TWO YEARS IN INDIA; 
 
 OR, 
 
 SOME MISSIONARY LESSONS, AND 
 HOW THEY WERE LEARNED. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. OKO. W. ISHAM, 
 
 OF THE NEBRASKA CONFERENCE. 
 
 CINCINNATI : 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY CRANSTON & CURTS, 
 1893.
 
 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE CHURCH. 
 
 "Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth 
 the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, 
 and strengthen thy stakes ; for thou shalt break forth on the 
 right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the 
 Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited." 
 
 ISA. LIV, 2. 3. 
 
 Copyright 
 
 BY CEO. W. ISHAM. 
 1895.
 
 ANNEX 
 
 6V - 
 
 3269 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE greatest need of the Church, aside from 
 its constant spiritual awakening from on 
 high, is information from the fields beyond. If 
 it were possible to let the disciples of Jesus in 
 Christian lands see the need of their brethren 
 in heathenism, and to know the power of the 
 gospel to deliver them from the strongholds of 
 evil, in whose bonds they are helpless, mission- 
 ary going and giving would be increased many 
 fold. 
 
 The information needed is many-sided, re- 
 quiring fullness of detail; and it seems that 
 missionaries and their home authorities have 
 been so absorbed in the work at the front, that 
 they have been unable to so inform the great 
 body of Church members as to keep them sym- 
 pathetically enlisted with them. It has often 
 seemed to the writer that if the people at home 
 were better acquainted with the missionaries 
 they are supporting, and knew more of their
 
 4 PREFACE. 
 
 experiences and toils, they would more vividly 
 realize that the present missionary movement 
 is not an enterprise undertaken by a mere 
 handful of enthusiasts, which they are called to 
 help, more for charity's sake than for any other 
 reason; but would see that it is a forward 
 movement of the whole Church, widening the 
 circumference of evangelism; and that the mis- 
 sionaries are our sent agents, who can win us 
 victories only as we furnish them the sinews of 
 war. It is the purpose of this little book to 
 take the reader through two years of mission- 
 ary experience, and let him learn some of the 
 lessons those two years taught, in the hope that 
 practical missionary devotion, expressed in ear- 
 nest prayer and sacrifice to give, may be ; to 
 
 some extent, increased. 
 
 G. w. L 
 FAIRBURY, NEBRASKA, January, 25, 1893.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. EXPERIENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAOE 
 THE CAI.I, AND PREPARATION 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE TRIP 13 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS, 40 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 AT WORK 58 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 A LETTER FROM THE FIELD 65 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 AN IMPORTANT EVENT, 75 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 MOVING FORWARD, 84 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE SECOND YEAR 90 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE ENGUSH WORK, 101 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DIVERSIONS, 108 
 
 5
 
 6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PACK. 
 
 CONQUERED BY BROKEN HEALTH 118 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 HOMEWARD TRAVELS, 133 
 
 PART II. MISSIONARY LESSONS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. , 
 THE WORK AND ITS MAGNITUDE, 148 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 PERVERSIONS OF PAGANISM 156 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 PERVERSION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS 167 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 WOMEN IN PAGANISM 173 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE CONSERVATISM OF PAGANISM 179 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 BENEFITS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 185 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 HINDRANCES FROM CHRISTIAN LANDS, 191 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE GOSPEL THE ONLY HOPE 200 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF STEWARDSHIP 210
 
 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 PART 1. EXPERIENCE. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 THE CALL AND PREPARATION TO GO. 
 
 AT the session of the Nebraska Annual Con- 
 ference held in St. Paul's Church, Lincoln, 
 in the fall of 1887, Bishop J. M. Thoburn then 
 Dr. Thoburn was present on Sunday, and spoke 
 at night on India and his eventful experience as 
 a missionary there. I suppose I was not- differ- 
 ently nor more deeply affected by what he said 
 than were others. No one can hear Bishop 
 Thoburn speak without being impressed with 
 the simple grace and directness of his style, 
 his entire freedom from conceits and affectation 
 of every sort ; and his masterly grasp and mar- 
 shaling of the leading facts of the missionary 
 situation must furnish any true Christian who 
 hears him the basis of a permanent missionary 
 inspiration. But we were so situated at the time 
 that we could go at once. And when the 
 
 7
 
 8 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 speaker, in closing, said, " Perhaps the call to go 
 comes to some of you young men here to-night. 
 If it does not, do not think of going ; but if it 
 does come, go; and God will be with you," I 
 felt strangely moved. And when I came to my- 
 self, I found that I was fighting my own convic- 
 tions by saying over and over to myself: " It 
 does not come to me. It does not come to me." 
 I had just before this Conference been 
 through an unusual season of religious refresh- 
 ing, and had learned the beginning of what it 
 means to be entirely consecrated to God, and to 
 definitely receive the Holy Spirit as an indwell- 
 ing Master, and to be led by him in all things, 
 only, however, according to the spirit and the let- 
 ter of God's Word. So that, when I found myself 
 inwardly resisting the sense of duty, I was con- 
 vinced I was resisting the Spirit's call, and at 
 once surrendered to go this provided, of course, 
 that my wife was of the same mind ; for I do 
 not believe that God calls the husband and not 
 the wife, nor vice versa. He might call them to 
 a work that would require them to separate in 
 order to accomplish it ; but if they were both in 
 communion with him, they would both be con- 
 vinced of his will, and reconciled to do it. They 
 would both see that it was the highest duty, and 
 would make whatever of sacrifice it involved, 
 gladly, for Jesus sake!
 
 THE CALL AND PREPARATION TO Go. g 
 
 I went home to York, Nebraska, on Monday 
 after the Conference; and, after chatting awhile, 
 I told my wife some of the things that Bishop 
 Thoburn had said in his address, and of the 
 needed missionaries for India. I said nothing to 
 her of my own convictions ; and, to my surprise, 
 she came to me an hour or two after, and pro- 
 posed that we offer ourselves to go. We settled 
 to do so, and sent our application at once to the 
 Missionary Board. While we were awaiting our 
 acceptance, we went to Weeping Water, Ne- 
 braska, our appointment, and began work. 
 
 I had been teaching in the York College the 
 year previous; but during the summer we had 
 decided to permanently retire from educational 
 work, and enter directly the work of the minis- 
 try, as God and the Church should direct. So, 
 excepting our household effects, we were all 
 sold out and ready to go anywhere. After Con- 
 ference, we were so certain we were going to 
 India, simply because God was leading that way, 
 that we sold our furniture and everything we 
 could not take with us, at once, and before we 
 were formally accepted by the Board. 
 
 It was about five weeks after Conference be- 
 fore we received the word which made us for- 
 eign missionaries. These five weeks were full 
 of temptation and trial to us. Our relatives used 
 every influence of ridicule, argument, and af-
 
 io Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 fectionate persuasion to overcome our convic- 
 tions. And some well-meaning friends were 
 sure we were forfeiting the most flattering pros- 
 pects of usefulness and honor in the Church by 
 our, to them, " inexplicable move." But none 
 of these influences changed the fact of our con- 
 viction that God called us to go. Again and 
 again my good wife said : " I feel that there is 
 but one thing for us to do. I feel that we could 
 not succeed in any work in this country. We 
 must go." For my own part, I felt that to yield 
 to the persuasions of loved ones against our con- 
 victions which were according to God's Word, 
 and were always strengthened by communion 
 with God in prayer was to give to human re- 
 lationships a higher authority than to the Di- 
 vine; was to obey man rather than God. Still 
 there were some who encouraged ns to do what 
 we felt was God's wjll, and some urged us to go. 
 These friends helped us greatly. And so the 
 days went by ; and at last a letter came from Dr. 
 J. M. Reid then corresponding secretary of the 
 Missionary Society stating that we were ap- 
 pointed, and that our passage had been arranged 
 for by the Anchor Line Steamship Company, to 
 sail in twelve days. 
 
 Mrs. Isham went at once to visit with loved 
 ones in Indiana, while I got our affairs in order, 
 packed our boxes, and closed up our work in
 
 THE CALL AND PREPARATION TO Go. n 
 
 Weeping Water. I expressed our goods to New 
 York, because the time was too short for them to 
 go by freight, and hurried on to join my family 
 en route. An insignificant affair occurred the 
 morning we left the old home at Liberty, Indi- 
 ana, for New York, which shows so clearly that 
 the leadership of the Holy Spirit does not save 
 one from mistakes nor render it unnecessary that 
 he should have his wits about him and use his 
 God-given cotnmon sense, that I take the space 
 to tell it. We started from Liberty on our long 
 journey nearly half-way round the world. We 
 were '"in all haste to get to New York. We 
 changed cars at Hamilton, Ohio. The road by 
 which we were to go branches just after leaving 
 Hamilton, one branch going to Chicago, and the 
 other toward New York. The trains came in near 
 together. The Chicago train came first. Though 
 it was not quite time yet for our train, I got us 
 all aboard it without a question. The conductor 
 did not come through till we were well out of 
 Hamilton, and our train would be gone before 
 we could get back. We had a wait of four hours 
 at a station called Seven Mile, and were delayed 
 twenty-four hours. The Spirit leads us in the 
 high realms of conviction and spiritual enlight- 
 enment; but an ordinary man has sense enough, 
 if he will only use it, to inquire the destination 
 of a train before he boards it. Fortunately, how-
 
 12 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 ever, our ship did not sail as soon as we ex- 
 pected, and we had nearly two days with friends 
 in the city; Saturday evening we boarded the 
 Anchor Line steamship Devonia\ and, amid the 
 noise and disorder of lading and final prepara- 
 tion, we endured and enjoyed what Bishop Tho- 
 burn told us was the beginning of missionary 
 life. The bishop suggested that our experience 
 would begin in earnest when we came to the 
 luxury of seasickness.
 
 Chapter II. 
 THE TRIP. 
 
 A LANDLUBBER often has many dreamy 
 notions of the delight and luxury connected 
 with a steamship passage across the Atlantic. 
 But there was nothing of the kind in -our No- 
 vember voyage. We sailed to Glasgow, and 
 were told nine days would see us anchored in 
 the Clyde ; but our ship did not reach the Glas- 
 gow docks till the morning of the thirteenth day. 
 The storms provided entertainmen from which 
 our good ship could not withdraw for four days. 
 Perhaps a brief description of the trip in general 
 will be interesting. 
 
 All the Saturday night after we went aboard 
 the most terrific noise was kept up by the 
 lading machinery, the thumping of boxes, the 
 shouting of the dock men, and the hurried 
 tramping overhead. In spite of it all, however, 
 we were soundly sleeping, when, at about three 
 o'clock in the morning, the steward awakened 
 us with the shout: "We are about to sail!" 
 We went on deck ; saw them remove the gang- 
 planks, unfasten the hawsers, and, amid the 
 noise of hurrying preparation and the hoarse 
 
 13
 
 14 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 shouts of the sailors calling their commands 
 from one to another, the steam was turned on ; 
 a concert of roar and hiss and sizzle came from 
 below, and our ship began to move and tremble 
 and creak like a great sphere about to burst by 
 the pressure of its own inward forces. 
 
 As we moved farther out, toward the open 
 sea, the scene became to me very impressive : 
 with the splendid array of lights along the shore 
 behind us ; the far-stretching sea of darkness 
 before us, illumined by a single yet resplendent 
 light that held aloft by the Statue of Liberty 
 on Bedloe's Island. The scene was so suggest- 
 ive of the life we imagined we were entering 
 upon : all the multitude of lights of the beau- 
 tiful life and civilization of America left behind 
 us, the darkness of heathenism before, and 
 Jesus the only Star of Liberty to enlighten 
 the gloom ! When I sail out of New York 
 harbor again, I shall have more sense than to 
 imagine such unreal likenesses. For the fact 
 is, when one sets out to be a missionary, he at 
 once puts himself in direct touch with the high- 
 est and best enlightenment, culture, and civil- 
 ization on the face of the earth. He goes, taking 
 his civilization with him, and his companions 
 and associates are the leaders in the world's 
 civilization. There are also far more of the 
 facilities and conveniences of Western civiliza-
 
 THE TRIP. 15 
 
 tion in India than Americans, as a .rule, im- 
 agine. 
 
 From such meditations, however, we were 
 awakened by the shouts of the sailors, who were 
 rigging the sails, crying, "Heave-ho! heave!" 
 for well we knew that we passengers would be 
 giving unwilling obedience, shortly, in a man- 
 ner unthought of by them. Sunday was a 
 beautiful day\ The sea was quiet, and none of 
 our party were sick. By Monday noon we had 
 gone three hundred and fourteen miles. This 
 day was also fair ; but the wind was pretty 
 strong, the sea roughened in the afternoon, 
 Neptune levied tribute on me, and I showed 
 what I had in me. Tuesday morning was fair, 
 and the sea smooth, and we all felt well. We 
 made two hundred and eighty-eight miles from 
 noon Monday to noon Tuesday. r In the after- 
 noon the weather became heavy. A terrific 
 gale of a head-wind set in; the anger of the 
 sea increased, till our old ship rolled and plunged 
 beyond all description. The ship did not un- 
 lade, but the passengers tried to give up even 
 more than they had. I think we would have 
 cast our immortal souls into the sea, had it been 
 possible. In penance and anguish that we had 
 ever eaten anything, we refused to be nourished 
 or dressed on Wednesday ; but spent the long, 
 tempestuous hours trying to let ourselves down
 
 1 6 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 easily, fir<st on one and then on the other side 
 of the berth, as the waves tossed our ship 
 about. 
 
 As soon as the sea became rough, a collec- 
 tion-pan was fastened to the side of each berth, 
 about a foot below the pillow. A most unkind 
 arrangement, for the thing acts like a stomach- 
 pump ! Wednesday was a very hard day, and 
 we made but two hundred and forty-six miles. 
 Thursday morning was a little better, and some 
 of our party began to crawl out to see what was 
 left of us ; but no member of our family could 
 go to the table. We toned up on Liebig's 
 chicken-broth and beef-extract. Thursday's log 
 was two hundred and thirty-eight miles. Fri- 
 day morning every one was better, and out on 
 deck. The weather was favorable, with a strong 
 north wind. We made three hundred miles 
 schedule speed for the Devonia. Saturday re- 
 peated Friday's experience and speed. Satur- 
 day night the weather became heavy again ; 
 still, we made three hundred miles to Sunday 
 noon. I was to have preached on Sunday morn- 
 ing, but seasickness .set in again with the rough 
 weather; and my second attack lasted three days, 
 and was much severer than the first. The ship 
 had a hard trial in this storm. We made but 
 two hundred and thirty-five miles from Sunday 
 to Monday noon, and but one hundred and
 
 THE TRIP 17 
 
 eighty-one miles from Monday to Tuesday noon. 
 The sailors called it a "stiff gale," and the cap- 
 tain's face wore an expression of extreme anx- 
 iety. Monday night the storm was so fierce 
 that the engines were shut down, and the ship 
 given over to the mercy of the wind and waves. 
 The ship rolled and pitched till one had all he 
 could do to stay in his berth. The seamen un- 
 furled a sail, thinking thereby to steady the 
 ship somewhat ; but when the wind got hold of 
 it, it tore it to strings. One can imagine some- 
 thing of the force of the wind when he remem- 
 bers that these sails are made of the very 
 strongest canvas. The waves ran so high and 
 with such force as to stave in a lifeboat sus- 
 pended above the hurricane-deck. The wind 
 blew sixty or seventy miles an hour. The sea 
 presented a scene so terrifically grand that no 
 one short of genius would attempt to describe 
 it. The waves seemed like mountains chasing 
 one another. It seemed that square miles of 
 the sea were being lifted to the skies in a body; 
 and everywhere on the surface the waves ran 
 together, and crests were bursting, producing 
 the wildest scene of flying spray and dancing 
 foam. 
 
 There was one, to me, supreme moment in 
 this storm. It was about midnight, Monday. 
 The machinery except the pumps was still.
 
 i8 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 The wind and the waves handled our ship as 
 though it were a bubble. The heavy waves 
 thundered on the deck above, the hungry yawn 
 of the sea could be distinctly heard, now and 
 then the shrill scream of the seagull sounded 
 like a note of despair, we had eaten consider- 
 ably less than nothing for three days, and the 
 dull thumping of the pumps below suggested a 
 sinking ship. The darkness was intense. In 
 the midst of such surroundings, I came from a 
 sick sleep to semi-consciousness, and for a mo- 
 ment I was seized with indescribable terror. 
 Just then, above the weird din of the tempest, 
 rang out the strong, clear voice of the faithful 
 watchman : " All 's well !" This entirely awak- 
 ened me ; and, taking it as a word both of the 
 watchman and the Faithful Father by whose 
 leading we were there the sweet peace of a 
 steady trust filled my mind, and I prayed : 
 "O Father, in the midst of every storm of life, 
 may I hear, above all else, thy Spirit's word, 
 'All's well! all's well!"* 
 
 Wednesday the weather became respectable 
 again. We made our first landing that night 
 at Moville, Ireland. Thursday morning we were 
 skirting the north coast of Ireland. About us 
 were islands in every direction. The scenery 
 about the approaches to the Clyde is exceed- 
 ingly picturesque. Unfortunately for us, No-
 
 THE TRIP. ig 
 
 vember is a foggy month in those parts, and our 
 view was not at all satisfactory. 
 
 We reached Greenock, at the mouth of the 
 Clyde, in the afternoon ; and, as our ship could 
 not ascend to Glasgow till the tide rose,, we 
 went ashore on a tug, and went up by rail. 
 We were much disappointed not to be able to 
 ascend the river in daylight, for the scenery is 
 said to be superb. Our landing was not at all 
 an enjoyable affair. Very strict precautions were 
 being taken at the time to prevent the landing 
 of dynamiters and infernal machines. The in- 
 spection of our baggage was very minute, and 
 we were detained on deck, exposed to the raw 
 Scotch wind and a drizzling rain. The whole 
 family contracted heavy colds. One rarely 
 takes cold at sea, but it is difficult to land in cold 
 weather without doing so. 
 
 We reached Glasgow about seven o'clock ; 
 and were glad indeed to be once m6re on solid 
 ground, and to sit down before a grate-fire, in 
 our neat and cozy room in the Hotel Cockburn 
 (Coburn). The entire missionary party dined 
 together at 8 P. M., and I am sure I never rel- 
 ished food more in my life than then. The 
 food was no better, nor was it better prepared, 
 nor was the service more costly, nor the attend- 
 ance more elaborate and polite, than we would 
 find in any good hotel in America ; but a con-
 
 20 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 valescent from six days' of violent seasickness 
 has, on landing, an appetite so supremely potent 
 that differences in character and flavor of food 
 are of slight consequence to him. In one of 
 my classes as a teacher, once, a tall, hungry- 
 looking boy defined appetite as " an eternal de- 
 sire for food " (the text-book said " internal "). 
 And it seemed to me the boy was not far wrong 
 in our particular case at that time. It was so 
 with each member of the party. I remember 
 to have frequently gone out, right after dinner 
 or some other meal, to the baker's and fruit- 
 stands, and come in loaded with sacks of buns, 
 apples, and such things, to tide us over to the 
 next meal. 
 
