Chapter XVIII: Missions and Missionaries 213-223 (3)

Another day's ride, or rather, another night's ride, brought us to a city of a very different sort from Jaipur, and to a very different environment from that of Mt. Abu. It brought us to the busy metropolis of Ahmedabad. Here is also a city in a state under a native ruler, but a city so prosperous that native rule is seen to be by no means slovenly or indolent. On the way from the station I counted eighteen lofty chimneys belonging to manufacturing establishments. There are eighty factories in this busy center, chiefly connected with the cotton industry. In this industrial expansion is revealed the solution of many of India's financial problems. The population is now too exclusively employed in agriculture, and its manufactured articles are imported. But the rains are so uncertain that the farmer's subsistence is precarious, and famines claim thousands of victims. Hence, next to Christianity, India needs industrial development. This has been the view of recent British governors. Better methods of irrigation and of cultivation have been supplemented by the introduction of new instruments of manufacture. Both English and American machines now do much of the work that was formerly done by hand, and in the cities there is growing up a new manufacturing population.

Industrial missions are a great blessing to India, and our religious denominations have shown their practical sense by entering upon this sort of work. When a native becomes a convert to Christianity, he is often thrown out of caste by his family, and out of labor by his employers. He must support himself; he must find something to do. But he is friendless and helpless, unless he can find friendship and help in the mission where he has been converted. It is necessary to secure employment for him, if he is not to become an encumbrance to the mission and to himself. Hence I welcome all gifts for industrial missions that will teach men new methods of obtaining a livelihood. India, as I have said, has a vast agricultural population, now scantily subsisting and subject to occasional famines. Multitudes who are now idle might be usefully employed. The change now going on in our Southern States might well go on in Southern India, and I welcome the sight of the factory chimneys of Ahmedabad.

Ahmedabad is not yet converted to Christianity. It is a celebrated stronghold of Jainism, and here is another most splendid temple. It was instructive to see the little houses on poles for the care of birds, and for the feeding of lazy monkeys, while the poor and sick of human kind in the neighborhood begged in vain for help. The Jain temples are noted in all India for their beauty. Carving and gilding can go no farther than they have gone in the decoration of this shrine in Ahmedabad. But the troop of monkeys that came to us in the park to be fed, seemed to us quite as sensitive to human needs as were the holy men who sat about that temple of the Jains, for these latter devotees use God's gifts not rationally, but for inferior ends, and especially for their own interest and comfort. Ahmedabad is an example, not of the worst, but still of a misplaced, religious zeal that has lost its bearings because it has lost its God.

IX

BOMBAY, KEDGAON, AND MADRAS

Bombay is a great city, the second, in population, of the British Empire in India. While Calcutta has over a million people, Bombay comes only a few short of that number. Its commerce is immense; its public buildings are fashioned after European models; its streets are broad and finely paved; there is every evidence of wealth and cultivation. But Hindus greatly outnumber Mohammedans; Parsees are strong; Christians are active, but still comparatively few. In thought and customs, Bombay is still essentially Oriental, while yet profoundly influenced by modern newspapers and modern inventions. It was a memorable change for us travelers to emerge from its Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, and then to find ourselves, first in its Caves of Elephanta, and secondly, in its Towers of Silence.

A word of explanation is necessary for each of these notable objects of interest. Elephanta is a little island eight miles from Bombay, and so named because of its general resemblance in shape to an elephant. Elephanta Island forms a beautiful object as seen from the deck of the little steamer that serves for a ferry, and the views from the summit of Elephanta Hill, over the Bombay Bay, with the gleaming towers of the green city in the distance, are very charming. The island is a great resort, however, not so much for the views therefrom, as because it is the seat of a rock-hewn temple excavated centuries ago in honor of Siva, the Hindu god, whose province it is to destroy. Brahma is the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer. Siva was the god of reproduction, however, as well as the god who destroys, and his worship has been often connected with obscene and lascivious rites.

The approach to Siva's temple is through a lovely garden, in which are many splendid specimens of tropical vegetation. At last there appears to the visitor, in the side of the precipitous hill, a massive portico, with four immense pillars, all hewn out of the solid rock. Then come long rows of similar columns leading darkly like a cathedral nave into the stony hill, and terminating at the altar, above which towers the statue of Siva, colossal in size, with Parvati, his goddess wife, by his side, and all the emblems of his authority, as scepter and sword, around him. The statue seems to express the joy of sovereignty, and, though somewhat mutilated, it is noticeably free from the immoral suggestions which have been intimated in many descriptions of it. Entrance to the statue is flanked by great guardian statues, and the whole chancel, so to speak, is enclosed by a broad and lofty corridor, in the manner of cathedral architecture. From this corridor on either side, many nooks in the rock have been excavated, like chantry chapels, each with its separate statue at least twenty feet in height. The whole Hindu pantheon, seems to be represented by carved figures, but all cluster about the god Siva. The really characteristic and indispensable feature of these caves is, however, still to be mentioned. It is the image of the lingam, or phallus, gigantic in size, and carven out of solid stone, in the innermost shrine, where it is the object of hysterical or lustful worship. Every year, on an appointed feast-day, three or four thousand people throng to this shrine, some to pray for offspring, others to seek license for illicit pleasure. Elephanta has become in this way the symbol and propagator of a debasing superstition. Such worship is only a deification of the lower instincts of human nature.

