trix nature to cast disused doctrines, and would be hazardous to assert that they are to develop new ones. But the process a direct outcome of missionary teaching. must be slow and difficult. Christianity | But it is certain that the leader of the new comes to the Indian races in an age of Muhammadan school in the south, and the new activity and hopefulness, as a fully equipped religion of effort and of hope. And it comes to them in a spirit of conciliation which it did not disclose before. It thus presents its two most practical claims on human acceptance. For, although to a fortunate minority Christianity may be a religion of faith, yet I think that to most of us it is rather a religion of hope and of charity. chief Hindu reformers in the north, are men who have been in close contact with missionaries, and who, both as to the methods employed and the results ob tained, are powerful, even when unwilling, witnesses to missionary influence. To the more enthusiastic advocates of Christian proselytism such a statement may seem vague and perhaps discouraging. But any gain in precision could only be attained by a sacrifice of accuracy. In a country like India, where many new influences are at work, it is not safe to single out any one of them as the cause of complex religious and national movements. We only know that the State does not and cannot give spiritual teaching in its schools; and that, as respects the higher education of the people, the missionary colleges alone redeem Western instruction from its purely secular character. We also know that the modern Indian reformers, whether of Hinduism, or of Islam, or of social hardships like those inflicted by child marriage and the enforced celibacy of widows, are almost invariably men who have been educated I should not be candid if I left the impression that I expect, even with the present improved missionary methods, any large accession from orthodox Hinduism or Islam to the Christian Church. It is rather from the low castes and the socalled aboriginal peoples that I believe direct conversions will chiefly come. At this moment there are fifty millions of human beings in India sitting abject on the outskirts of Hinduism, or beyond its pale, who within the next fifty years will incorporate themselves in one or other of the higher faiths. Speaking humanly, it rests with Christian men and women in England, and with Christian missionaries in India, whether a great proportion of these fifty millions shall accept Christian-in missionary schools or colleges, or who ity, or Hinduism, or Islam. But, apart in adult life have deeply conversed with from direct conversion, the indirect influ- missionaries on the subjects in regard to ence of missionaries is a factor of increas which they stand forth to lead and ening power in the religious future of India. lighten their countrymen. The indirect The growth of new theistic sects among results of a great spiritual influence, like the Hindus, such as the Brahmo Somaj, that of the missionaries, among a susceptiunder the impulse of Christian teaching, ble and profoundly religious Asiatic peohas long been a familiar phenomenon. ple, do not admit of being expressed in The Centennial Missionary Conference compact formulæ. At the same time I brought to light corresponding movements feel that both the supporters and the critamong the Muhammadans. The account ics of missionary enterprise have a right given by an eye-witness, of exceptional to demand some statement of direct reopportunities for observation, and of most sults. I shall therefore take the country commendable caution in statement, re- with reference to which I have personal garding the growth of a critical historical knowledge, the largest field of missionschool among the Muhammadans in south-ary labor in the world, and almost the only ern India was very significant. In Islam, as in Hinduism, there is an enlightened party who are shaking off the trammels of old superstitions, and are laboring to bring their hereditary faith into accord with the requirements of the times. The treatises which Indian Muhammadans have lately published to disprove the formerly accepted duty of jihad, or war against the unbelievers, indicate a political aspect of the new school. It would be untrue to allege that the new school, either among the Hindus or the Muhammadans, show a tendency to accept the Christian faith. It one in which we can test missionary sta tistics by a periodical census conducted by official experts. I shall briefly state the facts of missionary progress in India from 1851 to 1881. These thirty years include the whole period for which verified statistics exist, down to the most recent census. In 1851, the Protestant missions in India and Burmah had 222 stations; in 1881, their stations had increased nearly threefold, to 601. But the number of their churches or congregations had, during the same thirty years, multiplied from 267 to 4,180, or over fifteen-fold. There is not | tive Christians at the rate of 64'07 per only a vast increase in the number of the cent. stations, but also a still greater increase in the work done by each station within itself. In the same way, while the number of native Protestant Christians increased from 91,092 in 1851, to 492,882 in 1881, or fivefold, the number of communicants increased from 14,661 to 138,254, or nearly tenfold. The progress is again, therefore, not alone in numbers, but also in pastoral care and internal discipline. During the same thirty years, the pupils in mission schools multiplied by three fold, from 64,043 to 196,360. These enormous increments have been obtained by making a larger use of native agency. A native Protestant Church has, in truth, grown up in India, capable of supplying, in a large measure, its own staff. In 1851 there were only 21 ordained native ministers; by 1881 they had increased to 575, or twenty-sevenfold. The number of native lay preachers had risen during thirty years from 493 to the vast total of 2,856. In the opinion of the most cautious of the Anglo-Indian bishops, the time is close at hand or has already arrived, when