 Our missionary party across the Atlantic 
 numbered fifteen, including the children : B. F. 
 West, M. D., of Iowa, wife, and two children, 
 bound for Singap6re. Dr. West is still in the 
 field, a successful missionary in Malaysia. Rev. 
 E. F. Frease, of Ohio, wife, and baby girl. 
 Brother Frease went out as pastor of the Fort 
 Methodist Episcopal Church in Bombay, but 
 has since become a successful missionary to the 
 Gujarati people 'at Baroda, north of Bombay, 
 where he is now stationed. Rev. A. E. Winter 
 fcnd wife, of Ohio, went subject to appointment 
 on arrival. They were sent to Bellary, a sta- 
 tion in the Deccan. Mr. Winter's health was
 
 THE TRIP. 21 
 
 not good long after arriving in India ; and a 
 little over a year later, his heroic wife was 
 seized by a violent attack of black measles, and 
 died in two days. Mr. Winter, shattered in 
 health and overwhelmed with grief, returned to 
 America. Miss Anna Thompson, of Ohio, a 
 sister of Mrs. Frease, went out, not under ap- 
 pointment, but to enter the work, and has since 
 become a regular Woman's Foreign Missionary 
 Society missionary, working in Bombay. Miss 
 Ada Proctor, of Illinois, went to India to become 
 the wife of the Rev. Dr. Butcher, our mission- 
 ary then at Moradabad. The morning after our 
 arrival in Bombay we had the pleasure of at- 
 tending the wedding. Dr. and Mrs. Butcher 
 are still in the field. Miss M. E. Files, of New 
 York, went out under the Woman's Foreign 
 Missionary Society. She labored faithfully four 
 years in Rangoon, Burmah, And came home in 
 shattered health. Besides these, the writer, his 
 wife, and baby girl, completed the number. 
 
 I was impressed with one thing in associ- 
 ating with these yokefellows, and that is, that 
 missionaries are not materially different from 
 common Christian humanity. They are just as 
 likely to have narrow prejudices and foibles of 
 weakness as other Christians ; and, as I learned 
 afterward, are just as likely to make spiritual 
 shipwreck in the storms of temptation which
 
 22 Tiro YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 assail them. There is no calling nor life on 
 earth where we do not have to " watch and 
 pray," and work out our salvation with fear and 
 trembling. But taken as a whole, the party 
 has so far proven an exceptionally good one. 
 None have brought disgrace upon the cause in 
 any way ; but one died ; and but three so lost 
 their health as to be compelled to return home, 
 and these, it is likely, will all return again to 
 the work. Having described the party, I now 
 return to the trip. 
 
 Off Greenock, in the harbor, we saw the 
 Great Eastern at anchor. She no longer goes 
 to sea ; and the only revenue derived from her 
 conies from running summer excursions down 
 the Clyde, and charging a shilling to look her 
 over. There, too, we saw Ajax, the largest 
 British man-of-war, plated with ten-inch steel, 
 and seemingly able to go through almost any- 
 thing without harm. 
 
 We were surprised at the politeness of the 
 porters, baggage-carriers, and cab-drivers every- 
 where. On landing, one of them came near, 
 bowed, stood at a respectful distance, and offered 
 his services. As we needed him to carry lug- 
 gage and show us the way, I engaged him. He 
 carried our two heavy satchels a quarter of a 
 mile, showed us to an apartment in the car, po- 
 litely answered all our questions ; and when I
 
 THE TRIP. 23 
 
 asked him his bill, he said, "What you please, 
 sir." I paid him a shilling (24 cents), and he 
 seemed much pleased. Americans, when they 
 first land, pay more than these servants would 
 charge ; so it pays them to trust to our generos- 
 ity. But when one learns that he is expected 
 to tip everybody that in any way helps on his 
 existence and plans, he becomes necessarily 
 more conservative. These porters and railway 
 attendants will go to any amount of trouble for 
 you, never complain or speak short, treat one 
 just as well when he rides third class as when 
 he goes first class, and thankfully receive any 
 little offer he is pleased to make them. 
 
 In picturing the appearance of the towns and 
 cities of the Old World, one will be helped by 
 remembering that they were built before the 
 days of fourteen-story buildings and modern im- 
 provements. Hence, the buildings are seldom 
 over three stories high ; and, in most hotels, the 
 water in your room is carried there by hand, 
 and your light is a tallow candle this, too, in 
 the best hotels even in London. 
 
 The scene that greeted us when we looked 
 from our hotel window over the tops of the 
 houses was amusing at first sight; the chim- 
 ney-stacks are so numerous ! There are often 
 eight or ten abreast on the edge of a flat roof, 
 not over six inches or a foot apart, thirty or
 
 24 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 forty on a single housetop. They are from two 
 to three feet high, and one can hardly imagine 
 what a wilderness of them the housetops of a city 
 present. Stone and yellow or brown brick 
 are the only building materials used. The 
 streets are stone, the sidewalks stone, the houses 
 stone stone everywhere, everything stone. 
 Glasgow is a drab city smoky and drab, aged, 
 hoary, buried in gloom and haze and fog. But 
 inside the houses and shops, everything is hale 
 and cheery. The Scotch are hearty-looking, 
 ruddy-faced, and sparkling-eyed. The children 
 play in Glasgow shout and run and laugh 
 have rosy cheeks, and look like rogues of fun 
 and mischief. Even the ragged children play 
 and seem happy. 
 
 We were in Glasgow two days, when, finding 
 we had a week yet before we could sail from 
 Liverpool, we started for London. We made 
 the trip in daylight, Saturday, right through the 
 heart of England. It was a delightful ride. I 
 was surprised that we did not stop so often as 
 trains do in America. The villages are not more 
 than two or three miles apart ; but the through 
 trains stop only every twenty-five miles, on an 
 average. The villages, as a rule, are small, 
 often consisting of a single row of houses built 
 together, and precisely alike. The station- 
 houses are very fine, being built of red granite,
 
 % THE TRIP. 25 
 
 and having wide and commodious platforms 
 under cover. They are modern-looking, and 
 quite ornamental. I did not see a frame build- 
 ing, of any kind, anywhere in Great Britain. 
 
 There is much more country, and less vil- 
 lage and town, in England than one is likely to 
 think. There are no spreading, mile-square 
 villages of one hundred people, as are so often 
 seen in America. A village of a hundred peo- 
 ple occupies about as much space as an Amer- 
 ican fanner usually allots to his home and barn 
 premises. Some of these villages look like 
 barn, rather than home, premises. But usually 
 they are tidy and homelike. The scenery every- 
 where is restful and inviting. The country is 
 quite broken, and every nook and corner is cul- 
 tivated like a garden. Fields, strewn with 
 turnips as large as Dutch cheeses; flocks of 
 sheep, feeding in green meadows; men, plow, 
 ing with four large horses, tandem ; a village 
 here and there; an occasional ivy-mantled 
 tower; an old-fashioned windmill; palatial 
 country residences; here a timid glen, with the 
 thread of a waterfall playing at hide-and-seek 
 among the rocks and moss; and huge oaks and 
 elms, 
 
 "That wreathe their old fantastic roots so high,"- 
 make up the picture of an English landscape.
 
 26 Ttt'o YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 The day passed quickly and delightfully, and 
 at half-past seven in the evening we were in a 
 room ten feet square, in the Arundel Hotel, in 
 the heart of the greatest city in the world. Sab- 
 bath was our first day in London, and I went to 
 St. Paul's Cathedral, the largest and most mag- 
 nificent edifice of all Protestantism. I guessed 
 the dome to be two hundred feet in circumfer- 
 ence on the interior. At intervals there are 
 panels on the inside bf the dome to receive 
 paintings of sacred scenes and persons. But 
 they are, for the most part, blank. Portraits of 
 Peter, Matthew, and of one or two other of the 
 disciples, adorn the only panels yet in use. 
 There are also many niches for busts and stat- 
 ues which are unoccupied. One is surrounded, 
 though, by superb statues of England's greatest 
 Churchmen, warriors, and statesmen. The mar- 
 ble steps leading to the main entrance are the ' 
 length of half a square in an American town. 
 The service was long, formal, and flat; and the 
 giant stone pillars, vast arches, and stretching 
 wastes of stone floor chill one in winter time. 
 I was glad to find myself again at the hotel, 
 greeted by the promising odor of the coming 
 luncheon. 
 
 In the afternoon we went to Westminster 
 Abbey. We were compelled to take our baby,
 
 THE TRIP. 27 
 
 Anna, with us. She attracted so much atten- 
 tion not because she was noisy, but because 
 she was a babe in the Abbey that we did not 
 stay to the service. The English never take 
 children of such tender years to church, and 
 nothing seems more out of place to them. In 
 the evening the gentlemen of the party attended 
 services in a Wesleyan chapel on Queen's 
 Street. The sermon was on the Prodigal Son. 
 It was not eloquent, nor striking; but it was 
 long. There was a large attendance, and evi- 
 dently great earnestness among the worshipers. 
 On one side, seated together, were as many as 
 one hundred boys, averaging thirteen years of 
 age, I judged. They were under the care of a 
 gentleman, who sat in their midst. They were 
 the best behaved company of boys of that age 
 I have ever seen. A work of this sort could 
 be done, by the right persons, in most Churches 
 of two hundred or more members in America, 
 with the best results both to the boys and to 
 the hurches. One reason our boys do not go 
 to Church is because they are not taught and 
 organized to go. At the close of the sermon a 
 very good prayer-meeting was held. The 
 preacher started it, and then turned it over to 
 a local preacher or exhorter. The meeting's 
 purpose was to lead souls to accept Christ, and
 
 28 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 it was not unlike Methodist after-meetings in 
 America. It was very enthusiastic, being par- 
 ticipated in chiefly by young men. 
 
 When we reached the hotel we found our 
 wives famishing, which reminded us that we, 
 too, were unable to go till morning without 
 food. We went out in a body to get oysters. 
 We found a place on the great street called 
 " The Strand." When one of us ordered eight 
 milk-stews, the man said: "Height w'at?" We 
 found that milk-stews, like many other dishes, 
 are peculiar to America. We explained our 
 desires, and ihe oysters were finally served. 
 But they were very small not larger than small 
 hickory-nuts. We began to realize that the 
 days of Baltimore "selects" were over with us 
 for awhile. They cost, too, more than good 
 oysters do in the Mississippi Valley, and we had 
 to pay extra for the crackers, etc. 
 
 On Monday we found a private boarding- 
 place, where we had more room and better ac- 
 commodations every way than in the hotel. 
 We got moved and settled, and in communica- 
 tion with the steamship company's office, and 
 were free to use the balance of our delay sight- 
 seeing. 
 
 Tuesday we visited the British Museum, and 
 lost ourselves for the day in that world of an- 
 tiquities and curiosities. It contains the his-
 
 THE TRIP. 29 
 
 tory of the world on many lines : Of its art in 
 paintings and sculpture ; of its literature in 
 ancient inscriptions, rolls, and manuscripts ; of 
 its governments in signets, coins, and seals ; 
 of its religions in images, mummies, and sa- 
 cred writings ; of its decay in tombs, coffins, 
 and the general dilapidation of all that remains 
 of some of earth's greatest names and nations. 
 The 'seal of King Darius, which sealed Daniel 
 in the lion's den; the mummy of Cleopatra; 
 the original parchment of Magnet Charta; the 
 contract for the sale of "Paradise Lost;" the 
 Will of Mary Queen of Scots; Wycliffe's trans- 
 lation of the Bible; Csedmon's paraphrase ; He- 
 brew Scriptures, on rolls of goat-skin; the 
 Arabic Koran of Mohammed, also on goat 
 skins; and an endless multitude of similar and 
 dissimilar objects, interest and bewilder and 
 weary one before he is half through. 
 
 Wednesday we visited the "Zoo" as they 
 say in London, when they mean the Zoological 
 Gardens which contains by far the largest and 
 finest collection of animals in the world. It 
 takes a whole day to wander through its many 
 buildings, and one is wearied with the constant 
 change and surprise. 
 
 Thursday we "did" Westminster Abbey. 
 The beadle, who was our guide, pointed out to 
 us the resting-places of a multitude of royal
 
 30 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 personages. He practiced the usual English 
 boycott and dislocation of the letter //, and the 
 solemn grandeur of the ancient pile, and the 
 sacred ashes of departed royalty, were not suffi- 
 cient to prevent our amusement from becoming 
 audible, when our venerable guide struck the 
 floor with his cane, and declaimed, in stentorian 
 tones: "Hunder this hancient halabaster slab 
 rest the hashes of the hinfant Hedward!" Be- 
 sides the deceased of the royal family, there rest 
 here the remains of noble persons without num- 
 ber, of a few literary lights, and of not a few 
 great warriors and statesmen. There are not 
 nearly so many tombs and memorials of literary 
 persons as I had supposed. The bust of our 
 own poet Longfellow is given a prominent place 
 by his English admirers; but aside from him, 
 no American is represented. The Abbey is 
 somber and stately, and one of meditative mind 
 would want to linger long among its aisles and 
 chapels and ancient tombs ; but a practical 
 American regards it as a stately graveyard, and 
 is glad to return to the busy life of the great 
 city. 
 
 We wore ourselves out, Friday, visiting Lon- 
 don Tower and South Kensington Museum. 
 One must write a book to describe the Tower, 
 and volumes to catalogue the Museum. The 
 former was once the home^of the English court.
 
 THE TRIP. 31 
 
 It was built by William the Conqueror, but was 
 much enlarged and elaborated after his time. 
 The inclosure is quadrangular, surrounded by 
 massive walls, which are surmounted by towers. 
 To enter, one passes through the iron gateway 
 of one of the towers of this outer wall, across 
 the deep and now dry moat, and from thence 
 into the outer circle of buildings, which are 
 towers to the inner wall. There are a number 
 of these buildings facing the central inclosure. 
 They are solid, massive, and gloomy, and were 
 used for States-prisons and as residences for the 
 courtiers who were nearest the royal person. 
 The prison-towers are dreadful. One involun- 
 tarily shudders as the creaking iron doors close 
 behind him, and he remembers that the very 
 steps of deep-worn stone that he is ascending 
 have borne the trembling feet of martyrs and the 
 innocent victims of royal crime, as well as the 
 firm step of confident persecutors, and the cring- 
 ing weight of assassins like Richard of Gloucester. 
 In these gloomy cells the sighs and tears and 
 prayers of saintly heroes have been known to 
 God alone. In this circular apartment hun- 
 dreds have been racked and pinched and tor- 
 tured in a thousand nameless ways, and all for 
 no other offense than fidelity to the truth which 
 the world can not receive. And here is the cell 
 of the doomed. One is forced to crawl to get
 
 32 . Two YEARS JN INDIA. 
 
 into it. It is little more than large enough to 
 turn around in, and as dark as Egyptian mid- 
 night. Latimer and Ridley were crowded in 
 here, and a long list of others have found this 
 the dark vestibule to eternity. On the walls of 
 the common cells are many inscriptions, 'cut 
 there by the prisoners of different centuries. 
 The oldest is dated 1345. They are mostly in 
 Latin, and are illustrated by the carving of the 
 dove, and other Christian symbols. One in- 
 scription, translated, reads: "They who suffer 
 most for Christ's sake in this life, glory most 
 with him in the life to come." Within this 
 inner wall of buildings are spacious grounds, 
 which were once the king's gardens and walks. 
 They are now used as parade and drill grounds 
 for the soldiers. In the center stands the White 
 Hall Palace, the ancient royal home. It is now 
 used as an armory and jewel-house, where the 
 crown-jewels are kept. This jewel-house is the 
 room occupied by Henry VI during his long 
 captivity through the reign of Edward IV. 
 Under a great glass cover, at least ten feet in 
 diameter, and surrounded by a strong and high 
 iron fencing, the crowns of the different sover- 
 eigns from away back are kept. They are built 
 up into a pyramid, surmounted by Victoria's 
 crown, the largest and richest of them all. It 
 is needless to say that this room is well guarded.
 
 THE TRIP. 33 
 
 The armory contains a vast collection of armor 
 and arms of all times and countries: goat-skin 
 shields of the barbarians ; chain-armor of Japan, 
 China, and the Islands of the Sea; armor of the 
 Crusaders ; and steel armor so perfect and com- 
 plete that one could not be hurt by any art of 
 war known at the time it was used. There is 
 also a great display of horse-armor, all mounted 
 on frames, and looking so lifelike that one al- 
 most feels himself in the presence of a corps of 
 twelfth-century knights in line for the fray. 
 
 The South Kensington Museum is an exten- 
 sion of the British Museum, though it is ten 
 times as large, and much more elaborate every 
 way than the British Museum proper. One 
 could not see through all its apartments in a 
 week, if he were' at all careful to look at things 
 that attracted him. A month, at least, would 
 be required to.investigate it thoroughly, while a 
 student could spend months in a single depart- 
 ment. One of its buildings is occupied by the 
 Royal Albert Art Collection, one of the largest 
 and finest in the world. I regretted that we 
 could not spend a day more among these won- 
 derful collections; but our time was up, and on 
 Saturday morning we took the train for Liver- 
 pool, and resumed our long journey. 
 
 We reached Liverpool about three in the 
 afternoon, and found our ship waiting for us.
 
 34 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 We were soon aboard ; and were shortly joined 
 by the rest of the party, except Dr. West and 
 family, from whom we separated in London. 
 They went by another line to Singapore. But 
 a party of six missionaries of the Dutch Re- 
 formed Church joined us at Liverpool. These 
 were led by Dr. Chamberlain, who had been 
 twenty-five years in India. He had also made 
 extensive explorations in the Holy Land. He 
 afforded us all much pleasure and instruction 
 along the voyage. 
 
 We sailed at midnight, and Sabbath morning 
 found us suffering from seasickness again. The 
 weather was very bad in the Bay of Biscay. 
 We reached Gibraltar Friday afternoon, and 
 had four hours on shore while they were coaling 
 the ship. 
 
 Gibraltar rock is the end of a long, low point 
 of sand, running down into the sea. To the 
 landward from the rock it is so low that one 
 would fancy the sea could flow over it when 
 running high. The rock rises abruptly from 
 the sea to the height of fourteen hundred feet. 
 From the bay it looks like a huge lion, frown- 
 ing on the Continent of Europe; and when we 
 double the point, and swing out into the Medi- 
 terranean, and view it from the east, it looks 
 like two mighty leos one facing north and the 
 other south. The channel is ten miles wide at
 
 THE TRIP. 35 
 
 Gibraltar, but the English guns so sweep it as 
 to give them entire control of it. On shore is 
 an old Spanish town, with a Moorish castle, 
 and an English town of twenty thousand people. 
 The sides of the rock are fairly honeycombed 
 with batteries, and the artillery galleries are 
 among the finest in the world. The largest 
 guns weigh one hundred tons. 
 
 Saturday was beautiful, and we sailed all day 
 in full view of the dark flanks and snow crowns 
 of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Southern 
 Spain. We had fine weather all the time we 
 were on the Mediterranean. One morning we 
 saw two whales near by, spouting and steaming, 
 and lifting their huge tails ten or twelve feet in 
 the air. We passed Malta and Cyprus in the 
 night ; espied Cape Bon one morning, and 
 thought of Carthage and Hannibal and Regu- 
 lus and the long Punic Wars. 
 