Returning to Bombay, it was natural to think of the Towers of Silence, for these too are located on a lovely eminence, called the Malabar Hill, and overlooking the city and the bay. These towers are enclosures in which the Parsees, a most intelligent, wealthy, and influential sect, dispose of the bodies of their dead, by laying the forms in the open air where they can be devoured by vultures. The towers themselves are at least half a dozen in number, and they vary in size. But the style of their construction is uniform. Inside of a lofty circular wall are concentric beds of stone, each with its groove in which a corpse can be laid. There are three concentric circles, the outermost for men, the next inner for women, the innermost for children. The structure has no roof, but is open to the air. Great flocks of vultures perch upon the top of the outermost enclosing wall, waiting in silence and expectation for the time when they can descend upon their prey. Only a half-hour elapses after a body is laid on its stony bed, before these ravenous birds have torn every morsel of flesh from its bones. The skeleton is then left to disintegrate by the action of the elements, until the rains wash the remaining dust into a great pit at the center of the circles, from which receptacle the refuse is conducted away by drains during the rainy season, to mingle with the surrounding earth.

This is the Parsees' "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." They glory in this method of disposing of their dead, and they think it far more natural and impressive than the common Hindu method of cremation. We must grant that all methods of disposing of the dead are painful. But faith in a resurrection of the body is surely most in consonance with our time-honored custom of laying our dead away in their kindred earth, "until the day dawns, and the shadows flee away."

From Bombay to the town of Kedgaon may seem to some a descent from great to small. Not so; it is rather an ascent from the false to the true, from the impure to the pure, from the illusory to the real. For Kedgaon is the home, and center of the work, of Pundita Ramabai, perhaps the most learned, and certainly the most influential Christian woman in India. The very name pundita is given only to those of high intellectual attainments. A Hindu of the highest, that is the Brahman, caste, she was many years ago converted to Christianity, and she has devoted all her powers to the education and uplifting of her countrywomen. Her father was a great Sanskrit scholar. He was one of the first in India to determine that his daughter should be a learned woman. Accordingly she was thoroughly instructed. She knew by heart the sacred scriptures of her people long before she became a Christian. She could repeat from memory an amount of them equal to that of our whole English Bible. It is especially the improvement of the condition of women, and particularly of child-widows, to which she has devoted her attention. The condition of the child-widow in India is most pitiable. She is held responsible for the death of her husband, no matter how young she may be. She is subjected to indignities. Her hair is entirely shaven from her head. Her jewels are taken from her. Her bright clothing is taken away, and she is clad in the coarsest garments. She becomes the slave of the family; virtually an outcast; frequently a prostitute. She can never remarry, no matter how young she may be at the beginning of her widowhood.

It was to ameliorate this condition of affairs that Pundita Ramabai set herself many years ago. She gathered child-widows under her protection, surrounded them with Christian influences, and gave them a Christian education. A time of famine threw upon her care in one year twenty-four hundred girls, who depended upon her alone for food to keep them from starving. That time of great distress is now past, but when we remember that in India there are estimated to be as many as two millions of child-widows, it will be clear that the need of a refuge for such is still immensely great. Girls of the highest caste are in the greatest need, for among the lower classes the reproach of child-widowhood is not so strongly felt. It was the sorrows of girls belonging to her own Brahman caste, married perhaps at the age of eight or ten to husbands five times their own age, and then made practically outcasts by those husbands' death, that most touched the heart of Ramabai. It is wonderful what she has already accomplished. We found on her extensive premises a great assembly-room which has sheltered at one time twenty-six hundred auditors; schools of every grade for Hindu girls, including a school for the blind; a large and commodious hospital; a printing office with presses capable of turning out a high order of typography; an asylum for lepers; a rescue-home for unfortunate girls; normal classes for teachers and for nurses; training in sewing, embroidery, and weaving; and many another sort of Christian service, including the work of the factory and the farm. Every species of cooking on the premises, and all the care of the rooms and houses, is done by the girls themselves, so that all of them are taught how to support themselves when they leave the institution. Three hours a day for industrial work, and three hours a day for schooling, is the uniform rule. One can imagine the far-reaching influence of this institution, if he remembers that out of the twenty-four hundred scholars who were received and taught in that dreadful time of famine, more than fifteen hundred were child-widows and many of them of the highest caste.

Ramabai is a great scholar. She has translated and printed the whole New Testament, in the colloquial Mahrati dialect, for the benefit of the poor women in her district. She is now engaged upon the Psalms and the book of Genesis, with the hope of finishing the whole Old Testament. Numberless tracts of her composition have gone out into all parts of India. Her graduates become not only teachers, but also evangelists. No one can measure the extent of her present influence, as showing what a native woman in India can do, in the way of breaking down caste, overthrowing pernicious customs, and demonstrating to a benighted heathen world the superior claims of Christian truth. We left Ramabai, invoking a blessing upon her head and upon Manorama, her daughter, who bids fair to prove her worthy successor. Ramabai, by her intellectual gifts, her executive ability, and above all by her Christian devotion, deserves honor from all lovers of Christ and his gospel.