this great body of Indian converts and of Indian clergy and lay preachers ought to be represented in the episcopate. It is hoped that the Pan-Anglican Synod, now assembling at Canterbury, will find itself able to come to some distinct declaration regarding the appointment of native bishops for the native Church of India. As regards progress, therefore, the missionaries in India may well look back with thankfulness to the past and with hopefulness to the future. But some of my Hindu friends, when I first published these figures, correctly pointed out that they have another aspect. For, although the rate of increase is great, the net result is small indeed compared with the population of India. They hold that half a million Protestant converts out of two hundred and fifty millions of people is no source of alarm to Hinduism or Islam, and should be a subject of very modest self-gratulation to Christianity. They regard with equanimity this result as a moderate and natural product of the capital expended, and of the energy, ability, and really friendly nature of the agency employed. They point to their own religious activity during the same period, and to the larger totals which have been added to the two great native faiths. They have little fear of Christian effort in the future, because they believe that that effort, although strongly sup ported by money and made honorable by the lives and characters of its men, does not proceed upon lines likely to lead to important results. The Muhammadan ideal of a missionary is a lean old man with a staff and a couple of ragged disciples. Among the Hindus, for the past twentyfour hundred years, every preacher who would appeal to the popular heart must fulfil two conditions and conform to a certain type- he must cut himself off from the world by a solemn act, like the great renunciation of Buddha; and he must come forth from his solitary self-communings with a simple message to his fellowmen. Our missionaries do not seem to Indian thinkers to possess either of the initial qualifications necessary for any great awakening of the people. The foregoing figures are compiled from returns carefully collected from every missionary station in India and Burmah. The official census, notwithstanding its obscurities of classification and the disturbing effects of the famine of 1877, attests the rapid increase of the Christian population. So far as these disturbing influences allow of an inference for all British India, the normal rate of increase among the general population was about 8 per cent. Many years ago, when I lived in an from 1872 to 1881, while the actual rate of Indian district, and looked out on the the Christian population was over 30 per world with keen young eyes, I noted down cent. But, taking the lieutenant-govern- certain personal observations which I may orship of Bengal as the greatest province venture to reproduce here. The missionoutside the famine area of 1877, and for aries enjoyed the popular esteem accorded whose population, amounting to one-third in India to men of letters and teachers of of the whole of British India, really com- youth. They were even more highly reparable statistics exist, the census results garded as the guides who had opened up are clear. The general population in the paths of Western knowledge, and who creased in the nine years preceding 1881 were still the pioneers of education among at the rate of 10.89 per cent., the Muham- the backward races. The mission printmadans at the rate of 1096 per cent., the ing-presses might almost be said to have Hindus at some undetermined rate below created Bengali as a language of literary 13.64 per cent., the Christians of all races prose; and they had developed ruder at the rate of 40'71 per cent., and the na-tongues, like Santali or Assamese, into written vehicles of thought. But what- educated classes, notwithstanding its ever might be the self-sacrifices of our public training of a constant supply of missionaries, or the internal conflicts Christian native youth as masters for the which they passed through, their lives did provincial schools. The Oxford Brethren not appear in the light of a great renun- in Calcutta, while conducting a purely ciation. "To the natives," I wrote, "the Christian seminary, exert their special missionary seems to be a charitable En-influence by discussions and personal glishman who keeps an excellent cheap | interviews with the graduates and underschool, speaks the language well, preaches graduates of the university. Every aftera European form of their old incarnations, noon a brother sits waiting to see any and drives out his wife and little ones in young man who cares to call, and to talk a pony-carriage. This friendly neighbor, with him on any question which he this affectionate husband, this good man, chooses to start. If he wishes to be alone is of an estimable type, of a type which with the missionary, no one else is preshas done much to raise the English char- ent; if two or three youths come together, acter in the eyes of the natives, but it the missionary is equally at their service. is not the traditional type to which the Some of these young men have told me of popular preacher in India must conform. the patience, the humility, and the dexThe missionary has neither the personal terous Socratic methods, with which their sanctity nor the simple message of the doubts and difficulties are treated. No visionary who comes forth from his fast- one is pushed or hustled to desert his ings and temptation in the forest. Instead, ancestral faith. But every one carries he has a dogmatic theology which, when away material for deep reflection. Stuhe discusses it with the Brahmans, seems dent clubs formed under the auspices of to the populace to resolve itself into a the Oxford Brotherhood diffuse the effects wrangle as to the comparative merits of produced by this private teaching. At the Hindu triad and the European Trin- their meetings and lectures the brethren ity, and the comparative evidence for the meet the Calcutta undergraduates on the incarnation of Krishna and the incarnation common