 We were eight days on the Mediterranean; 
 and reached Port Said Sabbath morning, entered 
 the Suez Canal, and stopped for coal. Nearly 
 all the missionaries went ashore; but we had 
 scruples, and so did not go. We remained on 
 the ship, and watched the Egyptian Arabs fill 
 the tender with coal. It is a great sight. They 
 coal a ship quicker at Port Said than anywhere 
 else on earth. An officer of our ship told me he 
 had known of their putting eight hundred and
 
 4 
 
 36 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 fifty tons in a ship in two hours. An immense 
 coal-barge is towed alongside of the ship. Two 
 and sometimes four sets of gang-planks are 
 thrown across. Immediately the shovelers be- 
 gin filling large, pliable baskets, which hold 
 one hundred pounds each. These the carriers 
 take on the back, between the shoulders, and 
 trot away up the plank. Soon there are two 
 streams of one-hundred-pound loads, as closely 
 together as men can move on a trot, flowing 
 into the ship. They change men every fifteen 
 minutes; and while they were resting many of 
 them ate their breakfasts, which they had 
 brought with them in dirty rags. This meal 
 consisted at best of a rough, brown, unleavened, 
 puffy cake, about as large as a common dinner- 
 plate. They were two or three inches thick in 
 the middle, but made up of two thin crusts and 
 a hollow center. Some of them had pieces of 
 fish, which they put in this hollow, and with 
 onions made a meal ; but most of them had no 
 fish. They would break a hole in one side of 
 their cake, and fill it with water. Soon the twp 
 crusts became limp and separate; the feaster 
 would roll each of them about one or two 
 onions, and seem to relish them very much. 
 Often they do not have, time to finish before 
 they are called on again, and they tuck one roll 
 in a pocket or fold of their dirty clothes, and
 
 THE TRIP. 37 
 
 eat the other as they go with their loads. This 
 breakfast is eaten in the midst of dense clouds 
 of coal-dust, and without washing of face or 
 hands. As soon as their work is done, many 
 of them throw over their shoulders some old 
 blanket or coat, and lie down on the floor, or 
 edge of the barge, and go right to sleep in 
 the sun. 
 
 We spent Sunday in the Suez Canal, amid 
 scenes of the greatest interest. Millions of 
 pelicans waded in the shallow waters about the 
 north end of the canal. Here we cross a Jeru- 
 salem caravan-road at the ferry. Here is an 
 Arab village, and near it an immense dredging- 
 machine is deepening and broadening the canal. 
 A herd of seventy-five or a hundred camels 
 are laden with big baskets, which the Arabs 
 are filling with sand that has banked up along 
 the edge of the canal. These camels will carry 
 it back to the desert. Here comes a caravan 
 from Egypt to Jerusalem. And away the desert- 
 wastes stretch in every direction, in limitless 
 monotony, save for the enchanting illusion the 
 mirage whose lakes and cities and groves are 
 ever fleeing and melting away, and rising in 
 renewed splendor beyond. It was a charmed 
 day to us. 
 
 It is very expensive to keep this canal open, 
 and one can readily see why the old canal of
 
 38 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 the Ptolemys was so often abandoned and re- 
 opened. This, the first ship-canal in the world, 
 connected the Nile with the Red Sea, and was 
 at one time ninety-two miles long. It was con- 
 structed first by one of the Pharaohs, but merely 
 to convey water. Ptolemy Philadelphus first 
 enlarged it to a ship canal. It was abandoned 
 for a time, and the Emperor Trajan reopened 
 and lengthened it. After the fall of the Roman 
 Empire it again fell into disuse, until Omar, the 
 great Mohammedan, again reopened it, about 
 A. D. 600. Of course this old canal had noth- 
 ing more to do with the present than to forcibly 
 suggest it, though the part of it south of the 
 Bitter Lakes follows about the same course. 
 The sand is blown and washed in, and fills it 
 continually. The walls last but a short time, 
 and are continually being replaced. The toll 
 paid by our ship for this single passage was 
 about five thousand dollars. The amount is 
 determined partly by the tonnage of the ship, 
 partly by the weight of the cargo, and partly by 
 the number of passengers. The canal is eighty 
 miles long. 
 
 We stopped but a few minutes off Suez, at 
 the south end of the canal, Monday morning. 
 We spent the week in the Red Sea till Satur- 
 day night. The weather was hot, and, toward 
 the end of the week, boisterous. When we
 
 THE TRIP. 39 
 
 entered the Red Sea a double awning was 
 drawn over the passenger part of the ship, and 
 we spent most of the time on deck. Some of 
 us slept on deck, when there was not too much 
 wind and spray. We came out into the Arabian 
 Sea on Sunday morning, Christmas-day ; sighted 
 Aden in the distance, but did not stop. One 
 ^of the officers told us of an Irishman, who re- 
 marked, when he saw this sea town, surrounded 
 by its desolate and 'burning wastes: "And this 
 is Aden? Little wonther Mother Ave was dis- 
 continted ! Oi 'd ate anything to get out of such 
 a place !" After ten days more of varied experi- 
 ence, much storm and seasickness, we reached 
 Bombay, January 3, 1888.
 
 Chapter III. 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 WE were met on the ship by Revs. A. W. 
 Prautch ; J. E. Robinson, presiding elder 
 of the Bombay District; and Dr. Butcher, the 
 expectant bridegroom. . They gave us a hearty 
 welcome, and Brother Prautch helped us greatly 
 in landing. It is difficult for two persons who 
 can not understand each other, to keep from 
 raising the voice in the effort to be understood. 
 There were several missionaries, and Brother 
 Prautch was called here and there to help 
 them. Some of us tried to express our desires 
 to the native cartmen and coachmen without 
 the aid of an interpreter. At different times 
 the eye of some amused looker-on led me to 
 realize that I was throwing my arms in the 
 wildest fashion, and trying to out-yell a great 
 crowd of Coolies and Ghariwallahs. It was 
 raining very hard when we landed, an unusual 
 thing for Western India at that season of the 
 year. 
 
 We were taken to a hotel, which I suppose 
 was as good as the average in India, but which 
 seemed to us, like everything else, exceedingly 
 40
 
 * 
 
 I 
 
 i\ 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 41 
 
 filthy. The ground-floor looked and smelt like 
 a cow-stable; indeed, the whole city seemed to 
 us to be pervaded by such an odor. 
 
 When we were shown to our room, to our 
 surprise, our bed had no sheets, pillows, or 
 covers on it. We learned, on inquiry, that 
 travelers in India always furnish their own bed- 
 ding; and no one would think of using bed- 
 clothing in common use as in this country. 
 This is because of the prevalence of skin and 
 other diseases. Even when visiting a friend, 
 one takes his own bedding. We were in a 
 strait; for we had packed our bedding in large 
 boxes, which we could not well get at. But we 
 managed it some way, and retired, only to spend 
 a sorry night fighting bugs. Mrs. Isham had 
 never seen one of these pests, and I really did 
 not know what was annoying us; but we after- 
 ward learned that they are so common in India 
 that "bug" means bedbug, and one is so under- 
 stood when he uses the word. Other bugs are 
 properly called beetles. A gentleman said he 
 had often complained to his landlord of being 
 tormented by bugs at night, and finally the 
 landlord said: "Well, I don't know what can 
 be done. They are just as bad in my bed as 
 in yours!" And this was in one of the best 
 English hotels in Bombay. They can be kept 
 out only by the most constant care, even in
 
 42 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 private homes. I have frequently visited in 
 homes of well-to-do people, and seen them in 
 daylight, crawling on drawing-room furniture 
 and on the dress of the lady of the house. We 
 "spent but one unhappy night in the hotel, when 
 Dr. Salini Armstrong and her sister, of Ne- 
 braska, called, and invited us to share their 
 hospitality while we were detained in Bombay. 
 We gladly accepted, and could not have asked 
 for more comfortable and cleanly quarters and 
 Christian-like entertainment. 
 
 No one without experience can realize how 
 powerful and hurtful is the tropical sun. We 
 took every precaution, wore double hats, and 
 carried heavy double umbrellas; and yet, from 
 the first day, Mrs. Isham had sun-headaches, and 
 I had a sun-chill the second night after landing. 
 
 We were in Bombay more than three weeks, 
 waiting for the meeting of the South India Con- 
 ference. This was a time of the greatest trial 
 and temptation." We had nothing to do. The 
 missionaries were all very busy 'with their work, 
 closing up the year. As we were not going to 
 stay in Bombay, and the language would be 
 different where we were sent, it was useless to 
 begin the study of the language. We went 
 about sight-seeing, and studying the peoples, 
 their customs, and peculiar institutions, as well 
 as we could. Under the most favorable circum-
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 43 
 
 stances, the pressure of heathenism is very 
 heavy on the faith of the inexperienced mission- 
 ary. One feels so alone in the midst of these 
 vast crowds of heathen ! He feels that it is al- 
 most presumptuous for him to say that he has 
 the true faith, and all these surging thousands 
 are wrong. And then he feels so far away from 
 them. He can not speak their language; he can 
 not make them understand his signs, for their 
 gestures are so different from ours. Theirs are 
 graceful and expressive, and make ours seem 
 stiff and angular. And then, the looks of min- 
 gled suspicion, fear, and indifference from those 
 one wishes to help, the frauds he is such an easy 
 victim to, and a thousand other such experiences, 
 have a very cooling effect on his zeal, and rest 
 like mountain-weights upon his faith. It is a 
 new and entirely different experience in the life 
 of the missionary. He begins to realize how 
 many stays and props one has at home to 
 keep him on the way. The support of pastor 
 and brethren in the fellowship of the Church 
 the prevalence, authority, and popularity of 
 Christianity which give it the sweep of a 
 mighty current to carry one toward faith 
 and all such kindred helps, are at first very much 
 missed. But all this trial is exceedingly bene- 
 ficial. The missionary finds himself between 
 Jesus and heathenism, with all its woe and evil ;
 
 44 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 and, if he be a true Christian, he conies into a 
 much closer fellowship with the Savior than he 
 has ever known before. In the past he has 
 depended so much on the Church and its agen- 
 cies and fellowships ; now he must walk with 
 Christ alone in his spiritual life, and go between 
 Christ and his fellow-man in his life of minister- 
 ing. One of the weakest points in American 
 Christian character is this lack of independent 
 reliance upon the Savior. Unless we have 
 everything to our taste and everybody agree- 
 able, it is next to impossible for us to work and 
 rejoice ; and many of us can do nothing, except 
 when wrought up through some sensational 
 means. % 
 
 Besides this soul-depression of heathenism, 
 there were at the time peculiar conditions in 
 the work in South India ; and considerable dis- 
 satisfied and discouraging talk was indulged in 
 by some of the missionaries we met in Bombay. 
 The work in So'uth India had been opened by 
 Bishop Wm. Taylor during his four years' cam- 
 paign in that country, and had moved forward 
 on the self-support principle until the Confer- 
 ence of 1887, when it was decided to accept the 
 offered subsidies of the Missionary Society. 
 The work was in the transition state when we 
 landed. The Conference of '88 was the twelfth 
 session, and the work was started by Wm.
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 45 
 
 Taylor in '74; so that there had been fourteen 
 years of the trials and triumphs of self-support 
 before very much help came from America. 
 Hence, the work to this time had been carried 
 on mostly among the English and Eurasians, 
 because they were the only people in India who 
 could be induced to support the work. To our 
 surprise, the missionaries had so completely de- 
 voted their time to the English, and had changed 
 about so much, that very few of them had mas- 
 tered a native language so far as to be able to 
 preach in it ; and it did not seem to us that they 
 were any more missionaries than if they were 
 preaching in America. 1 Furthermore, it was 
 pretty clear that we were to be put at this 
 English work for a time ; and this was the 
 sorest of disappointments to us then. But now 
 it is a matter of thanksgiving; for we afterward 
 learned that there is no more important nor di- 
 rectly missionary work in India than this among 
 the English-speaking classes. While engaged 
 in this work, we were supported by the people, 
 and not by American missionary money ; so 
 that we do not now have the regret of having 
 put the Missionary Society to a large expense 
 for no service from us. We were not only 
 supported by our Church, but raised five hun- 
 dred dollars in the two years for missionary 
 work right in the field, and so supported a large
 
 46 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 native work of schools, Sunday-schools, preach- 
 ing, and literature work, which we directed 
 through assistants. By going into the English 
 work, we were able to begin at once, and so 
 were useful for the time we were there ; while 
 those of our party who were to enjoy the great 
 privilege of remaining steadily in the field were 
 given appointments to the native stations. 
 Whatever may be said pro or con of self-sup- 
 port as a principle in the world's evangelism, 
 one thing is certainly clear that, following 
 this principle, Bishop Taylor has committed our 
 Church to a vast work which, in atl probability, 
 it would never otherwise have undertaken. And 
 as we see it now, after some experience and ob- 
 servation, we believe it was through God's lead- 
 ing, and not by the choice of man, that this 
 great work has been committed to us as a 
 Church. 
 
 On Sundays, while we were waiting, I usually 
 preached once or twice in one of our three 
 English churches in Bombay. I preached my 
 first sermon in the Mazagon Church, and cre- 
 ated a little amusement by speaking of the fa- 
 tality of having one lack. I was preaching on 
 the Savior's words to the rich young man. 
 After the service, a brother remarked that he 
 did not know about America, but in India one 
 lakh was considered a good thing to have. Lakh
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 47 
 
 means one hundred thousand, and is especially 
 applied to that number of rupees. This error 
 is not so grievous in comparison with some that 
 are made. There are so many words almost 
 identical in sound and form that have very 
 different meanings, that very ludicrous blunders 
 are to be expected of new missionaries. We 
 were told a number of times in India that, for a 
 long time, the doxology was sung in one lan- 
 guage, " Praise God from whom all sausages 
 flow," until at last a missionary noticed the 
 error. And a noted missionary told us that, in 
 his early experience, while on a missionary tour, 
 he was giving his cook directions about pre- 
 paring a meal. He told him, as he thought, to 
 go to the village, and get a fowl and dress it. 
 The cook showed such evident bewilderment 
 that he suspected he had blundered. On in- 
 quiry, he found he had told the cook to go to 
 hades, and get a boy and dress it. The natives 
 will very rarely show before one's face that they 
 notice a mistake ; but after an interview with a 
 blunderer alone, or with their fellows, they give 
 vent to their amusement. 
 
 And so the days went by, and finally we re- 
 paired to Poonah to attend the session of Con- 
 ference. The Conference had then about thirty 
 members. Their physical condition, as regis- 
 tered in their faces, was by no means encour-
 
 48 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 aging. One brother had just recovered from 
 cholera; another was shaking, before our eyes, 
 with a daily malarial chill; two others were 
 about to return to America in shattered health; 
 and, with very few exceptions, every one looked 
 pallid and sick. The contrast in appearance 
 between those of us who had just landed and 
 those who had been years in the field, was, in 
 point of health, strikingly in our favor; but 
 there was no heart-sickness nor spiritual ma- 
 laria noticeable. Every one was hopeful, buoy- 
 ant, joyful; and even those who were sick 
 attended the sessions and served on the com- 
 mittees. They were, for the most part, a com- 
 pany of heroes, seasoned and tried amid . the 
 privations and vicissitudes of the years of self- 
 support. Most of them are still in the field, 
 and are laying the foundations of Christ's king- 
 dom broad and strong to save the millions. I 
 would rather have a humble place in their ranks 
 than to enjoy all the comforts and associations 
 and hpnors American life affords. 
 
 We were entertained at the home of Rev. 
 Mr. Sorabjee, a converted Parsee, and a minister 
 of the Church of England. Of course there 
 were some things in the home customs and 
 manners of these native people that were 
 strange to us, but we were never more royally 
 entertained. Mr. Sorabjee was absent, but his
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 49 
 
 cultured wife and daughters left nothing undone 
 that we could have asked for. Each member 
 of the family was engaged directly in mission- 
 ary, evangelistic, or educational work. One of 
 the daughters was the first lady in the Bombay 
 Presidency to receive the B. A. degree. She 
 had been presented to the queen ; and the mother 
 had traveled and lectured in England, and raised 
 large sums of money for mission-work. But 
 there was not the slightest show made of these 
 things, nor any ostentation in anything. This 
 was a model home; the Bible was thoroughly 
 studied daily, privately and in the .family circle; 
 and no one can estimate the influence for good 
 exerted in the midst of heathenism by such de- 
 voted and active lives. 
 
 Mrs. Sorabjee arranged for us to take tea at 
 the home of a wealthy Parsee widow Mrs. 
 Wadai. Here we met only ladies: the mother, 
 wearing the white cap of widowhood, and her 
 beautiful and graceful daughters. The house 
 was large, and richly furnished, though quite 
 differently from an American mansion. The 
 floor and walls were marble, the latter being 
 decorated, in each room, by life-size paintings 
 of the deceased head of the family. We had a 
 very delicate and delicious tea, at which Madam 
 Wadai presided with all the dignity and grace 
 of the first lady of the land. After tea she con- 
 
 4
 
 50 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 ducted us through the house, bringing us at 
 last to her own private study an airy and deli- 
 cately ornamented little room. She drew out a 
 secret drawer in her secretary, and showed us 
 her Bible, which we well knew from her con- 
 versation she had been studying, though se- 
 cretly, for fear of her people. This Bible had 
 found its way into this home, and its light to 
 the hearts of these women, through the patient 
 influence of good Mother Sorabj^e. Mrs. Wadai 
 was very wealthy, having three other splendid 
 mansions, at different altitudes, enabling her to 
 live in a delightful climate the year round. 
 When we left she gave us her photograph, which 
 we still prize very highly. 
 
 Through the kindness of Brother Prautch, I 
 got to visit the-high-priest of all the Parsee fire- 
 temples of the Deccan, who resides in the winter 
 in Poonah. He lives in a splendid mansion, 
 surrounded by a very park of drives and orna- 
 mental shrubbery. He received us very cor- 
 dially, having met Mr. Prautch once before in 
 a railway carriage. He showed us through his 
 great house, seating us at last in his large li- 
 brary. He had all sorts of books mostly En- 
 glish and prominent among them was the 
 Holy Bible. I finally succeeded in getting the 
 conversation directed to religion. He told me 
 of the excellence of the moral principles of the
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 51 
 
 religion of Zoroaster. These, he said, were 
 briefly summarized and stated: "Pure thoughts, 
 pure words, and good deeds." When I asked 
 him how we sinful creatures were to meet these 
 high requirements, he had little to say. I at- 
 tempted to impress upon him that this was one 
 point, at least, where the religion of Jesus is su- 
 perior to every other. Though its spiritual 
 requirements are the very highest, yet it affords 
 us the needed help to attain them. He had, 
 very likely, had the same thing said to him 
 many times, and it did not seem to strike him 
 with any particular force. He was the head- 
 man of his religion for a great district; he de- 
 rived his sumptuous support from its revenues; 
 and naturally enough he would be very slow to 
 recognize the superiority of what, to him, seems 
 like conquering robbery. At last he said, half- 
 mournfully: "In one hundred and fifty years 
 there will be no Parsees. Our people are rapidly 
 becoming Europeans. Already they have adopted 
 your dress, your education, and many of your 
 customs and ways of thinking. The revenues 
 of our temples are declining, our people are 
 weakening in their devotion to their ancient re- 
 ligion, and soon they will become Christians." 
 One could hardly fail to be touched with sym- 
 pathy for this brother's feelings; and yet it 
 would be unchristian not to pray, in the in-
 
 52 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 terests of these very people, "God speed the 
 day!" 
 