As we neared Madras, the third largest city of India, the heat began to oppress us. Up to this time India had been unexpectedly and refreshingly cool, at night even cold. But now it was unpleasantly warm. The heat reminded us of the conundrum: "Why is India, although so hot, the coldest country on the globe?" Answer: "Because the hottest thing in it is chilly" ("chili" is the peppery sauce which the natives mix with other spices to form "curry"). We have learned to like curry. I cannot understand it; but if seems as if the hottest countries needed the hottest kinds of food. At any rate we had a warm welcome in Madras, thirteen degrees in latitude above the equator. We were fortunate in reaching this fine city during the session of all our Baptist missionaries in the South India, or Telugu, field--that field which a few years ago witnessed the baptism of 2,222 converts in one day. It was a remarkable illustration of the family and tribal spirit in India. We Baptists believe in individual conversions, and we seek evidence, in every case, of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. But the coherence of the family and the village is so strong in a heathen community, that the lot of the individual Christian is often exceedingly hard. Occasionally there is apostasy. The resistance of an important man to the gospel makes the persistence of his dependents in the gospel-way almost impossible.

In some quarters, however, whole families and whole clans have been blessedly converted, and idolatry has been completely eradicated. In other cases where mass movements have taken place, certain missionaries have found it physically impossible to sift out each doubtful individual, and for safety have demanded that the whole family or clan or village shall give up idolatry before any single individual convert has been received for church-membership. To combine strict faith and practice, according to the New Testament standard, with a proper respect for local customs and traditions, demands great wisdom in our missionaries, and makes their conferences very practical and very necessary. Certain it is that in our Baptist missions abroad greater care is exercised in receiving members than that to which we are accustomed in the homeland. The missionary cannot afford to have false disciples in the flock, if he knows it, for "one sinner destroyeth much good."

New Year's Day at Madras was full of interest. Lady Pentland, wife of the governor of the Madras Presidency, invited us to a New Year's garden-party. An open-air gathering of any sort on the first day of January would have been a novelty to us, but this one found the atmosphere so balmy and the vegetation so green, that such a party was a positive delight. The avenues of approach to the governor's residence were lined with the body-guard of his excellency, stationed in twos along the way, and clad in scarlet The reception took place under a wide-spreading tree, on a spacious lawn. There were as many as a thousand guests. It was a gay and beautiful scene. Hindu and Moslem, Parsee and Christian, all met together. It was an exhibition of loyalty to the British Crown, as well as a proof that just government may yet weld all India's classes and castes together. Lord Pentland spoke to us most pleasantly of certain members of his family whom we had met in America, and Lady Pentland showed herself to be a charming hostess.

But a reception still more charming to us was the reception which the Rochester men gave us that same New Year's night, at the bungalow of Doctor Ferguson, close to the Day Memorial Chapel, where the sessions of the conference were held. At least ten of our graduates sat down to supper, together with their wives. Subsequently, from adjoining rooms, other members of the conference came in to the New Year's reception, which is an annual affair. The United States consul dropped in, with a few other guests, until the total number could not have been far from eighty. It was like a family gathering. When I remembered that the Telugu Mission was once called "The Lone-Star Mission," and was in danger of being given up, and when I noted that it now numbers one hundred and sixty-eight churches and a church-membership of more than seventy thousand, I could but say, "What hath God wrought!"

X

THE TELUGU MISSION

Madras is the greatest city of South India, and ranks next to Calcutta and Bombay in thrift and importance. Tamil and Telugu are the two languages of the extensive Madras Presidency, the former prevailing most to the south, the latter to the north. They are cognate tongues, and both are derived from the Sanskrit. Our American Congregationalists have done most for the Tamils; we Baptists have done most for the Telugus. The Telugus number twenty-six millions. Though Madras is near their southern border, it is the best starting-point for our description.

Next to our mission in Burma, the Telugu mission has been most blessed by God. The famine of 1876 was followed by a wonderful revival, in which a nation seemed to be born in a day. The people accepted Christ by the thousands, and twenty-two hundred were at one time baptized. Evangelization has been followed by education. While our organized Telugu churches number 168, and our church-members 70,000, we have 819 schools of all grades, and 28,781 pupils under instruction. The needs of the body have been cared for, as well as the needs of the soul, for there are fourteen hospitals and dispensaries, ministering to 8,067 patients.

In such a mass movement as that among the Telugus, it was inevitable that the organization of the converts into distinct, self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating churches should be a gradual process and should require time. The poverty of the people was an obstacle to self-support. But Christian teaching has made them models of liberality, and it was touching to see the church-members come forward at the close of the Sunday morning service with their thank-offerings. In fact, these Telugu churches, in the support of their native ministry, are in large measure independent of foreign financial aid. It is certain that, so long as religion is an exotic, its existence will be precarious. The plant in the pot needs, for permanence, to become a tree rooted in the soil. Self-government is as necessary as self-support, and self-propagation is equally important, if the Christianity of the native is ever to become indigenous. These aims have been dominant in recent years, and we have been permitted to witness scenes which demonstrate the power of God to make multitudes of people, of the lowest class, intelligent, liberal, and aggressive Christians.

