this high missionary work scholars at home could render invaluable service. Islam has a great contribution to make to the Christian Church. No one who has met the high type of Mohammedan gentlemen who have been brought up in the best Mohammedan traditions, THE PANJAB AND ISLAM 135 can have failed to be struck by their nobility of character and natural dignity. Two of my greatest friends in Delhi are Mohammedans of the old scholarly type. They have shown me, a Christian missionary, every kindness and courtesy, and have given me their confidence and friendship. They have given me, what is more, a new idea of the power of Islam at its best in moulding character and creating an atmosphere of reverence. The great strength in life which comes from' an ordered day and month and year in which GOD is ever remembered, and His worship is a first and fore- most duty that godliness which we are in danger of neglecting amid the rush and hurry of the West is a very great and real treasure which we need to regain within the Church. 136 NORTH INDIA CHAPTER VIII AMRITSAR AND THE SIKHS "ZDTMRITSAR, with its " pool of immortality"