 These Parsees are a remnant of the ancient 
 Persians. Their religion is so ancient that its 
 founder was a mythical personage before Chris- 
 tianity was born. There are perhaps but about 
 a hundred thousand of these people in India, of 
 which fifty thousand are in Bombay. They are 
 a very thrifty, and hence a very wealthy, com- 
 munity, and are often called "the Yankees of 
 India." Their ancestors came to India centu- 
 ries ago, on being expelled by the Mohammedan 
 conquerors of their own land. They are very 
 intelligent, speak English fluently, and are usu- 
 ally courteous and helpful to strangers. They 
 have some of the filthiest of religious practices 
 such, for instance, as drinking cow's urine while 
 warm. They expose their dead to the vultures 
 on the Tower of Silence, below which is a large 
 and deep well, to which the bones are con- 
 signed after being stripped of their flesh. At 
 Bombay this Tower of Silence is situated on 
 Malabar Hill, in the midst of the most beautiful 
 garden, 
 
 "Where every prospect pleases, 
 And only man is vile." 
 
 But on the streets and tram-cars, and in the 
 marts, the Parsee appears as the neatest in per-
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 53 
 
 son, the richest in dress, and the most courteous 
 and business-like in manner 'of any of the native 
 people. 
 
 Our Conference was presided over by the 
 saintly George Bowen, for forty years a mission- 
 ary in India, mostly in Bombay. Brother Bowen 
 was the least self-assertive, the lowliest .and 
 meekest soul I ever met. He said very little ; 
 but I, at least, was charmed in his presence. I 
 knew nothing of him before going to India. 
 Brother Frease took me to call on him in Bom- 
 bay. I greeted him as " Father Bowen;" for he 
 looked like a patriarch, if any man ever did. 
 He quietly and emphatically corrected me. 
 " Not Father, but Brother Bowen," he said. He 
 turned the conversation at once; but I should 
 never have dared to call him father again. He 
 began inquiring for our health, and prescribed 
 for our headache. The second Sunday we were 
 in Bombay, I was to preach in our Grant Road 
 Church. Dinner was late where we were stop- 
 ping, and I was five minutes late in getting to 
 the church. During the next week, Brother 
 Bowen came to the hospital to hold a Bible-class 
 with the servants. As soon as he saw me, he 
 said in the quietest, kindest tone, " You were 
 late Sunday night." I had not thought of it 
 before, except to shift the blame ; but I now felt 
 stung to the very heart. I began to say, " The
 
 54 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 servants were late with dinner," when, in the gen- 
 tlest and yet most authoritative voice, he said: 
 " You are in the King's business ; you must never 
 be late!" This word had such power that I 
 have never been late since ; and I never think 
 of being late that they do not ring in my ears. 
 Again, when we were boarding the train to go 
 to Poonah there were a number of the mission- 
 aries and their families, and the separate apart- 
 ments for Europeans are limited and every one 
 was scrambling to get in, this lame and weak and 
 aged saint called to me that, if I would hand 
 him his carpet-bag, he would find room else- 
 where. I do not believe there was a missionary 
 who noticed it that did not blush for his own 
 selfishness. For my own part, I never see self- 
 ishness manifested on the cars that I do not 
 think of Brother Bowen ; and it is my study to 
 act less like a dog in a manger, to say the least, 
 than if I had not learned of him. He presided 
 in this Conference when he was so feeble he 
 could hardly sit up or speak audibly to those 
 distant from him ; and yet, by the power of his 
 presence, the brethren, though the conflict of 
 interest and opinion was sharp, were kept within 
 the bounds of good order. But a few days after 
 this Conference, this man of God sainted in 
 the estimation of both heathen and Christian 
 breathed out his life upon the wings of a beau-
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 55 
 
 tiful tropical morning, and entered into rest. 
 He lived wonderfully near the gospel standard 
 of carelessness for the things of this world, 
 and of devotion to seeking first the kingdom 
 of God. Many are the stories of his practicing 
 the letter, as well as the spirit, of the Sermon 
 on the Mount. Once a native man was running 
 away with his coat, when he called to him to 
 let him take some valuable papers valueless to 
 the thief from the pocket, before he took the 
 coat away. He did not demand the coat, nor 
 even censure the man for taking it ; and the 
 thief was so astonished and shamed that he 
 brought it back. At another time, he enter- 
 tained the Bombay Missionary Conference. This 
 body, since Bombay is a city of near a million 
 people, and the headquarters of many mission 
 agencies, is a dignified company of, perhaps, 
 two hundred missionaries from most denomi- 
 nations and Protestant lands. Their custom was 
 to have their session about eight o'clock, and 
 take breakfast afterward with the missionaries 
 who entertained them. The spread on such an 
 occasion would be apt to be rather elaborate 
 anywhere in Christendom. But Brother Bowen 
 furnished the Conference with merely bread 
 and bananas his own accustomed breakfast, 
 only on a larger scale. But when he went to 
 eat with another, he had no criticism to offer on
 
 56 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 the home arrangements or the food, but ate 
 without remark what was set before him. He 
 is said to have frequently remarked that he did 
 not know of one soul who had been led to 
 Christ through his agency; but missionaries, 
 and many others of all classes of society, bear a 
 different testimony to the results of his life's 
 labor. He furnishes a striking example of the 
 truth of Spurgeon's statement: "The most pow- 
 erful influence on earth, aside from the Spirit of 
 God himself, is the serene and quiet beauty of a 
 holy life." 
 
 When the appointments were announced, we 
 found our work was the pastorate of the English 
 Church in Madras. I had talked with Dr. 
 Rudisill who had been pastor there for three 
 years, and was presiding elder of the Madras 
 District and was perfectly willing to go with him 
 to the work assigned. As soon as I saw him, 
 my soul knit to him, and all misgivings were of 
 the past. The prospect of getting to work in 
 a field of our own also relieved the pressure; and 
 altogether, we were glad we were in India by the 
 close of the Conference. The Madras mission- 
 aries traveled in a party, taking the train about 
 nine o'clock in the evening. We were thirty- 
 four hours on the way reaching Madras, with- 
 out change of cars, on the morning of the second 
 day. Dr. A. W. Rudisill, Rev. A. H. Baker, and
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 57 
 
 Miss Grace Stephens, of Madras; and Miss M. A. 
 Hughes daughter of the editor of the Guide to 
 Holiness, of New York, and the first missionary 
 sent by the Woman's Foreign Missionary So- 
 ciety to the Madras District and ourselves, con- 
 stituted the party. The trip across India was full 
 of surprises to us. It was made in comparative 
 comfort. We missionaries had a compartment to 
 ourselves the most of the time, and we used it re- 
 ligiously and joyfully. I realized afterward that 
 I was under kindly and hopeful inspection by my 
 presiding elder and Brother B. as to theology, pe- 
 culiarities, and disposition ; but it was so indirect 
 that I did not notice it. A person with a bad dis- 
 position, and hard to get on with, is more of a 
 nuisance than anything else in a mission-field. 
 Ill-nature is more harmful there than elsewhere, 
 and there is considerable suspense until the new 
 missionary is found to be agreeable. And it not 
 infrequently happens that a tolerably decent 
 disposition here at home becomes utterly un- 
 bearable in missionary life. We reached Madras 
 about seven A. M., were met at the station by 
 Mrs. Rudisill, our presiding elder's wife, and 
 were soon seated at breakfast with the whole 
 party in the parsonage where we were to live.
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 AT WORK. 
 
 MADRAS is a. city of four hundred thousand 
 people. It has a purely European popu- 
 lation of about four thousand, and a Eurasian 
 that is, mixed European and Asiatic population 
 of probably fourteen thousand. This latter com- 
 munity speaks the English language, and their 
 habits of life are as nearly like those of the 
 English as their income and education make 
 possible. They are all nominally Christians; 
 and, considering that most of them are brought 
 up closely associated with the heathen peoples 
 about them, and where the most of the Chris- 
 tianity they see is either of the Romish or the 
 ritualistic sort, they make a fairly successful 
 showing religiously. We all know how difficult 
 it was for God to keep the Hebrew people from 
 falling into the ways of the heathen about them ; 
 and one can hardly overestimate the power of 
 surrounding heathenism to tempt and ensnare 
 lustful humanity. If it were possible for the 
 heathenism of India or China to transplant its 
 worship and its abominations in the midst of 
 58
 
 AT WORK. 59 
 
 American society, it would not require two gen- 
 erations to pass till a majority of the people 
 would be corrupted to a greater or less degree. 
 But these Eurasians, with the sprinkling of full- 
 blood English Christians who mingle and wor- 
 ship with them, are becoming more and more 
 a recognized and powerful factor for the evan- 
 gelization of India. Bishop Win. Taylor's 
 coming, with a foresight which seems almost 
 prophetic, and his four years' campaign of re- 
 vival-work among the East Indians, was the 
 beginning of a new religious era for them. 
 Bishop Taylor's theory was, that the heathen 
 could never be converted with a dead, formal 
 Church of merely nominal Christians in the 
 way. His thought was to thoroughly arouse 
 this existing body of English and Eurasian 
 Christians, that they might exhibit the triumphs 
 and joys of salvation, and be enlisted under the 
 power of the Holy Ghost to evangelize their 
 own land, and thus a mighty hindering force 
 would be turned into an indigenous missionary 
 force. His theory has proven correct, but its 
 reduction to practice has gone on slower than 
 he probably anticipated ; and this because it is 
 difficult to find enough men of the zeal and 
 physical endurance necessary to thoroughly evan- 
 gelize the Christian body. Yet a great work
 
 60 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 in this direction has been going on ever since 
 his day there, and many of our very best mis- 
 sionary workers are from this class. 
 
 Our Church consisted almost entirely of Eu- 
 rasians. They paid us one hundred and fifty 
 rupees about fifty Collars a month ; own their 
 own church and parsonage; and paid, during 
 our pastorate, twenty-five dollars a month for 
 native work. 
 
 We soon found our work was going to tax us 
 to the utmost. Besides our large church in 
 Vepery, we had two small mission-chapels, in 
 one of which I preached once a week, and oc- 
 casionally in the other. Each had a Eurasian 
 Sunday-school. Then we soon opened three 
 day-schools and four Sunday-schools among the 
 natives, conducted by native teachers under my 
 supervision. Besides this, there was our Pub- 
 lishing-house in Madras, which was working 
 then in three languages, and employing from 
 thirty to forty men, including the book-binding 
 department. This was an almost entirely self- 
 supporting institution, doing job-work for banks 
 and colleges and missions, and requiring to be 
 so run as to give a profit with which to turn 
 out Sunday-school and other mission literature. 
 One oan imagine some of the difficulties met, 
 and annoying, time-consuming details, in suit- 
 ing the exact Englishman, with careless, inexact
 
 AT WORK. 6 1 
 
 printers, and without experience himself. But 
 shortly -after we reached Madras, Dr. Rudisill 
 had to go to Bangalore, to take charge of the 
 work there; and, besides all my preaching and 
 other work, I had to take charge of this press. 
 I found I had never known what it was to 
 work. Withal, I tried to study Tamil, and pro- 
 gressed so far as to be able to read and write a 
 little; and studied up on the Conference-course 
 studies, as in America. This overloading could 
 not be helped, as there was no one to share the 
 work with me. I worked so hard and con- 
 stantly that I contracted dyspepsia, and could 
 hardly digest milk and toast the last months we 
 were in Madras. I was green, as is almost every 
 new recruit, and doubt not that I expended 
 much energy unnecessarily. 
 
 My good wife soon found her hands more 
 than full. The Church may be made to furnish 
 to these Eurasian people religious life, social 
 life, literary life. Mrs. Isham held a social at 
 the parsonage once every month or two. She 
 organized an Oxford League the forerunner of 
 the Epworth the first one in India. Through 
 it she led the young people in their devotional 
 life, and to engage in various literary exercises. 
 The League is still a strong and useful society 
 in the Vepery Church. And then came her 
 missionary society for the ladies, and her cate-
 
 62 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 chism-class for the children, and the care of the 
 home, and the study of the language, and the 
 thousand nameless details of social and relig- 
 ious visiting and ministering to the sick; all 
 this, and, if she could get any time, she would 
 help me read proof for the Press, and post the 
 mission-books, and pay and instruct the teachers 
 of our native schools, and the like. I give these 
 details that my readers may know that their 
 missionaries are the fullest of care and the hard- 
 est of workers. 
 
 And right here I may write of the dangers 
 that confront the new missionary: First, he will 
 break himself down with overwork; second, he 
 will not protect himself sufficiently against the 
 dangers of the climate; and, third, he will un- 
 dertake so much work that he has neither the 
 money nor the strength to do it well. Really, 
 for the first two years, if not for five, where his 
 work lies among the heathen, his principal ef- 
 fort is spent on himself, and not on the heathen. 
 He must learn the language, the etiquette, and 
 many other things about the people, and get 
 himself as well seasoned as possible to stand 
 the climate. He will be in danger of becoming 
 too serious and intense. He must never forget 
 that joy is his strength; and the heavier his 
 burdens, and the more desolate his surround- 
 ings, the more joyful he needs to be. He needs
 
 AT WORK. 63 
 
 to learn well how to keep his heart a fountain 
 of joy. 
 
 The returned missionary is so often asked, 
 "Did you like it over in India?" And one 
 must say in sum total, "Yes," and very decid- 
 edly, too. In what does this liking consist? 
 In the fascination of the work; because, often, 
 of its foundation character; and because it, 
 needs so much to be done, and there is no one 
 else but the missionary to do it. There is no 
 sense sweeter to the soul than that of being 
 useful to Jesus in ministering for him to those 
 he died to save. At home here, the returned 
 missionary so often feels that, if the earth 
 should swallow up his church-building and him- 
 self some night, humanity could get on about as 
 well. It might create a little flurry for a time 
 with a few; but the other Churches could easily 
 and gladly take care of the flock ; and none need 
 go to eternity without gospel light. 
 
 As the season advanced, the heat became 
 very trying. Almost every one breaks out with 
 heat-rash, which is extremely nettling; and 
 when one is annoyed with all he can bear in his 
 work, he is apt to become petulant. There is a 
 general exodus of the Engish from the plains 
 to the hills at this season; and all who can 
 take a short respite from the period of extremest 
 heat which, in Southern India, is from May
 
 64 Two YEARS iff INDIA. 
 
 1 5th to June i5th do so. We went this first 
 year, for a short time, to Bangalore, in the hills 
 on the eastern side of the interior elevation, about 
 two hundred miles west of Madras. Dr. and Mrs. 
 Rudisill, Brother Baker and family, and W. L. 
 King and family, were in charge of the various 
 branches of the work there at the time. Mrs. 
 Rudisill came down with typhoid fever, and for 
 forty-seven days her life hung in the balance. 
 She had lived three years in Madras, and it is 
 likely that the change to the colder climate of 
 the hills brought on the fever. The missionaries 
 of all denominations in Madras and vicinity 
 joined in praying for her recovery, and those 
 who know the case and circumstances have no 
 doubt but that God raised her up in answer to 
 these prayers.
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 A LETTER FROM THE FIELD. 
 
 I WISH to let the reader have a view of life 
 in India, and I can do no better than give 
 the contents of a circular letter written during 
 our first year. 
 
 "Many things are different from our fancies 
 before we came. There are many more of the 
 facilities and comforts of civilization than we 
 had supposed. We have daily papers, with tele- 
 graphic news from Europe and America, rail- 
 ways which make travel cheap and fairly com- 
 fortable, and an excellent mail and postal 
 telegraph system. The postman comes to our 
 hoiise twice a day. Foreign mail comes regu- 
 larly once a week. There are so many English 
 people that, except for one's work and servants, 
 he need have nothing to do with the natives. 
 There are excellent English stores, where we 
 can buy almost anything we could in European 
 markets. American canned meats, and fruits 
 fresh from California, and crackers in air-tight 
 tins from London and New York, as fresh as 
 when they came from the baker's oven, can be 
 had quite reasonably. Labor is so cheap that 
 
 5 65
 
 66 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 clothing can be had much cheaper than in either 
 America or England. The gents' tailors and 
 fitters are Mohammedans. They do very well, 
 if one refuses to pay them till he is satisfied. 
 A suit that would cost $40 in America can be 
 gotten for $20 or $25 in India, but not so well 
 made. 
 
 "Americans who have not taken the pains to 
 inform themselves are apt to think of India as 
 covered with dense forests and luxurious vege- 
 tation, abounding in elephants and tigers and 
 big snakes, and peopled with naked natives who 
 never saw a white man. So it is quite a sur- 
 prise to one full of such fancies to find a coun- 
 try the most of which, during most of the year, 
 looks like a desert, to rarely hear of a wild ani- 
 mal larger or more fierce than the yelping jackal, 
 or of reptiles much larger than the American 
 blacksnake. It is true that the deadly cobra is 
 very numerous, and it is said that fifty thousand 
 natives die from his bite in a single year in the 
 province of Bengal alone. But this worst of 
 serpents is a timid creature, and I never heard 
 of a European or an American being bitten by 
 one. The missionaries sometimes have very 
 harrowing experiences with them, because they 
 so frequently come into the houses, and hang 
 themselves upon door-knobs, nails, clothes- 
 racks, and stretch out on window-sills, and so
 
 A LETTER FROM THE FIELD. 67 
 
 on ; but it usually happens that both the snake 
 and the missionary escape unharmed; for their 
 fear is mutual. We never saw but one cobra, 
 except those carried about by the jugglers ; and 
 it crawled into my study in the middle of a 
 very hot day, evidently in quest of a cool place. 
 Mrs. Isham was resting a short time on a lounge 
 beside my study-table. She lay still while it 
 crawled past her twice. I sat writing at my 
 table. She whispered, 'There is a snake.' I 
 looked up, and in a low tone said, ' It 's a cobra, 
 too.' It heard my voice, and turned back upon 
 itself quickly, and was gone before we could 
 trace it. I called some men over from the 
 Press. They dug up the brick and cement door- 
 step, and killed it with a crowbar before it could 
 disentangle itself. 
 
 "The Englishman dominates everything in 
 India. It matters not what his character is, or 
 his real merit he is, in appearance at least, 
 held in high respect by the natives. They will 
 rarely sit in his presence, and call him master, 
 or sahib, which means gentleman. There is a 
 larger number of English in India than is gen- 
 erally supposed in America. They are, for the 
 most part, employed in Government, military, 
 and civil service. Their incomes are large, and 
 they live in elaborate style, as a rule. 
 