I must take four separate stations as illustrations of my thesis. Fortunately, all of these stations are now under the administration of Rochester men, whom I am proud to recognize as my former pupils. But before I proceed to describe our experiences with them, I must to some extent repeat what I have said in my last letter about Madras and the conference there at the house of Doctor Ferguson. Because Madras is the greatest city of South India, it is the natural source of supplies and the easiest place of gathering for our Telugu missionaries, even though most of them live and work much farther to the north. The principle of home rule requires such gathering, and the missionary at Madras, without seeking it, naturally becomes a sort of secretary and treasurer and entertainer of the whole body of Telugu workers. No one could be better adapted to this position of responsibility than is Doctor Ferguson. His abounding hospitality and his command of the whole situation make him sought as a counselor and as a leader. As the older men, like Clough and Downie, pass away, Doctor Ferguson, by common consent, forges to the front. The present prosperity and harmony of the Telugu mission are largely due to his unassuming and welcome influence. He too is a man whose scholarship and character reflect honor upon the Rochester Theological Seminary, where he sat under my instruction twenty-two years ago.

Coming now to our stations north of Madras, I begin with the Theological Seminary at Ramapatnam, in charge of the Rev. Dr. Jacob Heinrichs. Its students met us at the entrance of the mission compound, and we passed under an arch over which were inscribed the words, "Welcome to Dr. and Mrs. Strong." We had garlands of flowers thrown about our necks, and we were sprinkled with eau de Cologne. In the large assembly-room of the seminary, we listened to addresses in excellent English from pupils of the higher grades, and we made responses in the same language, which were interpreted to the scholars of the lower classes by the pastor of the village church. A beautiful casket of carved ivory and pearl was presented to us, containing engrossed copies of the addresses delivered by the students. There was singing of hymns, both in English and in Telugu, by choir and congregation. The beauty of it all was its spontaneity and naturalness, for the pupils themselves had planned and executed the whole program.

Instruction in this seminary is largely biblical. Preachers are prepared for their work by being grounded in the life of Christ and the life of Paul. The text-books have been written by Doctor Heinrichs himself, and they are so well adapted to their purpose that they have been extensively used by seminaries of other denominations than the Baptist. A native Christian literature has been created for the Telugus, beginning with the Bible, but now embracing church history, theology, ethics, and something of modern science. It must not be thought that the teaching is exclusively religious. Our seminary, and all our schools of lower grade, are affiliated with the government system of education, and in all their lower grades are subject to government inspection. So far as they conform to government standards of thoroughness, they receive government grants of financial aid. British India is impartial--aid is also given to Hindu and to Mohammedan schools. But Christian schools can well stand competition with these other systems, for the methods of our Christian schools are more modern and more rational. We left Ramapatnam, convinced that India is receiving from the work of Doctor Heinrichs an inestimable blessing. Through a long series of years he has been training preachers and teachers for this whole Telugu land, and much fruit is appearing in a new type of New Testament pastors and evangelists.

Ongole, one hundred and eighty-one miles north of Madras, was the scene of the great revival. Here too we were received most royally. A crowd of church-members waited for us at the railway station and flocked round our carriage as we passed to the mission compound. On the way, a company of Telugu athletes entertained us at intervals by their feats of ground and lofty tumbling. It was their native way of welcoming distinguished guests. Dr. James M. Baker has ably succeeded Dr. J. E. Clough in the work of administering and organizing this important field. The Ongole church of twelve thousand members, with its connected schools, is enough to tax the resources of the ablest man. The new Clough Memorial Hospital had its beginning while we were in Ongole, in the laying of the corner-stone of a gateway in honor of Dr. S. F. Smith, who wrote, "Shine on, Lone Star," as well as "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." Mrs. Strong, with a silver trowel, made its foundation sure, while the English deputy collector for the district represented the government, and I had the privilege of making an address to a great mixed audience of Hindus and Mohammedans as well as Christians.

Our most thrilling experience in connection with Ongole I am yet to relate. We wished to see the heart of India, as we had seen the heart of China and the heart of Burma. We could do this only by taking part in one of Doctor Baker's country tours. Every year he takes advantage of the favorable weather centering about mid-winter, to spend two solid months in visiting the villages which throng these fertile plains. With tent and equipment for cooking, he penetrates these swarming heathen communities and carries to them the gospel of Christ. It was over some fearful roads that our two-pony, two-seated buggy enabled us to accompany him. Government roads are one thing; native roads are quite another. Sudden descents to fordable streams and sudden ascents to the opposite banks are succeeded by long stretches of passage through cultivated fields, where there appears no sign of road at all. At last we reached the village of Naletur. Under the shadow of a great tree we found at least a thousand people assembled, sitting on the ground bordered by a broad fringe of men and women standing on the outside, and supplemented by a score of half-naked Zaccheus-like hearers perched in the branches of the trees. Mrs. Baker, awaiting the coming of her husband and his guests, had been holding this motley audience for two hours with selections from the gramophone, with illustrated Scripture lessons and pictures from the Life of Christ, and by calling on her "band" for "music" with a big drum, castanets, cymbals, and various other instruments of Indian manipulation. Salvation Army methods have great influence over a childlike people, and Mrs. Baker would make, in case of necessity, a first-class Salvation Army lassie. In fact, no act of missionary humility has struck our eyes as more pathetic and true, than that of Mrs. Baker, beating a big drum to the time of native music, in order to hold an audience for the hearing of the gospel. The amphitheater of dusky faces, massed together and intently listening, with Christians on one side and heathen on the other, seemed like a reproduction of the days "when Jesus was here among men," and a prophecy of the great final Day when our Lord, the Judge, will separate the sheep from the goats.