ground of intellectual men interof Christ. The uneducated native pre-ested in the subjects of the day. Young fers, if he is to have a triad and an incarna tion, to keep his own ones. The educated native thinks that triads and incarnations belong to a state of mental development which he has passed." Hindus at the university are anxious not only to listen to them, but to dwell together subject to strict moral regulations under their supervision, if the houses could be procured. Since these words were written, a new The relations of the Oxford fraternity form of missionary effort has arisen in to the natives are of the courteous Pauline India. The great Evangelical societies type; the unclean-beast theory regarding to whom the rapid progress of the past non-Christian religions is conspicuously thirty years has been chiefly due go on and conscientiously absent. When I was with their work more actively than ever. asked to become president of a Hindu soBut side by side with them, small Chris-ciety formed in connection with them, I tian brotherhoods are springing upascetic fraternities living in common, and realizing the Indian ideal of the religious life. In Bombay, in Calcutta, in Delhi, certain houses of Christian celibate brethren are becoming recognized centres of influence among the Indian university youth. They consist of English gentlemen of the highest culture, who have deliberately made up their minds to give their lives without payment to the work. They are indifferent to hardships, fearless of disease, extraordinarily patient of labor, and in no hurry to produce results. The Cambridge Mission at Delhi has got into its hands the chief share in the university teaching in the ancient Mughal capital. Six hundred students in its college and a well-filled hostel attest the confidence which it has gained with the upper and thought it discreet to look first through the reports and epistles of the mission. From first to last I did not come upon the word heathen. One of the offshoots of this activity is a students' club for the critical study of Jesus Christ. I am informed that its members are, with a few exceptions, non-Christian graduates or undergraduates of the university. What should we think if a society arose among the English university youth seriously and accurately to inquire into the teaching of Buddha? The truth is that the example of these Oxford men's lives, their simple and unostentatious asceticism, their daily service to others without a thought of themselves, are creating a deep impression. Their deaths produce a deeper impression still. It would be unwise to overrate the narrow sphere within which they at present work. But it is difficult | is clearly right that such a meeting should to over-estimate the value of their influ- commence and should close with an act of ence within that sphere. I myself do not devotion. But it is most damaging to the expect that any Englishman, or any European, will in our days individually bring about a great Christian awakening in India. But I think it within reasonable probability that some native of India will spring up, whose life and preaching may lead to an accession on a great scale to the Christian Church. If such a man arises he will set in motion a mighty movement, whose consequences it is impossible to foresee. And I believe that, if ever he comes, he will be produced by influences and surroundings of which the Ox-leave behind conviction. ford Brotherhood in Calcutta is at present the forerunner and prototype. It is to be regretted that this new form of missionary effort was not represented at the congress of last month. At the same time it is not difficult to appreciate the reasons which led the ascetic Christian brotherhoods, and several of the High Church societies, to abstain from that public demonstration. One cannot help feeling that such gatherings sometimes fail to disclose the most genuine aspects of missionary work. In their eagerness to intensify enthusiasm and to prove their case, they are liable to lapse into methods not calculated to carry conviction to minds which are simply desirous to get at the facts. The first open conference, for example, dealt with a controversy which had filled many columns of the Times, and which has since occupied the thoughts of serious men in many lands. Is it true, or is it not true, that the nonChristian races of the world are being rapidly absorbed into Islam, and that Muhammadanism, by its discountenance of strong drink, exercises on the whole a higher moral influence than Christianity? Here were distinct issues in regard to which dignitaries of the Church, experienced travellers, and others well qualified to speak, had ranged themselves on opposite sides. They were issues which delegates from the missionary societies of Europe and America had come to debate. Many of these gentlemen brought the careful observation of a lifetime to the subject, and a little pile of cards had been handed up to the chairman by those who wished to take part in the discussion. Yet, with the full knowledge that the time allowed for the meeting was strictly limited by the hands of the clock, certain zealous persons, in the body of the hall, insisted on interrupting the proceedings by a resolution demanding an interval for prayer. It missionary cause that a series of careful statements of evidence should be broken in upon by an irrelevant resolution of this sort. In any other class of meeting a chairman would decorously ignore such a proposal. But at Exeter Hall he is made to feel that this course is not open to him. A speaker who followed with a unique personal knowledge of the facts was coldly received, and some of the subsequent proceedings had a declamatory character adapted rather to elicit cheers than to I am convinced that the really noble work done by the missionaries abroad often suffers, in the opinion of candid and serious men, from the methods employed at home. It suffers also from a vague but general impression that only a part of the evidence appears. It is well known that many experienced missionaries believe the chief obstacles