 "All India now June 5th is parched, and
 
 68 Tn'O YEARS IN 
 
 as barren as a desert. Green spots occur only 
 by thorough irrigation, and the water must be 
 drawn from wells for this purpose. In large 
 cities, like Bombay and Madras, the Govern- 
 ment provides a plentiful supply of water by 
 collecting it in artificial reservoirs, and conduct- 
 ing it often many miles. But in most of the 
 towns the water is carried from large pools on 
 the heads of Coolies, or drawn by an ox in, a 
 barrel-cart, or carried in large leather sacks on 
 the backs of oxen. A sack of this kind is made 
 of the whole hide of a goat or calf. Water is 
 precious now, and vile, in most parts of this 
 burning land. Its two hundred and eighty mill- 
 ions of people, with all their fields and flocks 
 and herds, require a vast quantity of water. 
 Here, at Madras, we are thirteen degrees from 
 the equator, and six feet below the level of the 
 sea. The sun stands a little to the north of us 
 at noon, and will do so for two months to come. 
 We shall be under the almost direct rays of the 
 sun for six months of the year. The most care- 
 ful precautions must be taken now against sun- 
 stroke. Our hats are one and a half inches 
 thick, and we carry double umbrellas, covered 
 with white. But it is said to be the healthiest 
 season of the year. 
 
 "We are furnished with a good English 
 brougham. Our horse is one of my own choos-
 
 A LETTER FROM THE FIELD, 69 
 
 ing a flea-bitten-gray Persian mare, the tough- 
 est and best of horses to be had in India. If 
 she is driven ten miles one day, she must rest 
 all the next. Horses are not taken out in the 
 middle of the day unless absolutely necessary, 
 and then they are often provided with solar 
 lopes that is, a shade, made of pith, for the 
 head, neck, and loins. The average time of 
 usefulness for horses is three or four years. 
 After that their wind is gone. If the climate 
 has such an effect on horses, one can see why it 
 is such a trial to the health of Americans to live 
 here. 
 
 "And how do we keep cool t in the house? 
 We do just the reverse of what we should do in 
 America. There we should open the windows 
 and doors; but here we shut up everything, at 
 eight or nine in the morning, except two or 
 three windows and a door on the side of the 
 house from which the wind comes. Over these 
 we hang cus-cus tatties that is, a curtain woven 
 like a rag-carpet, only more loosely. The woof 
 is of fine yellow roots ; the warp is of strong 
 hemp cord. These are wet every half-hour or 
 so; and as the wind blows through them it is 
 cooled, dampened, and perfumed by the odor of 
 the roots, which is quite pleasant. The feeling 
 on going from the outside into a room so cooled, 
 is not unlike that on going into a cellar, on a
 
 70 Two YEARS IN INDIA, 
 
 hot summer day, in America. But, with the 
 temperature so reduced, it is often necessary to 
 keep a thick blotting-paper under the hand r to 
 protect the paper from perspiration stains, while 
 writing. 
 
 " Besides this, a punkah is kept swinging over- 
 head to keep the air in motion. A punkah con- 
 sists of a heavy board, about six inches wide, 
 and from six to twelve feet long. This is sus- 
 pended from the ceiling by neatly covered ropes. 
 On both sides of the lower edge of this plank 
 is suspended a heavy plaited frill of cloth, 
 about eighteen inches wide. This frill is made 
 of coarse stiff cloth, covered and lined with 
 linen, and otherwise ornamented, so that, when 
 properly made, they relieve the barn-like ap- 
 pearance of the necessarily large and high 
 rooms, and when properly swung create a good 
 breeze. 
 
 "In America it is expensive to keep warm; 
 but here, to keep cool. Six months in the year 
 these punkahs must be swung while we sleep, 
 and while we work in the study. We employ 
 two men to pull them at night, and a boy for 
 the day. We pay each of these pullers a dollar 
 a month. It may be surprising to some that 
 this is their entire income, and they board 
 themselves. The men very likely support 
 others, and their entire income will be not more
 
 A LETTER FROM THE FIELD. 71 
 
 than four cents a day. They sit gust outside 
 the house, and swing the punkah by a rope, 
 which passes through a hole in the wall and 
 over a pulley. 
 
 " This brings us easily to speak of the servants 
 it is necessary to keep, in order to live and work 
 in India. We sometimes hear from globe-trot- 
 ting tourists a sight of criticism on the fact that 
 missionaries support so large an establishment. 
 It does seem strange to you in America that 
 we, for instance, keep thirteen servants; but 
 the strangeness comes from one's utter ina- 
 bility to take in the situation without the ex- 
 perience of keeping a house in India. In the 
 first place, it is the law of the Missionary So- 
 ciety that the missionary and his wife shall give 
 their whole time and strength to missionary 
 work. And this is a very wise rule ; for it does 
 not pay to send cultured American women over 
 here to do housework, when women can be 
 gotten here for a dollar and a half a month to 
 do it. We Americans are almost foolishly com- 
 mitted to the thinking that a woman who does 
 no housework does nothing. This notion is 
 peculiar to Americans, and inspires us with an 
 unreasoning contempt for housekeeping by the 
 servant system. We should remember that it 
 is waste of labor and money to put skilled and 
 expensive workmen at cheap and common em-
 
 72 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 ployments. Let every one work, and let him 
 work at the highest work he can do well. 
 
 "Then, it would cost almost any American 
 woman her life to attempt to cook and do house- 
 work here ; and she could not do it so well with 
 the rude appliances as do the natives to the 
 manner born. It is necessary for us to have 
 many servants, because the iron laws of caste 
 prevent one servant from doing more than one 
 sort of work. The cook who does the market- 
 ing must not carry the basket nor fetch the 
 water. The ayah who cares for the children 
 must not sweep the floor. The man who cares 
 for the horse must not care for the yard and 
 water the plants. So it is necessary for us to 
 keep the thirteen here in Madras, to get along 
 and be free to work for the Church. No one 
 feels worse about this than the missionaries, for 
 it is a great annoyance to manage all these serv- 
 ants and to keep them from cheating us out of 
 everything. The cost of keeping them is not as 
 much as of keeping one good girl in America. 
 We pay the whole number less than fourteen 
 dollars a month, and they board themselves. We 
 pay this out of our own salary of fifty dollars a 
 month less than the average preacher in America 
 gets, and give our own entire time and strength to 
 the Church. And then these poor people would 
 come to want if some one did not employ them.
 
 A LETTER FROM THE FIELD. 73 
 
 This is their only means of keeping soul and 
 body together. They come and beg us to em- 
 ploy them, and attempt to bow down and kiss 
 one's foot in token of their servant spirit; and 
 one would feel condemned to rob the Church of 
 his time and the starving of his bread to save a 
 dollar a month. New missionaries are some- 
 times disposed to head a revolution on this line ; 
 but they succumb with increase of experience. 
 The missionaries who have been long in the 
 field may be trusted both as to devotion and 
 wisdom, for it takes a good deal of both to keep 
 one at his post. 
 
 "Of course it is a great event when a mission- 
 ary is privileged to entertain an American trav- 
 eler; and there is often more or less of a spread 
 made from 'the slim purse for the household ex- 
 penses, which must be paid for by reducing the 
 expenses for some days to come. And the weary 
 worker is apt to lay off, and show his guest 
 about the place in the mission conveyance. Of 
 course,, when he has gone to all this trouble, 
 he appreciates the gratitude shown by his guest 
 in thoroughly misrepresenting him where it will 
 do him and his cause the most harm. 
 
 "One is surprised that the missionary so little 
 minds the things he imagined would be so hor- 
 rible to him. There are little lizafds everywhere 
 on the walls and ceilings. They make one
 
 74 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 squeamish at first; and I know one lady mission- 
 ary who says she put in her first night throwing 
 her shoes at the creatures she saw running about 
 the walls of her room. But one soon learns that 
 these innocent little creatures are good friends, 
 and not half so pestersome as the flies and other 
 insects they destroy would be. Occasionally a 
 scorpion is found about the house; but it rarely 
 happens that one gets stung by one; and, if he 
 does, it is usually because he forgets that he is 
 in a land where such things abound, and so be- 
 comes careless. Bandicoots twice the size of a 
 rat, blind mice, and stinking little muskrats, 
 run about the floors freely at night; and some- 
 times cats will break out into a wild scream 
 under one's bed at midnight. These things af- 
 ford amusement, and break the monotony of life ; 
 and one survives, and works away."
 
 Chapter Vl. 
 AN IMPORTANT EVENT. 
 
 THE subject above refers to the conversion of 
 Raju Naidu, which took place during the 
 fall of our first year in Madras. I do not wish 
 to claim him as in any way the fruit of my 
 labors; but as I frequently talked with him 
 during the weeks which preceded his baptism, 
 and had a part in all the experiences which fol- 
 lowed it, I may be able to so account for it that 
 my readers will see more clearly than they do 
 now what it means for a man of caste and po- 
 sition in the Hindoo community to become 
 openly a Christian. 
 
 Raju Naidu belonged to one of the leading 
 high-caste families in Madras. The family es- 
 tate was large, and some of his near relatives 
 were high in professional and official standing. 
 He himself had a good position on the staff of 
 a Hindu semi-weekly paper printed in English. 
 He was fairly well educated, speaking three 
 languages; one of which was English, which he 
 used fluently. He was married, and, after the 
 custom of India, lived with his mother and 
 brothers and sisters, his father being dead. This 
 
 75
 
 76 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 placed his wife and his property more under the 
 control of his family than of himself. Property 
 is held by the family, and not by the individual, 
 as in this country; and, in everything, the fam- 
 ily rules, and individuality of thought and 
 action is suppressed. A man may be well off in 
 the family, but, if he goes forth from it, be ut- 
 terly penniless. And by the education of the 
 girls from their infancy, no high-caste woman can 
 exercise the moral courage to go out, even with 
 her husband, where other men will see her ; and 
 her caste will be broken in baptism and com- 
 muning with Christians; for she is taught that 
 such sins might cost the life of her husband, and 
 ruin her entire family. 
 
 So for Raju to become a Christian required 
 that he should absolutely forsake houses and 
 lands and mother and brethren and wife and 
 position, and escape for his eternal life from all 
 these entanglements. 
 
 Raju had gone to a mission-school when a 
 boy, and there received his first impressions 
 about Christianity. He had been more or less 
 in touch with missionaries and Christian teach- 
 ing all along the years. Two or three years 
 before, he had formed the acquaintance of Dr. 
 Rudisill; and Miss Grace Stephens, the zenana 
 missionary of our Church in Madras, had been 
 teaching some of the women in his home, and
 
 AN IMPORTANT EVENT. 77 
 
 he had often talked with her, and heard her 
 lessons to the others. All these influences were 
 laying the foundation of his convictions, and 
 unconsciously he was steadily moving toward 
 conversion to Christ. 
 
 A municipal election was held in June, and 
 some friend or relative of Raju's was running 
 for commissioner or alderman, as we say in 
 America. Raju and a friend came in a carriage 
 to take me to vote. Raju returned with me 
 alone, and conversed quite freely concerning his 
 religious views and convictions. At first, he 
 said, he was a zealous Hindu. Then, as his 
 education advanced, he lost all faith in idolatry, 
 and became an Atheist. As time wore on, he 
 saw that a universe of law and providence re- 
 quires an intelligent designer, who rules in its 
 affairs, and so became a Deist. "And now," 
 said he, " I see that men are helpless in sin, and 
 must have a Savior; I believe Jesus Christ is 
 that Savior, but it costs so much to fully accept 
 him." It is a common thing for the missionary 
 to hear heathen gentlemen speak patronizingly 
 of Christianity; and, for all this brother talked 
 more to the point than they do generally, I 
 doubted whether he meant more than to make 
 himself agreeable to me. I encouraged him all 
 I could, showing him that, though the cost was 
 great, the promised return was a hundred-fold
 
 78 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 in this life, and eternal life in that which is to 
 come. "The kingdom of God comes not with 
 observation;" and no one can tell, in the mis- 
 sion-fields or at home, whether a seeker is in 
 earnest or not. But the true soul-winner must 
 encourage and help every one ; sow among the 
 stones, by the wayside, and among thorns, as 
 well as in what seems to be the fruitful field; 
 for we preach the gospel to win souls, and also 
 as a witness. Three or four months later, Raju 
 visited me, and as I talked with him I realized 
 that he was passing through a life-and-death 
 soul-struggle. Shortly afterward Dr. Rudisill 
 told us he was to be baptized in two or three 
 weeks. During these weeks Raju visited me 
 often ; and I have never witnessed a more heroic 
 fight of faith than that he waged against the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil. His face grew 
 thin, his cheeks hollow, and his eyes sunken. 
 He could not eat; he could not sleep. Once, 
 with crying and tears, he said : " I love my wife 
 and mother very dearly; how can I separate 
 from them?" And then, after a moment of 
 quiet, he said: "But I have a soul to save, and 
 what shall it profit me if I gain the whole 
 world and lose it? My wife will be a widow 
 but the few years of this life; but if I lose my 
 soul, it is lost forever. I must leave all for 
 Christ!"
 
 AN IMPORTANT EVENT. 79 
 
 We arranged all the preliminaries for his 
 baptism. The missionaries and native Chris- 
 tians were invited. It was to take place in our 
 Vepery church. About noon of the day ap- 
 pointed, Raju came into my study by the side- 
 door, with two changes of clothes under his 
 arm, and a little money in his purse everything 
 else of this world being left behind. He had 
 to escape secretly, explaining to his folks that 
 he was going on a little visit. We talked and 
 prayed together; Dr. Rudisill and the other 
 missionaries came in; a little lunch was served, 
 and Raju ate with us, thereby breaking his 
 caste; then we removed his long hair called 
 kudimi which is religiously regarded in South 
 India, and is one of the marks of the Hindu 
 faith; then we went to the church, and Raju 
 was baptized. Immediately he took the train, 
 with Dr. Rudisill, for Gulbarga, one of our mis- 
 sion-stations in the Deccan, two hundred miles 
 from Madras, where Brother J. H. Garden was 
 then stationed. 
 
 His relatives followed him, and we found 
 that Brother Garden was not going to be able 
 to keep them from taking him away. So we 
 determined to bring him back to Madras, and 
 have the struggle through. Dr. Rudisill went 
 after him ; and T had handbills printed in three 
 languages, and scattered all over the city es-
 
 8o Tico YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 pecially in his home neighborhood stating that 
 Raju Naidu, recently baptized to Christianity, 
 would speak in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 Vepery, on Sunday morning at ten o'clock. The 
 distributers of these notices were roughly han- 
 dled in some instances, and would have been 
 mobbed but for the police. 
 
 It was the plan of Raju's friends to meet 
 him at the station, and never let him get to the 
 church. They were there in great numbers;* 
 but we had anticipated such a move, and I sent 
 the Church-carriage to Perambore a suburban 
 station so that Dr. Rudisill and Raju arrived 
 safely at the parsonage about the time his 
 friends were disappointed at the Central Sta- 
 tion. The time for service arrived, and for once 
 we had a large native congregation. The church 
 was packed, and the people were orderly. Dr. 
 Rudisill preached through an interpreter; some 
 Tamil lyrics were sung by the native Christians; 
 then Raju stood up, within a week of his bap- 
 tism, to explain to his friends and relatives the 
 reasons which impelled him to take the step. 
 He spoke quite confidently, and they listened 
 attentively; but as soon as the service was 
 ended, they broke straight for Raju. I was ex- 
 pecting this, and hurried him over to the par- 
 sonage. In a minute nearly 'the whole crowd 
 of natives, some of them boisterous and angry,
 
 AN IMPORTANT EVENT. 81 
 
 were rushing through our house. Dr. Rudisill, 
 the zenana missionaries, and a few of the mem- 
 bers of our English Church, were with us; and 
 for more than an hour we baffled this crowd, and 
 finally they departed, leaving Raju with us. 
 
 Then we ate a lunch, and lay down to rest a 
 little. In the afternoon, Raju's wife and mother 
 came and prostrated themselves on our veranda, 
 and wailed in token of their bereavement and 
 desolation. Raju wisely refused to see them. 
 They begged that they might merely see his 
 face. They would stay on the outside and look 
 through the glass door, they promised; but Raju 
 would not even grant this. In this he set an 
 example for all young converts; viz., that of 
 avoiding temptation. The Hindus have a super- 
 stition that they get power over a person by 
 looking upon his face. Raju knew that one of 
 his battles would be with superstition, and care- 
 fully avoided everything that might strengthen 
 this enemy. 
 
 For two months Raju's friends tried in many 
 ways to get him in their power ; but he success- 
 fully avoided them until they gave him up. 
 Had they gotten him away from us, we should 
 probably never have seen him again ; but by our 
 protecting and helping him awhile, he was ena- 
 bled to overcome their opposition, and live and 
 preach and write for Christ among them. He 
 
 6
 
 82 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 devoted himself to lecturing and writing inde 
 pendent of missionary support. Recently he is 
 on the editorial staff of the Eastern Star, and 
 will, if he lives, exert a powerful influence as a 
 Christian layman for Christ and civilization 
 through the years to come. 
 
 One can not estimate the far-reaching re- 
 sults of such a missionary victory. It means 
 far more than a revival with five hundred con- 
 verts does in a Christian land. It sets agoing 
 lines of influence which will affect thousands 
 for Christ, and will go on increasing and bless- 
 ing generations who will never hear of the 
 missionary whose faith and toil gave God a 
 means of revealing himself to the lost.
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 MOVING FORWARD. 
 
 OCTOBER 1 5th was looked forward to, in 
 our home at least, with longing expecta- 
 tion. It is the day appointed by the Govern- 
 ment for the breaking of the eastern monsoon. 
 We had been ten months in Madras, and had 
 seen no rain to speak of. We had endured the 
 long half-year of extreme hot weather, culmi- 
 nating in the sultry heat and heavy air- of Sep- 
 tember and early October. At this time, the 
 atmosphere seems to weigh tons, and makes 
 one's shoulders tired to move about, and his 
 chest tired in supporting respiration. It is like 
 the still, sultry air which precedes the breaking 
 of a summer thunderstorm here in America, 
 lengthened out through two months. And it is 
 with great joy that we greet the ides of October; 
 for the British Government has fixed that date 
 for the rains to begin. The seas about are 
 swept by terrific storms, and navigation is dis- 
 couraged by the Government as far as it has any 
 influence. The flags are taken down from the 
 harbor-staff; the made harbors, like the one at 
 Madras, are pronounced unsafe ; and generally 
 
 83
 
 84 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 the off season has set in. The Government 
 prognosticates with precision. We had very 
 grave doubts about the rain setting in; for 
 Americans are schooled to be skeptics on this 
 line by the uncertainty and fickleness of all the 
 weather they have known. But at six o'clock 
 sharp on the morning of October I5th the rain 
 began to fall in torrents. There was not the 
 usual preliminary of a sprin&t, or scatttering 
 drops; it was just what it is called "the burst 
 of the monsoon." It poured down, too, for 
 three days, with but little cessation. Everything 
 was flooded. The surface of the earth became 
 a waste of waters. But as soon as the rain 
 ceased, the water subsided, the earth was 
 dressed in green, and all nature was trans- 
 formed. It is almost startling to see how 
 quickly the surrounding country changes from 
 a burning desert to the luxurious dress of trop- 
 ical vegetation. 
 