That evening we left the grove and entered the village with fife and drum, attracting auditors, and held a torchlight meeting in the market-place. There was preaching, and the chanting, in rhythm but not rhyme, of a versified story of the life of Christ. The missionaries make much of this sort of Telugu singing. There was the same crowd of auditors that had met us in the afternoon, but now the intermittent light of the torches made the scene seem to be flashing rays of conviction into many a troubled breast, and I wished that some great painter could immortalize the picture upon canvas, for no one can understand missions to the heathen without picturing to himself such preaching.

The next morning, on our way back to Ongole, we visited the famous spot on the river bank at Vellumpilly where, in 1878, 2,222 believers were baptized. On Sunday we attended a service of the mission church, where a native pastor officiated and at least fifteen hundred persons in addition to the missionaries were present, though several hundreds of scholars were absent on account of the holiday vacation. And finally, at the sunset hour on that memorable Sabbath Day, we ascended Prayer-meeting Hill, where Doctor Jewett, Mrs. Jewett, and two others met on New Year's Day fifty years ago, looked out over the great surrounding plain, and prayed the Lord to give them the Telugus, as John Knox of old prayed, "Give me Scotland, or I die!" In both cases prayer was answered, and we hope the more recent prayers offered on that historic spot in January, 1917, will also be answered. The Telugus are gradually being won, and we ourselves were witnesses to that fact when, at the village of Naletur, we beheld the baptism of eleven new converts, nine stalwart young men and two married women.

Kavali is next to be mentioned. Here is a work for the gradual reformation of criminals and the industrial regeneration of India. In this land of poverty and famine, our converts, when turned out of house and home, need new means of earning a livelihood. There is in India a hereditary criminal class which, like the thugs of a former generation, make it a sort of religion to prey upon their fellow countrymen. The British Government has been almost powerless either to subdue or to reform such offenders. Something more than mere justice is required in their treatment. The Government is recognizing the value of Christian education and supervision, and has recently put large tracts of territory into the hands of the Salvation Army, the Methodists, and the Baptists, with a view to combining compulsory work and paternal influence in the reform of the criminal classes. The Rev. Samuel D. Bawden, at Kavali, has charge of over eight hundred such people, and is teaching them agriculture and all manner of trades. Mr. Bawden is one of the graduates of our theological seminary. He was for several years chaplain of our House of Refuge at Rochester. Physically and mentally he is a remarkable man, an athlete and almost a giant, a man of science and a man of faith. It needs all these gifts to dominate and lead toward Christ eight hundred born thieves. I know of no more self-sacrificing and Christlike work than that which brother Bawden is doing.

The success of it proves its value. There are no prison walls, though leaving the community is followed by pursuit and recommittal. There are no punishments except deprivation of food-wages. Each member of the community is paid in food, and in proportion to the extent of his labor. If he will not work, neither can he eat. Opportunities for education are given to all. There is even a church, made up of converted convicts. The faithful among these Erukalas, as they are called, are made monitors and helpers to their weaker fellows. Squads are sent out from five to twenty miles, to build and repair the roads, with only an unarmed comrade for overseer. Nothing is given but education and Christian influence. Everything for the physical man is earned. In this way hundreds of reformed criminals learn to gain their own living and to lead an honest life. It was pathetic to receive the welcome of these humble men, and to see their reverence and affection for their "big father," Mr. Bawden. We heard them greet him as "our savior." To show their respect for Mr. Bawden's former theological instructor, these poor men subscribed of their scanty means and hired a large gasoline street lamp to illuminate the evening service.

I have reserved to the last my account of our visit to Nellore. Nellore is last, but not least, for this was our first permanent mission station in South India. Work was indeed begun at Vizagapatam in 1836, but in 1837 it was moved to Madras, and in 1840 to Nellore, Madras being reopened in 1878. Nellore is one hundred and seven miles north of Madras, on the main line of railway, and sixteen miles from the seacoast. In the Nellore field we have six churches, and a total of nine hundred and twenty-six members. It is our Baptist schools that most attract our attention. The Coles-Ackerman High School, in charge of the Rev. L. C. Smith, has more than eight hundred pupils, and is a great credit to our denomination. Bible classes and special preaching services for students are conducted with enthusiasm by our young missionaries, Smith and Manley, and they bring good results. There are also in Nellore a high school for girls, a hospital for women, and a nurses' training-school, all under the direction of our Woman's Society. In these schools, Miss Tencate and Miss Carman are representatives of Rochester.