to the spread of Christianity are to be found in certain degrading customs and institutions which make them. selves specially prominent in Christian communities. Among this class of thinkers, the professor of Chinese at Oxford holds a distinguished place. His thirtyfour years of successful labor as a missionary, his erudition, his orthodoxy, and the unrivalled position which he holds as the translator and expounder of the sacred books of China, give weight and authority to his views. He holds that as long as Christianity presents itself infected with the bitter internal animosities of the Christian sects, and associated with the habits of drunkenness and the social evil conspicuous among Christian nations, it will not do its work, because it does not deserve to do its work, in the non-Christian world. When Professor Legge was asked to take part in the Centennial Conference, he explained that he would have to put forward clearly his convictions with the result that he did not take part in it at all. It may be that some of the ground which he would have occupied lay beyond its scope, and could not be satisfactorily dealt with by it. But incidents like these, although perhaps isolated ones, tend to weaken the authority of such an assemblage, and to create a suspicion among fair-minded men that they have not been placed in full possession of the facts. I have thought it right to refer to these defects because feel that I should be chargeable with the same one-sided advocacy if I feared to raise my voice against them. I think that the late congress, in an agreeable little book* distinguished by its fifty meetings, gave a true and, on the a good deal of poetical feeling, appears to whole, an accurate and a complete pre- use the word " paradox rather in the sentment of missionary work. I know general sense of unnatural or extravagant, that its projectors and managers were sin- than in its more proper sense of that which cerely desirous to overstate nothing and administers a kind of slap in the face to to conceal nothing. But I cannot help conventional opinion, in order to make feeling that these good intentions were those who entertain the conventional opinsometimes overborne by the old hanker-ion better understand not necessarily that ing after unctuous declamation which at they are wrong, but certainly that they one time made missionary statements have forgotten how very far from plainsneered at even by clergymen, and sus- sailing it is to be right. The use of parpected by all accurate critics, whether adox is to awaken people to the various clerical or lay. The able biographer of unsolved difficulties and evident shortCarey has acknowledged that occasion comings in judgments which seem to be was given by at least one coadjutor of that conspicuous for their good sense, and truly great man for Sydney Smith's ridi- which may, indeed, really be as near an cule. The time has come for mission- approach to good sense as any judgment aries themselves, and for those who have on the subject which could be embodied watched the simple and noble spirit in in anything like the same number of which they labor, to protest against every words, but which conceal half the obstacles form of exaggeration or insincerity in in the way of holding the opinion adopted, popular expositions of their work. They and foreshorten all that they do not conmust purge their cause of bigotry and ceal. Thus, it is not a paradox to say, as cant of bigotry, such as the injustice one of the Paradox Club says, "In apprenwhich some pious people in England do ticing a boy to the most humdrum busi to the Roman Catholic clergy in India; to ness, we can guarantee his future, provided that great Church which is quietly and he is fairly dishonest; or, as another of with small worldly means educating, dis- the club says who maintains the superiorciplining, and consoling a Christian popu-y of woman to man, "The time is aplation three times more numerous than proaching when man will have the courage all the Protestant converts in India put to sacrifice himself to his convictions, and together; of cant, such as the tirades refuse to drive a woman to the degradation against caste and other indigenous insti- of marrying her inferior." These are extutions, which accomplish for a densely travagant sayings, but they are not paracrowded tropical population what the doxes. A paradox is a saying which, by primitive Church did for its own little its apparently flat contradiction of what is communities, and what later Christianity ordinarily taken to be true, forces us to fails to effect, namely to support the poor think more deeply of the assumptions inwithout State aid. You may pass a whole volved in that ordinary thought, as, for life in contact with the missionaries who instance, the Greek paradox that "the are doing the actual toil, without having to half is often more than the whole." This listen to a single insincerity. The results saying brings vividly before the mind how of their labor need neither overstatement much better it is to set other people fairly nor concealment. I believe that those re-thinking for themselves on a great quessults justify the expenditure of money, and the devotion of the many lives, by which they are obtained. And I am convinced that if Englishmen at home knew the missionaries simply as they are, there would be less doubt as to the merit of their claims and as to the genuine character of their work. W. W. HUNter. From The Spectator. tion, than to think it fully out for them, since in the former case you get their minds into activity, and give them a motive for keeping up that activity after your stimulus is removed; whereas if you round off the process for them and satisfy them, they probably relapse into inactivity almost as soon as they have followed you to the end. So, too, it was a paradox when Lessing said that if there were held out to him in one hand truth, and in the other the love of truth, and he might choose freely between the two, he would prefer the latter to the former, a paradox The Paradox Club. By Edward Garnett. Lon don: T. Fisher Unwin. |