 We were . so hungry for the rain and the 
 refreshing sea-air that we did little the first 
 day but watch the water pour down, and enjoy 
 the refreshing. The rain cools the air, washes 
 everything clean ; and, with its coining, every- 
 thing and everybody awake to a new life. 
 About two weeks after this first downpour, the 
 second of the three big rains came. It was a 
 terrific storm a veritable cyclone. The streets
 
 MOVING FORWARD. 85 
 
 were filled with broken trees, blown up and torn 
 to pieces ; wall fences were blown down every- 
 where; many native huts and some large En- 
 glish houses fell in ; and roofs of public build- 
 ings were blown off. The sea was as wild and 
 grand a spectacle as one could wish to behold. 
 Fortunately no ships were in the harbor and 
 none near the coast, or they would have been 
 dashed to pieces. One fall there were five 
 splendid ships wrecked at Madras in a similar 
 storm. One was lifted ashore, and left there. 
 All the passengers and sailors, except those who 
 were saved by the throwing of the life-line 
 from the pier, were lost. All Madras was 
 flooded. The water was said to be four feet 
 deep in some of the leading streets. Business 
 was suspended. Many could not get to their 
 offices or work; and many who did, could not 
 get home. After this there was another three 
 days' rainfall; and in these three storms the 
 bulk of the annual rainfall about fifty-three 
 inches descended. From this time on till the 
 next April life in Madras is quite pleasant as 
 far as climate is concerned. Our work increased 
 as the -year drew to a close ; but we were well, 
 and enjoyed it. In January a little stranger, 
 whom we call Robert, came to us ; and a week 
 later the father of this new arrival posted off to 
 Bombay to Conference.
 
 86 Tiro YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 The trip required forty hours, and though it 
 was in the dead of winter, I found it necessary 
 during the day to wrap a moistened towel about 
 my head to prevent headache from the sun as 
 we crossed the Deccan. When we awoke, the 
 second morning, we were at Lanowli, at the 
 summit of the Western Ghats. We made the 
 descent as the morning sun was crowning 
 the peaks with gold, and then flooding the 
 valleys with beauty. A more restful and refresh- 
 ing experience I have never had. After the 
 long, hot year of hard work in flat and sickly 
 Madras, what a change it was to awake, one 
 bright morning, in mountain air and amid 
 mountain scenery, on the way to meet the 
 brethren in Conference, and enjoy the strength- 
 ening and rest of a week of fellowship! Still 
 there was a thought of regret through it all, 
 and that was of my sick wife in Madras ; cared 
 for truly with skill and tenderness, but by 
 strangers. She could not share in all ' this 
 change and rest. And so it ever is the weight 
 of monotony, suffering, and sacrifice, rests heav- 
 iest on woman. 
 
 This was Bishop Thoburn's first year as 
 bishop, and he was everywhere received by mis- 
 sionaries and people with great joy. He pre- 
 sided over the Conference. Bishop Fowler was 
 present coming by way of Japan, Corea, and
 
 MO VING FOR WARD. 8 7 
 
 China and lectured and took part in the plat- 
 form and other meetings. This will ever be a 
 memorable Conference to me, for here I was 
 ordained under the missionary rule taking dea- 
 con's and elder's orders the same day. 
 
 The Conference over, we returned to our 
 fields of. labor, strengthened and with new zeal 
 and inspiration. Bishop Thoburn visited Ma- 
 dras immediately after Conference. We had a 
 reception for him at our home, which was at- 
 tended by two hundred of our Eurasian people. 
 The bishop lectured and preached, and studied 
 every branch of the work. The weelc following 
 we all went to Bangalore with Bishop Thoburn, 
 and the missionaries and their helpers from the 
 other points, to organize the Madras District 
 Conference. Here the bishop worked in the 
 Conference in the daytime, and preached to the 
 people at night. One who has not seen him in 
 the field would hardly believe, if told, the 
 amount of work the missionary bishop of India 
 accomplishes. But the work is as nothing, 
 compared to the burden and care of the work. 
 
 The morning after we arrived in Bangalore, 
 a telegram was forwarded to me from Madras. 
 It was for Bishop Thoburn, from Calcutta, and 
 brought the overwhelming intelligence of the 
 sudden death of the Rev. Frank Latimer McCoy, 
 D. D., one of the most promising missionaries
 
 88 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 our Church ever sent to India. At the time of 
 his death, Dr. McCoy was carrying four men's 
 work. He was manager of the Publishing- 
 house in Calcutta, which was extremely burden- 
 some; for it was in debt about five times the 
 value of its plant. He was principal of the 
 Calcutta Boys' School, a self-supporting board- 
 ing-school. He was editor of the Indian Wit- 
 ness^ the sixteen-page weekly official organ of 
 our Church in India. And he was the presiding 
 elder of the Calcutta District. Bishop Thoburn 
 fyad a strong personal attachment to Dr. McCoy, 
 as he has to all the missionaries who are asso- 
 ciated with him in his great work ; and with his 
 sorrow came the fact that four very important 
 posts in the capital of the empire were made 
 vacant, and there was no one but himself, with 
 the care of all the vast work, to take charge of 
 them till they could be manned. On reading 
 the telegram he seemed as if he were stunned 
 by a heavy blow ; but he soon took up the work 
 .of the day, and showed no signs of being weighed 
 down. He could not stay with us through the 
 Conference, but hastened away to Calcutta to 
 take up the reins that Dr. McCoy had laid down 
 forever. Brother F. W. Warne, pastor of the 
 large English Church, had been so overloaded 
 with work during Dr. McCoy's sickness that he 
 was taken dangerously ill, and had to go for a
 
 MOVING FORWARD. 89 
 
 change to the hills. Bishop Thoburn stepped 
 into both these places, and filled them for a 
 month, until Brother Warne came back, and the 
 other work was put in good hands; then he con- 
 tinued the tour of his great field. I give this 
 to let the reader see that it does not mean lux- 
 ury and ease and privilege to be a missionary 
 bishop ; but it does mean a weight of care and 
 responsibility and toil that few have either the 
 strength or the grace to bear.
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 THE SECOND YEAR. 
 
 OUR second year was full of toil and trial. 
 About the last of April, Dr. and Mrs. Rudi- 
 sill went for a month's change to the hills. We 
 cared for the Press and all the other work while 
 they were away, and they were to relieve us 
 when they returned, and give us a month's 
 change. Mrs. Rudisill never fully recovered 
 from her long siege of fever in Bangalore the 
 previous season, and, humanly speaking, ought 
 to have come home before another hot season 
 set in; but she would not urge it herself, and 
 as she could not be spared without loss to the 
 work, no one felt like urging her return. It 
 was hoped that a change to the hills would help 
 her greatly. Mrs. Isham had suffered more or 
 less from pain in her eyes and the back of her 
 head almost from the first of our experience in 
 India, but we hoped it would pass away as she 
 became acclimated. But the many calls on her 
 strength from the work, the care, and the cli- 
 mate, only aggravated her suffering; and as the 
 heat increased, she grew much worse. From 
 90
 
 THE SECOND YEAR. 91 
 
 this time on, we had the additional anxiety of 
 her declining health. 
 
 We had our arrangements made to leave 
 Madras for Ootacamund, the summer capital of 
 the Madras Presidency, on the 2Oth of May. 
 This was a very trying day. The thermometer 
 registered 110 in the shade, and the wind from 
 the interior was like the breath of a furnace. 
 About one o'clock, Mrs. Isham was looking 
 through a small opening in the tatty, when a 
 sharp pain, piercing from the eye to the back of 
 the head, sickened and prostrated her. There 
 is little doubt that it was a slight sunstroke; 
 and from that time sjie grew steadily worse. 
 We managed, however, to get to the train and 
 start for the hills. Mrs. Isham said afterward 
 that, as we were leaving Madras that evening, 
 she felt that she should not live to return. By 
 the next day at ten o'clock we reached Metapa- 
 liam, where we left the railway to ascend the 
 mountains by touga. Metapaliam is one of the 
 hottest places on this earth. It is just at the 
 base of the mountains, where the sun's maxi- 
 mum power is unrelieved by either breeze or 
 moisture. It is a common expression, that it is 
 separated from the burning lake by but a sheet 
 of tissue-paper. 
 
 However, we managed to survive; and, with 
 such light baggage as we were permitted to
 
 92 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 carry, started on the rapid journey of thirty- 
 two miles, and an ascent of over six thousand 
 feet. The touga in which we made this journey 
 is a two-wheeled vehicle, with two seats backed 
 together; or, rather, having a two-faced back 
 between them, the seats being low down between 
 the wheels to prevent upsetting. The driver 
 sat facing front ; and wife and I, each holding a 
 child, faced backward. We traveled at a gal- 
 lop, having relays of horses every mile and a 
 half after the ascent began, and reached our 
 destination in about five hours. 
 
 The first three miles lay along the level, in 
 the burning heat of the, plains, and amid the 
 most luxuriant tropical forest. Here we saw 
 the American cqnception of a jungle. The 
 plain near the base of the mountains is well 
 watered by mountain rills and frequent rains; 
 and, as the heat is extreme, vegetation is rank 
 and varied. It is only at the base of moun- 
 tains that the jungle is a dense forest. Most 
 of what is called jungle in India is open 
 country, and as barren as a desert most qf 
 the year. Oranges, and many varieties of 
 plantains, and numerous other tropical fruits, 
 are abundant all along these lower hillsides, 
 and in all stages of development from the 
 blossom to the ripe fruit. There can be no 
 more magnificent scenery than that along this
 
 THE SECOND YEAR. 93 
 
 ascent. The vast, the luxuriant, and the deli- 
 cately beautiful so combine as to be 'captivating 
 beyond description. As we ascend, above the 
 belt of tropical fruits the mountain-sides are 
 clothed in the rich green of the tea and coffee 
 plant. Many Englishmen have large planta- 
 tions for these products; and, higher up, there 
 are large plantations of cinchona-trees. 
 
 After the first ten miles are passed, the tem- 
 perature is so much lower that one is quite 
 comfortable, and begins to feel refreshed, as 
 now and again a cool breeze from the moun- 
 tains comes down to welcome him. Twenty 
 miles up from the plains, out come the over- 
 coats and wraps ; and the rest of the way, one 
 chills and shivers until he reaches his bungalow 
 and sits down by a fire. We needed fire all the 
 time we were in the hills, which was during the 
 warmest season of the year. 
 
 Ootacamund is an English town of five hun- 
 dred houses. It is one of the most delightful 
 spots on earth in many ways. The market part 
 of the town is situated in a basin of the, hills; 
 and the residences are villas, scattered every- 
 where on the mountain-sides. The grounds 
 about the homes are spacious; the flower-gar- 
 dens are rich in a variety of plants and colors; 
 the hillsides are well wooded with the trans- 
 planted blue-gum tree from Australia. All
 
 94 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 about the town and surrounding country are 
 beautiful and well-kept drives ; and all that 
 nature and art can do, is done to make it a de- 
 lightsome retreat. To one side of the town is 
 situated the governor's mansion, in the midst 
 of one of the most superb parks in the world. 
 It is said to contain a specimen of every tree 
 that will live at that altitude; and there are 
 flowers of numberless varieties. Whether the 
 statement concerning the trees be true, we can 
 not know; but it is true that it would be diffi- 
 cult to find a country on the map of the world 
 whose peculiar forest features are not repre- 
 sented. Once or twice a week the governor's 
 band gives an open-air concert in the midst of 
 this garden; and every one who can, turns out 
 to enjoy it Some may be surprised that such 
 things are to be found in India. But why not ? 
 With nature favorable in every way; with 
 starving laborers begging to be employed for a 
 song; and with revenues at their disposal, and 
 the love of beauty in the heart, why not 
 have parks, and music, and flowers? At any 
 rate, they do have them. There is not a Presi- 
 dency-town in India, I suppose, that has not its 
 splendid park, or Governor's Gardens, as they 
 are sometimes called; and, in some cases, these 
 contain fine collections of animals. Tuesday of 
 each week is Shauda, or market day, at Ootaca-
 
 THE SECOND YEAR. 95 
 
 mund; and it would be hard to find a better 
 market anywhere. It affords the combined 
 products of the tropics and the temperate 
 zone in vegetables and fruits. Better beef and 
 mutton can not be found ; and the food manu- 
 factures of both Asia and Europe are offered 
 to the purchaser's selection. Taking it alto- 
 gether, one would about as soon spend his life 
 at Ootacamtind as anywhere else on earth, if 
 only he could have his own .Government and 
 friends to live with. 
 
 We spent a month here, and were much 
 helped at least, I was. I put in the time 
 climbing the mountains and chopping wood, in 
 order to recuperate bodily energy to resist the 
 enervation of life in the plains. An amusing 
 incident occurred after we returned to Madras, 
 which illustrates how closely the natives follow 
 the pattern set for them in everything they do. 
 I "run down" the shoes I was wearing, climb- 
 ing the hills; and when a chuckler came to take 
 my order for a new pair, he asked me for an old 
 shoe "for size." I was hurried with work, and 
 handed him one of my mountain-climbers with- 
 out giving the matter any attention. He was 
 longer than usual in returning with the new 
 shoes, and when he came, to my astonishment, 
 they were as badly run down as the old ones. 
 When 1 objected to them, the poor man com-
 
 96 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 plained: "All the same, like master's foot. 
 Very much trouble inakin* poor chuckler. See, 
 master! so much stretch-work !" and he pointed 
 to the bulged side of the shoe in proof. The 
 joke was worth the price of the shoes, and the 
 poor man could by no means afford to lose per- 
 haps halt his entire fortune; so he got his pay 
 in full. A well-known missionary tells of hav- 
 ing a pair of pants made, and when the tailor 
 brought them, he found, on trying them on, 
 that they were patched. He asked the tailor to 
 explain, and he said, "All the same, like mas- 
 ter's pattern," and showed the patch on the 
 old pair, given him as a pattern, as his justi- 
 fication. They are so in the habit of doing 
 things just as they have been done for all time, 
 absolutely according to pattern, that they never 
 stop to think of the why and wherefore of any- 
 thing. On returning to Madras we found it 
 was well for us that we had had a month's 
 recreation; for the burden of work and the 
 nerve-strain awaiting us were all we could sup- 
 port as it was. 
 
 Shortly after our return, our presiding elder's 
 wife Mrs. M. M. Rudisill was taken seriously 
 ill, and her physician gave us little encourage- 
 ment to hope for her recovery. We all knew 
 so well what she had suffered before, that it was 
 lelt by all the missionaries and near friends that
 
 THE SECOND YEAR. 97 
 
 she was going home. As the days passed, she 
 grew rapidly worse. All Saturday night and 
 Sunday, the 6th and jth of July, the mission- 
 aries and near friends from our Vepery Church 
 watched with sorrowful anticipation at Waverly, 
 as their home was called. Sabbath evening it 
 became evident the end was near. With songs 
 and prayers and tears the hours passed. There 
 were fifteen Christian friends present in the 
 sick-chamber. The servants, some of whom had 
 been converted in her service, were weeping in 
 the doorway. The light was turned low; all was 
 hushed and still; the breathing became slower 
 and slower; a smile lit up the kindly face, and 
 some one whispered, "She is gone;" and, as if 
 the presence was too sacred for human speech, 
 each one quietly withdrew without breaking the 
 stillness. 
 
 Funerals must follow quickly in Madras. So 
 that of our sainted sister, who had done so 
 much of kindness and of cheer for each of us, 
 was arranged for Monday afternoon. My pur- 
 pose in this whole account is to show how the 
 people of India regard the faithful missionary. 
 At the hour appointed for the funeral service 
 the church was packed, and the yard and street 
 about it were crowded with people. During 
 the services, which were conducted by the mis- 
 sionaries of other denominations, the people 
 
 7
 
 98 Tu'o YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 * 
 
 wept in sobs and tears. When an opportunity 
 was given to view the remains, the weeping 
 crowd held the casket long after the time for 
 moving to the cemetery; and when they did 
 move, they would not allow the remains to be 
 placed in the hearse ; but members of our En- 
 glish Church took up the casket and carried it, 
 the three English Sunday-schools and the mem- 
 bers of our Churches following in procession, 
 and singing appropriate hymns. This is so un- 
 usual an order, so spontaneous and indirect, 
 that it shows most forcibly how the people for 
 whom she had laid down her life responded in 
 affectionate appreciation. 
 
 Mrs. Rudisill was a true missionary, and had 
 no fears to die in India. She used often to say, 
 when urged to seek to come home: "It is as 
 near heaven from India as from America. If 
 the Lord wants me to go home, it will some- 
 how be made clear; if not, I can stay here." 
 She spent her life ministering to others, and 
 seemed to have acquired the power to forget 
 herself even when suffering. Her husband, en- 
 tirely broken down by his five years' toil in 
 Madras, was compelled to return to America 
 shortly afterward. 
 
 During the first five or six weeks after re- 
 turning from the hills we had fifteen funerals, 
 from a Qhurch of two hundred members. En-
 
 THE SECOND YEAR. 99 
 
 teric fever a malignant type of ^typhoid was 
 epidemic, and we could do nothing but minister 
 to the sick and dying. On returning from the 
 funeral of Mrs. Rudisill, having had no sleep 
 for two nights, we were called to the home of 
 an Englishman before we had had time to take 
 a lunch; and while trying to help him to shift, 
 he died in my arms. The family were so help- 
 less I had to take charge of all the funeral ar- 
 rangements. A day or two later I was at the 
 deathbed of a widow, who lived alone. The 
 natives were all about, ready to carry off any- 
 thing they could steal. The woman died the 
 eighth day, her temperature reaching one hun- 
 dred and eight degrees or higher. The corpse 
 turned black from fever-poison in a very few 
 minutes ; and yet I was compelled to stay in the 
 room, and make an inventory of her personal 
 effects, and seal them up, taking a receipt from 
 the owner of the house to secure the heirs, the 
 landlord, and myself from injury, until we 
 turned them over to the police authorities the 
 next day. I was in 'the room for at least an 
 hour, and suffered in no way from it. I con- 
 ducted sometimes two funerals a day, and gave 
 all my time to the sick and dying. The people 
 used often to send for me in the middle of the 
 night, and I always went gladly. If the people 
 would treat their pastors so in America, they
 
 ioo Two YEARS IN INDIA, 
 
 would get more good from them. It often hap- 
 pens that when sickness is in the family, the 
 pastor would be glad to call ; but not knowing 
 it, he fails to do so, and often is met with un- 
 kindly complaint afterward. People never com- 
 plain if the doctor does not call without notice; 
 but they expect the preacher, with perhaps 
 many times the constituency of the doctor, to 
 know all about their ills. It is a good rule to 
 send for the doctor and notify the preacher at 
 the same time.
 
 Chapter IX. 
 THE ENGLISH WORK. 
 
 DURING the two years in Madras, our En- 
 glish work required regularly two sermons 
 each Sunday at Vepery. We had here a con- 
 gregation in the evening of from two to three 
 hundred, and of about one hundred in the 
 morning. The evening service is the principal 
 one everywhere in India. The Vepery congre- 
 gation required as good preaching as a good 
 Church does anywhere, to hold the people. 
 Dr. Rudisill, who had been for years a presiding 
 elder in the Baltimore Conference, had been 
 my predecessor for three years; and educated 
 Englishmen, missionaries, and sometimes mem- 
 bers of the governor's council, were present. 
 While these persons deserve no better preach- 
 ing than any others, yet their presence in our 
 churches proves that they enjoy our services 
 better than those of the Established Churches, 
 and mightily confirms our own people in their 
 respect and confidence for their own Church. 
 Besides, these English friends often give us the 
 most substantial financial aid in both our En- 
 glish and native work, and their friendship is
 
 102 Two YARS IN INDIA. 
 
 in every way helpful. So the standard of ex- 
 cellence in our English Churches in India must 
 be kept high, and the best preachers are needed 
 as much as anywhere. This made my study 
 work very exacting, for I had had but little ex- 
 perience as a pastor before taking this charge. 
 On Monday nights I preached regularly at 
 Otary, a suburban village of railway mechanics. 
 Nearly all the people here belonged to our 
 Church, and owned a very neat chapel, which 
 served as a school-house during the week. 
 Then we had class and prayer and League and 
 other social or literary meetings for almost every 
 night of the week. 
 