The general work of the mission is presided over by the Rev. Charles Rutherford, one of my former pupils and graduates. Mr. Rutherford is the young and able successor of Dr. David Downie, a much older Rochester man, and one of the pioneers and leaders of the Telugu Mission. He graduated from Rochester in 1872, the year in which I began my work as president of the seminary. I cannot easily express my gratification at finding him in South India to welcome me, and to accompany me during a large part of my stay on this field. Few men have so noble a record. Though he retired from active service ten years ago, and is now devoting himself to writing the history of the mission, he is still vigorous in mind and heart, and to meet him is to come in contact with "an incarnation"--an incarnation of the missionary spirit. He has seen "the little one" become not only "a thousand," but well nigh a hundred thousand. His faith is great, that this whole Telugu Land will bow to Christ's scepter. Long may he live, to bless India and the world!

XI

THE DRAVIDIAN TEMPLES

The Dravidians are supposed by most ethnologists to have been the aborigines of India. When they were subdued by the Aryans from the north, they were crowded southward and were compelled to serve their conquerors. This subjugation was the origin of caste; the weaker became hewers of wood and drawers of water for the stronger. The Brahman would have no social intercourse with the Sudra, and thought even his touch a profanation. For the Brahman represented Brahma, was in fact Brahma incarnate, while the Sudra was a manifestation of deity in inferior clay. Yet the Brahman needed the Sudra, and had to propitiate him in order to use him. So the Aryan absorbed into his own system some of the Dravidian gods, and usually did so by marrying to Dravidian female divinities male deities of his own. Siva, the Aryan god, for example, took for his wife the Dravidian goddess Kali. In many ways like this, the Aryan and the Dravidian united to form the Hindu. The Hindu religion is a composite--a corruption of the nature-worship of the earlier Vedas by its union with the more cruel and debasing features of the Dravidian idolatry. The renowned temples of Southern India best represent this mongrel form of Hinduism, and show Hinduism in its most corrupt development under Dravidian influences.

The massiveness and vastness of these temples demonstrate the power of the religious instinct in man, even when that instinct is most perverted. With all their grossness and crudity, these shrines reveal a wealth of imagination and an artistic inventiveness, which furnish object-lessons to the most cultivated Occidental mind. We wonder what the East could really have accomplished, if its native gifts had been under the control of Christian truth. Unfortunately, those gifts were commonly under the control of the baser instincts. Paul's philosophy of heathenism is far more correct than that of many a modern writer on comparative religion. Only an ancestral sin can explain man's universal ignorance and depravity. Because he would not retain God in his knowledge, he was given up to the dominion of vile affections, to show him his need of a divine redemption.

Tanjore and Madura are the seats of the Dravidian temples which we visited. Tanjore is two hundred miles south of Madras, and fifty miles from the Bay of Bengal. It is in the Presidency of Madras, but European influences have not greatly changed its prevailingly native aspect. The half-naked coolies, and the children clothed only in sunshine, show how inveterate are custom and poverty. The great Tanjore temple is the center of worship for a hundred miles round. It is built on a stupendous scale. It consists of a series of courts, in the midst of which are two tremendous towers or gopuras, as the technical term should be. Its principal tower, is pyramidal in form, is two hundred feet in height, is covered with row after row of colossal carvings of gods and goddesses, and is surmounted by an immense dome-shaped and gilded top of solid stone, said to have been brought to its place upon an inclined plane from the quarry four miles away. The gateway leading to the temple is itself an enormous structure. It opens upon a court eight hundred feet long by four hundred feet wide, the walls of which enclose an endless succession of little chapels, each one of which has at its back a rude picture of some incarnation of Vishnu or Krishna, and in front of each picture there stands erect an image in stone of the lingam or phallus.

A great platform, in the center of the court, houses, beneath a gorgeous canopy, an immense black granite image of a bull, the favorite animal of Siva, carved out of a single block sixteen feet long and twelve feet high, and kept perpetually shining by anointings of holy oil. The imagination of the worshiper is thus excited by successive statues and pictures, until at last he reaches the tremendous pyramidal tower, or gopura, which portrays and symbolizes the power of the heathen god to destroy and to recreate. That massive tower, superimposed above the idol and forming its magnificent abiding-place, has no superior in all India for grandeur. Mr. Fergusson, the distinguished writer on architecture, calls it the most beautiful and effective of all the towers found in Dravidian temples. The sculptures in the long and dimly lighted corridors at the base of the temple, and in the first tiers of the tower, are wonderfully realistic representations of a sensual and ferocious deity. But, as you stand in the court, and look up the sides of the tower to the gilded pinnacle on its dome, you discover that all the upper rows of gods and demons are of stucco. Money evidently gave out, as the structure rose, and plaster took the place of stone.

The appurtenances of the temple are tawdry and childish. Huge cars, in which images of the gods are carried about at times of festival, stand in the courtyard. Each car has its bejeweled beast for the god or goddess to ride--a wooden elephant, a wooden bull, a wooden rat--each with trappings of many-colored glass, to imitate rubies and diamonds, and each with its escort of dusky priests, not forgetting to follow the foreign visitor and hold out their hands for alms. Yet in these corridors there were prostrated many absorbed and eager worshipers, seeking protection or aid from a deity more demonlike than divine. One's heart grew sick as he realized that, still in these latter days,

The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone,

and worships in a temple which exhibits in its halls a hundred immense images of the male organ of generation.

It was a relief to be conducted by a clergyman of the Anglican faith to the church where lie buried the remains of Schwartz, the first English missionary to India. It must have required great gifts of mind and heart and will to brave Hindu opposition, to win the affection and support of a raja, and to lay the foundations of a Christian community in this heathen land. Schwartz was a Prussian by birth, though he went out as a missionary of a Danish society. He gave his life and his fortune to the cause of missions, and the English work in Tanjore is even now largely supported by the endowments which he left behind him when he died. Our good friend Doctor Blake, the English clergyman, took us to the palace of the princess of Tanjore, also to the raja's library of Oriental manuscripts within the palace--a priceless collection of eighteen thousand Sanskrit manuscripts, of which eight thousand are written on palm-leaves. This library is unique in all India; and it shows that a raja in Tanjore, in his love for literature, could equal the raja of Jaipur, in his love for astronomy. The desire for learning was a passion that survived the fall, an evidence of the presence in humanity of the preincarnate Christ, "the Light that lighteth every man."

Madura is a hundred miles farther south than Tanjore. It is really the center of Dravidian worship. While some features of the Tanjore temple are more beautiful, the temple at Madura is more vast. Five great pyramidal towers, four of them on the points of the compass, meet the eye as one looks upon the temple from a distance. The temple is built about two great shrines or cells, one for the god Siva and the other for his goddess wife Minakshi, each cell surmounted by a noble dome of plated gold. On the four sides of the temple are stone porches, arcades, and pillared halls of great variety, filled with elaborate and grotesque carvings and sculptures. The extent of the structure may be judged from the simple statement that the outer walls, twenty-five feet high, surround a space eight hundred and thirty by seven hundred and thirty feet, and are surmounted by four lofty gate-pyramids, each of them ten stories in height. The portico roof of Minakshi's Hall is supported upon six rows of carved pillars, each made from a single stone. There is an extensive "Golden Lily Tank," bordered by a granite corridor hung with cages of parrots, and the putrid waters of the tank furnish purification preparatory to worship at Minakshi's shrine. The very porch or entrance pavilion of this shrine is called "The Hall of a Thousand Pillars," though the actual number is nine hundred and eighty-five. Here and there among the pillars are seated learned men or pundits, who place offerings of flowers and perfumed water before their sacred books and chant the meaning of Sanskrit scriptures to groups of devout listeners.

The great temple, with its dimly lighted corridors, is open to the public day and night, and there is special illumination by hundreds of little lamps in an arch at the entrance when night comes on. Long avenues are filled with buyers and sellers of wares, and the rent of their stalls furnishes a large revenue for the support of the many priests. A big elephant and a baby elephant, each with the mark of the god upon its forehead, are paraded up and down, and are taught to pick up with their trunks the coins thrown down by visitors. Innumerable dark alcoves invite the crowd to rest, and many a sleeping form is seen at the foot of the altars. Imagine a festival night with these dimly lighted courts crowded with worshipers, the fierce and lustful images, the glorification of the lingam, the secret places of assignation! And this is the acme of Hindu religion!

There are better things than this to be seen in Madura. The palace of Tirumala, a raja of the seventh century, is a magnificent specimen of Moorish architecture with unexpected Gothic tendencies. Its entrance hall, one hundred and thirty-five feet long, half as wide, and seventy feet high, has a lofty roof supported by heavy stone pillars with pointed arches of Saracenic type. It shows that the Moslem, in the long ago, had at least a temporary hold upon South India. This palace, which has the structural character of a Gothic building, has now been partially restored and taken for the law-courts of the British Government.

The same Tirumala who built the palace, built the Teppa Kulam, an artificial reservoir outside the town, about one thousand feet on a side, very symmetrical and the largest of its kind in South India. The whole "tank" is surrounded with granite walls and parapets, and next the water there is a granite walk five feet wide running round the whole structure. Flights of steps lead down to the water, at intervals. In the center of this small lake is an island, also walled around with granite slabs, and on it there are five towers, a large one in the center and one at each of the four corners. The whole effect is very graceful and it makes a sight long to be remembered, when the "feast of lights" takes place and the island and the parapets and the granite curbings are illuminated with hundreds of little oil-lamps. Not far away from the "tank" is a famous banyan-tree which covers with its shade an area sixty yards in diameter, has a main stem seventy feet in circumference, and has besides two hundred branches that have struck root.