 The most satisfactory work I did, though, 
 was the pastoral work. The difficulty in this 
 work, everywhere, is in the impossibility of 
 meeting all the members of the family together. 
 In America the men are off to business, office, 
 or work early in the morning, and the children 
 are at schcrol all day. The afternoon is the 
 time set for the pastor to call, and his meeting 
 is with the mother and infant children. He 
 does much good by visiting and praying in the 
 homes even under these limitations, but how 
 much more good he could accomplish if he 
 could occasionally meet the whole family to- 
 gether ! In India, the man of the house seldom 
 goes to his office before eight, and usually not
 
 THE ENGLISH WORK. 103 
 
 before nine or ten o'clock. v So I devised the 
 plan of sending a printed notice with date and 
 time filled in the day before I called, stating 
 that I should like to meet the entire family for 
 worship. If it was not convenient for them to 
 receive me, they could set another time. I 
 went calling both morning and evening; and 
 many, many were the -precious seasons had at 
 the family altars of our Church. In this way 
 the pastor can encourage family worship. I 
 made from three to five visits each morning 
 and evening, and so got through a great deal of 
 this work 'every month. I never got so near, 
 nor felt that I was in a position to be so prac- 
 tically helpful, to the people of any other 
 Church. 
 
 We held several special revival efforts', as our 
 strength would permit. We had some conver- 
 sions in each. The largest number that pro- 
 fessed to accept Christ at any one time, I be- 
 lieve, was eleven. The Eurasians are not moved 
 by these special efforts as we often are, here in 
 America. They are steadier make more of 
 their religion all the time, and less of spasmodic 
 efforts; so, if other things were equal, a Church 
 would not fluctuate as is so often the case in 
 America. The people are naturally quiet, affec- 
 tionate, and gentle, and not easily wrought up 
 to the pitch of excitement. Evangelists who
 
 104 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 have been wonderfully successful in America, 
 are surprised and tried at the seeming utter 
 failure of their methods among this class of 
 people in India. There are lasting results from 
 all genuine efforts, but conditions and natures 
 in America and in India are widely different. 
 
 There are many discouragements in this 
 work, as well as in all other religious work. 
 One must carry on evangelistic Church-work in 
 the face of a constant war with ritualism. The 
 Church of England is established, having the 
 power of the Government behind it, and a big- 
 oted clergy paid from the public treasury to 
 man it. If one did not know, he could hardly 
 distinguish these Churches from the Romish; 
 and there is no practical difference to the 
 people, except it be that this English Es- 
 tablishment is directly less oppressive finan- 
 cially, but indirectly more so. There are usu- 
 ally two chaplains to a Church, with a pay of 
 about five thousand dollars a year each. Our 
 Church in Vepery is but one block from a very 
 strong and very " High " Episcopal Church, and 
 lives only by squarely joining the issues and 
 forces of evangelism with those of sacerdotal- 
 ism and worldly advantage. This is the war 
 our Churches are every Where waging in India; 
 and the American pastor, when weary and seem- 
 ingly defeated, is apt to feel discouraged. The
 
 THE ENGLISH WORK. 105 
 
 ritualistic Church has been long in the field; 
 memories, associations, and family ties bind the 
 people to it ; and loyalty to it is often essential 
 to advancement in official and social standing. 
 All these things are against our cause ; but still 
 we advance. 
 
 Our Church has not been established long 
 enough among the Eurasians for us to bring 
 forth a generation of our own educating. Our 
 members have been won largely from ritualism, 
 and had all their early training there. Though 
 they are as loyal to Methodism as any one can 
 be, yet they are strange to our ways ; and many 
 of the less devoted ones show such a lack of 
 moral force ! They come to Church with hymn- 
 book and Bible ; they bow and say a prayer, on 
 taking their seat; they are reverent for all re- 
 ligious exercises, and would not think of put- 
 ting the hat on in Church ; and one, observing 
 them, would think they are most devout and 
 conscientious, but they are not nearly so care- 
 ful about their moral conduct, nor so reverent 
 concerning the temple of the Holy Ghost. And 
 one learns that this seeming piety is the remains 
 of their religious education in " The Church." 
 Mrs. Rudisill remarked to us, when we took 
 charge of the Madras work, as a bit of her ex- 
 perience : " Our only hope of building up a 
 strong Methodism among these people is in the
 
 106 Two. YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 thorough training of the young." This is the 
 wisdom of experience; and every worker in the 
 English field in India comes to realize it. So 
 that now, as many who were formerly children 
 in our Eurasian Sunday-schools are coming to 
 maturity, it is gratifying to find them going 
 forth as missionary assistants and teachers, or 
 engaging in League and other Church-work at 
 home. We are in the beginnings of the harvest 
 from this English work, which is full of prom- 
 ise to the Church in the work of evangelizing 
 India. So while the English work, viewed from 
 the point we view work in America, may seem 
 discouraging, yet from the point of results to 
 India, it is most encouraging. 
 
 Besides, these discouragements, there is an 
 annoying show of opposition to the foreign 
 preacher in even the Methodist Eurasian pulpits. 
 But this, one finds on becoming acquainted with 
 the people, consists mostly in talk indulged in 
 by persons having but little influence among 
 their own people, and who imagine they are 
 crowded into obscurity by the usurping and 
 even inferior foreigner. As a rule, the Eurasian 
 Methodists would much rather have an Ameri- 
 can pastor, and one, too, fresh from America. 
 
 It is my experience that the Eurasian Meth- 
 odists are exceptionally affectionate, appreci- 
 ative, and kindly attentive to their pastor and
 
 THE ENGLISH WORK. 107 
 
 his family. One rarely receives the evidences 
 of regard in the service of an American Church 
 that he does from them. They are liberal to a 
 fault in supporting their own Churches, and in 
 giving for missions and all charitable purposes. 
 Though they are much less demonstrative in 
 times of revival, and when deeply moved re- 
 ligiously, than many Americans are, yet one 
 sees clear and beautiful conversions and con- 
 vincing evidences of the Spirit's work. Sum- 
 ming it all up, I have never spent two such 
 happy years as the two of hard service and 
 seeming sacrifice in the work in Madras ; and, 
 if it may ever be, I shall joyfully return to that 
 field. Those days when we were comforting 
 the sorrowing, who hung upon us as their only 
 stay, and cheering the sick, who anxiously 
 longed for our coming, and supporting the dying 
 and bereaved with song and promise and prayer, 
 were so filled with the precious sense of spiritual 
 usefulness that one would gladly fill with them 
 the entire span of his years.
 
 Chapter X. 
 DIVERSIONS. 
 
 I WOULD not have my readers suppose that 
 the missionary life is all toil. Of course there 
 is recreation and diversion. Human nature de- 
 mands it, must have it, and all parts of the 
 world afford it. Missionary life differs little 
 from any other life, except that it is a larger 
 life a life of greater sacrifices, and greater 
 services, and greater experiences. It is not 
 without superior diversions. In Madras, per- 
 haps the commonest ^recreation is an evening 
 visit to the beach. Here is the finest surf in 
 the world. Extending ten miles out to sea from 
 the shore-line is a submerged plain, over which 
 the water is but from ten to twenty feet deep. 
 Then the bottom drops to ocean-depths. When 
 the tide is rising, or when the sea is heavy from 
 storms, the great waves come rolling and thun- 
 dering and dashing into spray and foam, one 
 behind the other, until sometimes ten plunging 
 surges are chasing each other, to exhaust them- 
 selves upon the shore. When the breeze is 
 from the sea, it is cool and refreshing. Along 
 this beach was formerly a waste of sand; but 
 108
 
 DiyERSIONS. 109 
 
 the English have made walks and gravel-drives, 
 and hedges of the casurena-tree which resem- 
 bles our cedar, and makes a rapid growth in 
 sand and made beds of crotons and other flow- 
 ering-shrubs, so that it is now very much like a 
 park; and a large per cent of English women 
 and children, and many native gentlemen, and 
 a few Englishmen, are at the beach from five 
 to eight o'clock each evening. About once a 
 week, while the governor is in Madras, his 
 band plays; his excellency, attended by his 
 body-guard, drives about, with flourish of trum- 
 pets and a great spread ; and the bulk of well- 
 to-do English turn out. This, of course, has 
 little attraction for an American after the nov- 
 elty has worn oflf; but to ride through the Gov- 
 ernor's Gardens, and among the Government 
 buildings, with the surf thundering within hear- 
 ing, and an Indian moonlight beautifying all, is 
 to feel the peculiar charm which results from 
 the union of the arts of civilization with the 
 indolent magnificence of the tropics. Here is 
 the spreading mango-tree, with its leaves of 
 polished green the live-oak of India in size 
 and shape; and groves of palm-trees, with their 
 tufts of plumes bending lazily from the top; 
 and a great variety of other trees, of all shapes 
 and sizes, but all alike rich in foliage. And 
 here are crotons, in never-ending variety of
 
 no Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 shapes and colors; many flowers of beauty, 
 with a sky of India-blue and a matchless moon- 
 light over all. Unite with this the work of the 
 gardener and the architect arrange the flowers 
 in beds, the crotons in tasty clumps and rows ; 
 clean away all the underbrush and vines from 
 among the trees; set an occasional fountain 
 playing in the moonlight; cross and recross the 
 grounds with well-kept drives; put here a Sen- 
 ate-house, with four immense domes; there, a 
 great palace, formerly the residence of a nabob, 
 but now the Revenue Building; on this other 
 side, the Madras University, with its beautiful 
 surroundings; just behind it, the fine Pub- 
 lic Works' Building; and on that other side, 
 the Governor's Palace and Banqueting Hall, 
 with walls so white that they seem built of 
 snow; add to these the music of the bursting 
 waves, and to ride in a comfortable carriage, 
 driven slowly through it all, affords to one in 
 need of rest a recreative diversion not to be 
 despised. Occasionally two or three times 
 in a month we get away from our work, and 
 spend an evening in surroundings such as 
 these. 
 
 Then, there are many novel and strange af- 
 fairs, and celebrations of a religious origin, of a 
 more or less public nature, which are interest- 
 ing and diverting in the extreme, especially to
 
 DIVERSIONS. 1 1 1 
 
 those who have not been long enough in the 
 country to become accustomed to them. I copy 
 the following from a letter, written to friends at 
 home while we were in Madras, as an instance 
 in point: "Last month we had the Moham- 
 medan fast and feast, called the Mahorum\ and, 
 as far as I am able to learn, its leading facts are 
 about as follows: It is held every eleventh moon, 
 and lasts ten days. The event celebrated is a 
 quarrel between two brothers Oosaim and Ah- 
 saim sons of the prophet. One of them was 
 killed ; and the other, escaping, became a home- 
 less wanderer, and was cared for by a tiger. 
 Hence it is sometimes called the 'Tiger Festi- 
 val.' When this boy grew up, he determined, 
 in memory of all these events, to hold a solemn 
 fast and feast. Originally it was a mourning 
 celebration, on the side of the death of one of 
 the brothers; but on the side of the tiger's hos- 
 pitality, and the rescue of the other brother, it 
 was a joyous feast; and to this day the ortho- 
 dox and informed Mohammedans meet and 
 snivel and wail together, with seeming depth of 
 feeling, in honor of this event. There is no 
 meaning in it calculated to produce any lasting 
 effect on character. It is a mere arbitrary ob- 
 servance, completed in ten days, and then dis- 
 missed until the time of its observance recurs 
 again."
 
 ii2 Tiro YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 >f ' 
 
 But this orthodox observance of the Ma- 
 horum, though the only part having any real 
 significance, is of no interest to speak of, com- 
 pared with the weird spectacles seen in the 
 streets. The people call it the "Tiger Fes- 
 tival." It is a time when every disorderly ele- 
 ment throws off restraint; and during the ten 
 days of the celebration, the city of Madras is an 
 ideal pandemonium. Although the Mahorum 
 is of Mohammedan origin and meaning, yet all 
 classes and races of people take part in it. 
 Like everything else in heathenism, it has de- 
 generated into a mere opportunity to exercise 
 the spirit and the enormities of meaningless 
 idolatry. To the reckless it is a time of dis- 
 order; to the boorish it affords a chance to appear 
 in grotesque garb, and act the fool ; to the de- 
 signing it gives an opportunity, and to the 
 vicious and bestial it is a time of violence and 
 excess. It is said that no decent native woman 
 is safe on the streets at such a time. Each 
 guild of Mohammedans builds what is called a 
 cage. I know not why they are so named; for 
 the structures resemble miniature mosques. 
 They are similar in shape and material, but 
 different in combinations of color and richness 
 of decoration. They are made entirely by 
 hand the framework of light sticks, and the 
 covering of many-colored paper and tinsels.
 
 DIVERSIONS. 113 
 
 When complete, and brilliantly lighted within, 
 and flashed upon by torchlight without, the 
 best class of these cages are dazzlingly pretty. 
 Each cage is, I judge, twelve feet square, 
 and fourteen feet high combining the square, 
 the dome, and the minaret of the mosque. 
 During the ten days of the festival, the cages 
 are kept on exhibition in immense booths, and 
 are inspected by multitudes. The finest cage in 
 Madras is that built by the governor's Moham- 
 medan guard; and the crowds visiting its booth 
 are so great at times that many fail to reach the 
 scene. 
 
 On ' the last night of the Mahorum, these 
 cages are carried in procession, amid a wilder- 
 ness of torches, to one of the large pools 
 of the city, dipped in the water, the paper torn 
 off, and the frames preserved for future use; 
 and the Mahorum is ended. There is nothing 
 so bad about this part of the performances ; but 
 this is only the most nearly decent part. 
 
 During the ten days, night and day, the 
 whole city is in disorder. The men of each oc- 
 cupation select a fierce, brutal Mohammedan, 
 put a false scalp on his head, with tiger-like ears, 
 dye his beard, and paint his entire body with 
 spiral stripes of black and yellow, spotting him 
 with other colors. They then drug him with 
 belutg, the effect of which is to make the man 
 
 s
 
 ii4 T WO VEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 as fierce and bloodthirsty as a tiger. Then 
 they make him the center of an immense mob, 
 keep him restrained, irritate him in every way 
 they can; and, when he is in the rage of an 
 infuriated beast, they open a space before him, 
 let loose a sheep in it, which he clutches, and 
 bites in the neck till he cuts a blood-vessel, and 
 then drinks its blood. There are a dozen or 
 more such processions in Madras every evening 
 of the ^fahorum. When two of these proces- 
 sions meet, and the tigers come face to face, 
 they fight with all fury; and, unless the police 
 prevent it, the two processions join in a hand- 
 to-hand battle. Were it not for the excellent 
 police regulations, many lives would be lost, 
 and no one would be safe on the streets. 
 
 Besides these tiger-processions, with their 
 crowding throngs, many go about promiscu- 
 ously in hideous false-faces, with blackened 
 bodies shining like polished boots, or painted 
 in all sorts of stripes and colors, and all ac- 
 companied by the indescribable din of thump- 
 ing drums, screeching horns, and weird noises, 
 until one feels he is on a visit to Hades. 
 There are other processions of different or no 
 significance some, at the head of which gilded 
 hands are carried high on poles (these are 
 called "three-finger gods"); others, with images 
 or banners, followed by noisy throngs, who
 
 DIVERSIONS. 1 1 5 
 
 scatter everywhere a sacred yellow powder. 
 Most of all this is entirely meaningless; and 
 this is the difficulty in describing any of these 
 great spectacular celebrations. There is so 
 much connected with them that has neither his- 
 toric nor religious meaning! It is done be- 
 cause it gratifies an aimless impulse. And 
 right here is one of the saddest results of 
 heathenism it renders so much of one's out- 
 goings of soul and energy aimless, meaningless, 
 and waste. 
 
 The Hindus imitate whatever they see 
 the Mohammedans do. They paint them- 
 selves, paint and drug their children, and drag 
 them half-dead through the streets. Fathers 
 carry naked children, whipping them with 
 stinging switches to keep them screaming in 
 torment; and bands of painted hoodlums meet 
 and fight with clubs. If one native has. a 
 grudge against another, he takes advantage of 
 this time to get even with him. 
 
 We drove in the thick and center of one of 
 the tiger-processions for some hours one even- 
 ing, with a party of ladies, in two open car- 
 riages. Our horses were often frightened, and 
 many times we seemed in danger ; but such 
 was the crowd about us that there was no 
 moving except with it. I am glad we could 
 not get away; for it was an evening long to be
 
 ii6 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 remembered. The Mohammedans were very 
 polite to us. They had the whole party com- 
 pletely in their power; but they showed us 
 every kindness, and helped us control the 
 horses* when they became unruly. 
 
 This is only one of many festivals, all dif- 
 fering in character and significance, which, 
 if one cares to pay attention to them, are full of 
 interest. Then, missionary touring, though hard 
 work, is restful through the changes and camp- 
 life which it affords. And when worn out or 
 much run down in health, a short voyage at 
 se, a vacation in the hills, or a complete change 
 of station, breaks up the steady drag of life. 
 Besides, there are in all the large cities organi- 
 zations of all the missionaries, corresponding to 
 the interdenominational ministers' associations 
 here at home. The Madras Missionary Con- 
 ference numbers one hundred and seventy of the 
 most cultured and experienced missionary super- 
 intendents, teachers, and preachers, from all 
 leading Protestant missions. Their monthly 
 meetings are broadening and inspiring. One 
 feels that he is in the councils of the world's 
 best training and thinking when in them. And 
 so the missionary's life is varied. His experi- 
 ence compasses the worst and the best the 
 greatest trials and sorrows, and the greatest 
 comforts and consolations. God's proportion
 
 DlVERSfONS. 117 
 
 runs through every life alike; "for as the 
 sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our con- 
 solation also aboundeth by Christ." (2 Cor. 
 i, 5.) And a missionary's life differs from an- 
 other's in being greater in many ways
 
 Chapter XI. 
 
 CONQUERED BY BROKEN HEALTH. 
 