But the noblest sight of Madura is its American Congregational Mission. Beginning in 1836, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions planned and founded their most wise and successful foreign missions. They have aimed to do one thing well: to make the Madura station not only complete but well supported, to embrace in it all stages of education and all sorts of evangelization; and to reduce the whole work to a unified system. And the result has been the raising up of a large native ministry, churches with twenty-two thousand members, schools of every grade from the kindergarten to the college and the theological seminary. We were most hospitably entertained by the principal of the college, Dr. J. X. Miller, and the other missionaries; and we met and addressed both the native church at their Sunday service, the faculty and students of the seminary, and the annual conference of Congregational missionaries. The Madura Mission is a light shining in a dark place, the darkest place indeed in India. But it is a light that cannot be hid. Like our missions to the Burmans and the Telugus, it is showing the power of the gospel to "cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God," and to make a spiritual desert "bud and blossom as the rose."

XII

TWO WEEKS IN CEYLON

Ceylon is not a part of India. It is a Crown Colony of Great Britain, and is administered directly from London, while India has more of independence and self-government. The relation of Ceylon to Britain is somewhat like that of the Philippine Islands to the United States, while the relation of Britain to India resembles that of the United States Government to our several territories. Ceylon, however, is very productive and prosperous. Surrounded by the sea, it is free from Indian droughts and famines. Its people are stalwart and loyal. The English language is fast becoming the easiest method of communication between Cingalese and Tamils, Hindus and Malays. Colombo is really a European city, as large as Rochester, with noble public buildings and lovely parks. Our Galle Face Hotel, on the very edge of the sea, with a great stretch of green lawn in front of it, is one of the finest hotels in the East, and our week of rest here was delightful.

Buddhism has been one of the great missionary religions of the world. It was a reform of Hinduism. But the Hindus, with their caste system, would have none of it and drove it out. The Buddhist triumphs were in Burma, Tibet, China, Japan, at the north; in Ceylon and Java, at the south. Here in Ceylon is preserved a sacred tooth of Buddha; and one of his bones, recently discovered in northern India, is to be brought next week with great pomp and ceremony to the temple in Kandy, which already ranks in sacredness next to the great Shwe Dagon pagoda in Rangoon. A temple in Java is founded upon a single hair of Buddha's head. All this superstition and imposture dates back to a couple of centuries before Christ, and there is great reason to believe that the Roman Catholic worship of relics is only an appropriation of this form of heathenism.

Christian schools and churches are doing much to undermine Buddhism in Ceylon. Colombo is especially fortunate in possessing a noble college of the Wesleyan Methodists and a strong institution of all grades with eight hundred students. The English Baptists also have a very creditable mission work under the charge of Messrs. Ewing and Charter; while Mr. Woods is the able pastor of an English-speaking Baptist church. The students of these various schools usually adopt the English dress. The barefooted pupils first put on shoes, then the coat, finally the trousers. In the end you can hardly distinguish them from Europeans. These changes are more rapid in Colombo than in Madras. Indeed, British rule is fast transforming what was first a Portuguese, and then a Dutch, settlement into a city where English is universally known and spoken.

It was gratifying to find that the Government College, where the English language alone is used, is opened every day with the reading of Scripture and with prayer. But it was unpleasing to learn that, side by side with these Christian influences, the Ananda College, a theosophical institution, allied to Mrs. Besant of Madras, was exerting an influence unfavorable to Christianity, not only by setting Buddha side by side with Christ, but by urging the claim of Buddha to be the supreme ethical teacher of the world.

Before I tell you of our visit to Buddhist temples, I must speak of the refuge from them which we found at Nurwara Eliya, sixty-two hundred feet above the sea. Colombo is only six degrees north of the equator. Here in January the sun casts hardly any shadow at noon, and the middle of the day is hot. Later in the year the heat is intense, day and night. So British officials combine with the rich of every tongue, and even with the missionaries, to make their summer quarters high up among the hills. We were transported thither on a narrow-gage railway, cut into the sides of precipices, running through tunnels, and so tortuous as to form a hundred horseshoe loops. The road seemed almost a miracle of engineering. But the views were beautiful beyond description. It was Switzerland without its ruggedness. It was Italy on the southern side of the Alps, as "Philip van Artevelde" best describes it:

Sublime, but neither bleak nor bare
Nor misty, are the mountains there;
Softly sublime, profusely fair;
Up to their summits clothed in green,
And fruitful as the vales between,
They lightly rise
And scale the skies,
And groves and gardens still abound,
For where no shoot
Can else take root,
The peaks are shelved and terraced round.

I am inclined to think that, of all the beautiful railway rides I have ever taken, this was the finest. From the rice-fields of the plains we passed upward through endless tea-plantations, where every inch of soil was preserved and utilized by the construction of artificial terraces. In the midst of these plantations, rubber trees were set at intervals. There were many instances when we looked down from our airy perch, on the edge of a precipice, at least a thousand feet, and saw ourselves on the side of a veritable amphitheater of mountains towering a thousand feet above us and covered with rows of tea-plants from the bottom to the top. This amphitheater was often two miles across, every foot of the ground minutely cultivated and a perfect sea of verdure. But, as we went up, the palm gave place to the pine; cold succeeded to heat; and to be at all comfortable at our hotel we were obliged to order fire in our rooms.