 FROM the first of this second year the drain 
 of the work and the climate upon our ener- 
 gies was exhausting. As the summer wore on, 
 we realized that it would be impossible for us to 
 live in Madras without relief from the pressure 
 of the burden. After Mrs. RudisilPs death, 
 Mrs. Isham had taken the additional work of 
 editing Kfathar Mithiri the Womatt's Friend 
 the monthly Tamil zenana paper published for 
 the women who are taught to read by the 
 zenana teachers of the different missions. One 
 can hardly realize the difficulty of this work. 
 It is an effort to bring to the minds of these 
 lifetime prisoners such glimpses from life in 
 the great free world that Jesus gives to woman 
 in Christian lands, that they will catch some- 
 thing of the inspiration and hope which she 
 enjoys. Suppose a child of Christian American 
 parentage were so imprisoned for life that no 
 ray of light from any of our institutions civil, 
 educational, or religious could reach her, and 
 she should grow up in utter ignorance of all 
 the world except of two or three fellow-prison- 
 
 118
 
 CONQUERED BY BROKEN HEALTH. 119 
 
 ers and of one ignorant man who imposed 
 falsehoods upon her credulity and tightened her 
 bonds of delusion, how difficult it would be to so 
 present Christian life to her, while still in prison, 
 that it would benefit her in any lasting sense ! 
 And yet the task is even more difficult in the 
 case of the zenana woman ; for she is the child 
 of a motherhood imprisoned from the centuries 
 beyond the horizon of history. We can not ap- 
 preciate how utterly undeveloped these women 
 are. They are not women in any other sense 
 than in body and years ; otherwise, they are de- 
 luded children. It is significant that, when a 
 present is made, these mothers appreciate above 
 everything else the gift of a dressed doll. Only 
 those who have been taught by the missionaries 
 to sew, can make even dolls' clothes ; and they, 
 it is said, take as much pleasure as children in 
 playing with dolls. From this, one can see how 
 difficult it must be to find or write stories so 
 suited to their experience, and at once of such 
 a character as to help them to the Christian life. 
 It would be impossible, as a rule, were it not 
 that the work of the editor is supplemented by 
 that of the zenana teacher, who answers the ques- 
 tions awakened ,by what is read in the paper. 
 There were a thousand copies of Mathar Mitkiri 
 issued each month while Airs. Isham was editor. 
 Most of them found their way to the zenanas ;
 
 izo Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 and great good must steadily be accomplished 
 in this way. But with all her other work and 
 care, and the fact that her eyes and head were 
 never free from pain, which was aggravated 
 by the required reading and writing, my wife 
 found this editorial work wholly in excess 
 of her strength. But there seemed no way to 
 escape it. It was Mrs. Rudisill's dying request, 
 and there was no one else who was not as busy, 
 or busier, who could do it. There was, too, a 
 strong fascination about the work that would 
 indispose .any missionary to refuse ; and so it 
 was undertaken. 
 
 Almost continually after our return from the 
 hills in' July, Mrs. Isham was in the care of a 
 physician of one sort or another. There are 
 plenty of first-class physicians in most of the 
 large cities and military stations in India. The 
 lives and health of British soldiers and civilians 
 are so valuable to the Government that it pays 
 England to establish and support at India's 
 expense, of course an elaborate hospital sys- 
 tem. And because this establishment is sup- 
 ported from the revenues of India, and be- 
 cause the Government seeks to do everything 
 practicable to improve the health of the people 
 and the sanitary condition of the cities, by 
 treatment, education, and sanitary regulation, 
 these hospitals and dispensaries are open to all
 
 t 
 CONQUERED BY BROKEN HEALTH. 121 
 
 * 
 
 who will take advantage of them. To the poor 
 patient, they furnish free bed, food, nursing, 
 and medical treatment; and those who are able 
 to pay are charged fees rated according to the 
 amount of their respective monthly incomes. 
 These hospitals are well equipped, and manned 
 by the best physicians, graduated from Indian, 
 English, and Scotch medical colleges. 
 
 Madras, for instance, has a very large mili- 
 tary hospital for men only ; another for women 
 only; another for women and children; arid an- 
 other for all classes, called "the Eye Infirm- 
 ary," all supported from the public treasury, 
 and open to patients of all classes and races. 
 Besides these, there are other private and mis- 
 sion hospitals. In connection with each Gov- 
 ernment hospital, there is an out-patients' dis- 
 pensary, where all who will may consult a 
 physician, and get his prescriptions filled, with- 
 out cost if unable to pay. Of course, since the 
 entire system is supported from public funds, 
 it is as much each one's right to partake of its 
 benefits as it is our right to send our children 
 to the public schools here in America. Hence 
 very many of the well-to-do, as well as poor, 
 when sick, seek and obtain admission to the 
 hospitals. During September, Mrs. Isham be- 
 gan an out-patient's course of treatment at the 
 Eye Infirmary. She continued going for weeks,
 
 122 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 until after having prescribed glasses, which 
 afforded but slight relief the oculist said he 
 could give her no further relief, as her general 
 ill-health was the cause of the pain in her eyes. 
 He advised an immediate change of climate. 
 
 Our family physician came regularly to our 
 house; and one day told us that his patient 
 was suffering from no organic difficulty he could 
 find, but from a general decline of health and 
 possibly some mischief was working in the 
 brain which could be relieved only by return- 
 ing to America. He felt very sure that she 
 was not going to stand the strain of becoming 
 acclimated to India, and that attempting to re- 
 main would very likely cost us her life. 
 
 He advised me to write Bishop Thoburn at 
 once; while he would call a physician in con- 
 sultation, and, after thorough examination, they 
 would, if agreed, certify in writing to her ill- 
 health and need of change home. Our physi- 
 cian had had thirty years' experience in medical 
 service in many parts of India, and he was de- 
 cided in the opinion that no change of climate 
 in that country could relieve his patient. We 
 wrote to the bishop, and followed it up with 
 the certificate, which the physicians concurred 
 in giving. 
 
 We were greatly disappointed and chagrined 
 at the thought of having to give up the battle;
 
 CONQUERED BY BROKEN HEALTH. 123 
 
 and when Bishop Thoburn's reply reached us, 
 we were sure that he did not intend we should 
 give it up, except as a last resort to save life. 
 He submitted the certificate to a leading physi- 
 cian of Calcutta, who encouraged him to believe 
 that the symptoms it reported indicated a state 
 of health which might be relieved by change of 
 climate in India; and when the bishop proposed 
 to transfer us to Lucknow, we gladly and hope- 
 fully consented to it. This set the matter of 
 our change at rest for the time being, and we 
 continued at our post in Madras till after Con- 
 ference, which met late in January. Bishop 
 and Mrs. Thoburn visited Madras before Confer- 
 ence. Mrs. Thoburn, being herself an M. D., 
 called another eminent missionary physician in 
 consultation, and they encouraged us to hope 
 that we might find health for my wife, and con- 
 tinue in the field by changing to the North, 
 though they considered it only a doubtful ex- 
 periment. 
 
 But for myself, this was the most trying time 
 in all my life's experience. It was by no means 
 easy to see clearly the line of highest duty at 
 all times. The conflict in the opinions of emi- 
 nent physicians, and that between duty to the 
 Church and to one's family; my wife's uncer- 
 tainty of conviction as to the right course for 
 us to take; the knowledge that every day
 
 124 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 brought increase of suffering and loss of strength 
 to one so precious to many; the fact that one 
 missionary, whose symptoms had been similar 
 to my wife's, had disregarded nature's warning 
 until she had lost her reason and finally her 
 life; and the ever-increasing pressure of the 
 work as the year drew to a close, made for us 
 some gloomy months. But I came to see that 
 I was not responsible either for my wife's being 
 in India, or for keeping her there. She would 
 not say, "I must go home;" Bishop Thoburn 
 was not ready to release us, and I could not; 
 so, much as I sympathized with and feared for 
 my wife, I found I still had about nothing to 
 do but to trust in God and obey orders. Bishop 
 Thoburn was tender and sympathetic, but at 
 the same time wisely checked our haste, and 
 conserved both our own and the Church's best 
 interests. He dealt with us as a father, and we 
 shall always feel greatly indebted to him for the 
 kindly wisdom of his counsel and the steadi- 
 ness of his hand in helping us safely through 
 this time of peril. 
 
 I was so connected with important matters 
 in the South India Conference that it was neces- 
 sary for me to attend it, and our transfer to the 
 North India Conference was not made till the 
 close of our own. /The session was held at 
 Hyderabad, the capital of the Deccan State,
 
 CONQUERED BY BROKEN HEALTH.. 125 
 known as the Nizam's Dominions. It was to 
 
 * 
 
 me a season of great religious refreshing, and 
 of helpfulness .on many lines ; and I returned to 
 Madras determined at least to be true to God, as 
 far as I could see clearly the line of duty. 
 
 I reached home on a Wednesday morning, 
 and found we could sail for Calcutta by Satur- 
 day, if we could get packed up- and aboard. 
 With much hurry and hard work we were ready 
 by Friday night. Then came the farewell re- 
 ceptions tendered by the League, the Sunday- 
 school, and the Church, on the same evening 
 and at the same place. The Sunday-school 
 gave theirs first. The' superintendent presided ; 
 and an address, signed by e f very member of the 
 school, was read, and, together with a purse of 
 money, was handed to us. Then, after a re- 
 sponse from the retiring pastor and farewells to 
 the school, the Epworth League, with a differ- 
 ent chairman, followed in like order. And last 
 of all came the farewell of the Church. The 
 purses contained about fifty dollars. The art- 
 lessness of the expressions of affectionate ap- 
 preciation proved their genuineness. Major 
 Wm. Marshall, who presided for the Church, 
 broke down in an attempt to express the esteem 
 in which we were held by those whom we had 
 tried to help for two years. His tears and 
 choking emotion were more eloquent than any
 
 126 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 words could be, and, we felt, truly expressed the 
 sentiments of many hearts. I write this merely 
 to show that these people appreciate the sacri- 
 fices and efforts made in their behalf. We were 
 not more loved than any faithful minister and 
 his wife would be perhaps not so much loved 
 as many are and yet we have not been shown 
 such affection- elsewhere. It was hard for us to 
 sever from a people to whom we were so knit 
 in the bonds of affection, and with most of whom 
 we had walked in the deepest valleys of affliction 
 known to humanity. 
 
 On Saturday we were helped and escorted 
 aboard our ship by a large company of friends, 
 very few of whom it is likely we shall ever see 
 again. And so ended our two years in Madras. 
 We had passage on a splendid ship the Gol- 
 conda of the British India Steamship Company, 
 and had a quiet, pleasant voyage of four days 
 to Calcutta. Mrs. Isham was so ill that she 
 could not bear the sea-breeze on deck, and so, 
 being confined to her state-room, got but little 
 benefit from the trip. 
 
 Bishop and Mrs. Thoburn were away in 
 South India, and had directed us to occupy 
 their rooms, which we were delighted to do 
 during our week's stay in the capital of the 
 empire. We were impressed with the extreme 
 simplicity of the bishop's style of living. The
 
 CONQUERED BY BROKEN HEALTH. 127 
 
 rooms occupied by his family were in the build- 
 ing known as the Deaconess Home. One long 
 room, divided by a curtain partition, served as 
 offices for the bishop and Mrs. Thoburn. This, 
 and a moderate sized sleeping-room, with the 
 regulation bath and dressing rooms, completed 
 the list of their apartments. They took their 
 meals at the Home table, and thus avoided the 
 expense and care of a separate establishment. 
 There was not an article of furniture that 
 could be dispensed. with; and while everything 
 was clean and tidy, all was plain and sub- 
 stantial. 
 
 Our stay in Calcutta was somewhat restful; 
 but Mrs. Isham had again to submit to the 
 now-become-odious ordeal of medical examina- 
 tion and quizzing, with the usual result of dis- 
 agreement between the physicians. One advised 
 returning to America; the other believed India 
 had climate that would restore her health. We 
 were treated with great kindness by the mis- 
 sionaries in Calcutta, and would have lengthened 
 our short vacation with them gladly; but our 
 new work the pastorate of the English Church 
 in Lucknow had been waiting long for our 
 coining, and we hastened on. 
 
 We left Calcutta about eight o'clock in the 
 evening, traveling by rail in a northwesterly 
 direction up the Ganges Valley. Daylight, the
 
 128 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 following morning, found us in the midst of 
 scenes at once beautiful and strange to us. It 
 was about the middle of February, when the 
 wheat is golden and the poppies in bloom ; for 
 these rich wheat-lands are also rich opium- 
 lands. From the poppies grown here the deadly 
 drug, for which England forces China to fur- 
 nish a market to the ruin of her people is 
 manufactured. Fields of gold, of red, and of 
 white interchange; and here and there are com- 
 panies of harvesters, with hand-sickles, gather- 
 ing the handfuls into huge bundles for the 
 women to carry -to the village threshing-floor. 
 All day we were in scenes like these, broken 
 now and then by villages, towns, and impor- 
 tant cities. We passed through Benares the 
 Mecca of the Hindus and other places of in- 
 terest and importance, and reached Lucknow at 
 one o'clock of the second night. 
 
 Dr. Mansell for more than thirty years a 
 missionary in India, and our new presiding 
 elder met us at the station with a carriage, to 
 take us to the waiting parsonage. We were also 
 met by a delegation of our new parishioners, 
 with a quantity of milk for our children. Such 
 an attention would hardly be expected even in 
 America. But our children were asleep, and 
 this carefulness for them was wholly superfluous. 
 Dr. Mansell's house was in the same compound
 
 CONQUERED BY BROKEN HEALTH. 129 
 
 as the parsonage, and his good wife had a lunch 
 awaiting. We ate, of course ; but were too tired 
 and sick to enjoy it at that hour. It was about 
 two o'clock in the morning when we went over 
 to our own home Dr. Mansell carrying one 
 of our sleeping children, and I the other. Im- 
 agine our surprise when we found the great 
 gloomy house stripped of everything but dust. 
 It was just as it had been left weeks before by 
 our predecessor, with dust accumulations added. 
 There were no mattresses on the bedsteads, no 
 curtains between the rooms, no water no any- 
 thing, except a letter to Mrs. Isham from a mis- 
 sionary who had recently returned to America, 
 instructing her, in a rather mandatory and warn- 
 ing tone, about her new duties. To make mat- 
 ters worse, the wrong trunks those of a Mrs. 
 Colonel some one had been brought from the 
 station instead of our own. Dr. Mansell carried 
 over some mattresses ; and we patched up such 
 cover as we could, and lay down three of us 
 to sleep, but my poor wife to cry all to herself 
 from nervousness and the sense of insufficiency 
 for the requirements of our new work. If we 
 had been well, this night's experience could 
 easily have been laughed through; but under 
 the circumstances it was rather trying. 
 
 To us, this seemed, as we looked at the map, 
 much more of a change than it really was at 
 
 9
 
 130 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 the time of the year we made it. Lucknow is 
 farther due north from Madras than Milwaukee 
 is from New Orleans. If we had made the 
 change in September, it would have made great 
 difference ; and, with the bracing effect of a 
 North India winter, we might have continued to 
 work on there for years. But to reach Lucknow 
 late in the winter, when the sun is returning in 
 power, when all India is dry as a desert, and 
 when the burning winds and dust-storms are 
 setting in, is "jumping from the fat to the fire." 
 North India, from the beginning of March to 
 the middle of June, is hotter, and severer every 
 way as to climate, than is Madras. The temper- 
 ature rarely goes above 110 in Madras, while it 
 reaches 120 or higher in Lucknow and at other 
 North India points. This is due partly to the 
 fact that the rains on the Madras coast come 
 later by five months than to the rest of India, 
 and partly to the moderating effect of the sea 
 at Madras. Lucknow has continental climate, 
 which, of course, means greater extreme?. 
 Madras has continual summer, while Lucknow 
 has a much more decided summer, and a mild 
 winter, with frost and very thin ice. 
 
 This change intensely aggravated Mrs. Ish- 
 am's suffering, and rendered her unable to plan 
 and execute even the household arrangements. 
 We were trying to get hold of our work, and
 
 CONQUERED BY BROKEN HEALTH. 131 
 
 furnish and make presentable our great gloomy 
 parsonage. This was a very trying work, as we 
 had little money and few ornaments. While at- 
 tempting to get this work done, Mrs. Isham 
 completely broke down. Mrs. Dr. Badley called 
 one day while I was out, and, seeing how utterly 
 hazardous it was to her life to continue to bear 
 any sort of care, induced her to go home with 
 her. The missionaries then took matters into 
 their own hands sent for Dr. Cleghorn, who, 
 after an examination, advised our immediate 
 return home. Then my wife gave up. She 
 said it seemed the obligation to stay was lifted 
 from her all at once, and she felt it her duty to 
 come. She has never since seen it in any other 
 light. The following quotation, which, without 
 even a thought or a suggestion from -us, ap- 
 peared in the Indian Witness the official organ 
 of the Church in India sums up, I think, the 
 verdict of the missionaries who were familiar 
 with the facts: "The Rev. Geo. W. Isham and 
 Mrs. Isham had no sooner reached Lucknow than 
 Dr. Cleghorn, so well and favorably known as a 
 medical authority throughout the Northwest, per- 
 emptorily ordered Mrs. Isham to America to stay, 
 as she is 'constitutionally unfitted for residence 
 in India.' Mr. and Mrs. Isham have done their 
 best to stay. They have remained when others 
 less determined, or less attached to the field,
 
 132 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 would have given up the battle which Mrs. 
 Isham has waged against pain and weakness 
 and lassitude. They go, regretting their ina- 
 bility to remain, as all the mission staff and 
 their many South-of-India friends regret to 
 spare them. Both have been honored servants 
 of the Master in India. The work they have 
 done will abide."
 
 Chapter XII. 
 HOMEWARD TRAVELS. 
 
 WE telegraphed Dr. Cleghorn's advice to 
 Bishop Thoburn; and, in reply, he di- 
 rected us to return to America as soon as possi- 
 ble. Our recently unpacked effects were shortly 
 repacked, and shipped to Bombay. Freight 
 travels very slowly in India; and it would 
 take at least a week for our boxes to reach 
 the sea. We concluded to stay in the North 
 until as near sailing-time as possible. We would 
 have at least a week. Mrs. Badley urged me 
 to use the time seeing as much as possible 
 of North India. I visited, however, but two of 
 the great cities ; viz., Agra and Cawnpore. The 
 former is the capital of the Province of the same 
 name, which was formerly an important Moham- 
 medan State. An object of great interest here is 
 Fort Akbar, the royal fortress of the Moham- 
 medan era. This contains the celebrated "Pearl 
 Mosque," the king's harem, the palace of Shah 
 Jehan, royal reception-halls, Government build- 
 ings, courtly residences, baths, etc. built mostly 
 of white marble on red-sandstone foundations,
 
 134 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 ornamented everywhere with mosaics of pre- 
 cious stones and delicate tracery. These build- 
 ings are partly in ruins, but largely in a good 
 state of preservation. The British Government 
 has restored in cheaper materials the broken 
 pillars, and parts of the gilded ceilings, so that 
 one can get a fair conception of what they were 
 in the palmy days of Mohammedan glory. 
 This fort is now occupied by a garrison of 
 English soldiers. But the object of greatest 
 interest is the celebrated Taj Mahal, situated in 
 the midst of a forty-acre garden of rich foliage 
 and flowers, about a mile east of the fort, on 
 the banks of the river Jumna. Taj Mahal is a 
 splendid mausoleum, built by Shah Jehan (king 
 of the world) for himself and favorite wife, 
 Noor Mahal, sometimes called Noor Jehan 
 (light of the world). In many respects, the 
 Taj Mahal is one of the most superb edifices in 
 the world. Twenty thousand workmen are said 
 to have been employed for twenty-two years in 
 building it ; and its estimated cost is $4,000,000, 
 which expresses but the merest fraction of what 
 its cost would be if erected in this country. 
 The well-kept garden in which it is situated 
 may be entered on either of three sides through 
 a palatial gateway. When I stepped from the 
 carriage at the entrance to one of these gates, 
 I at first mistook it for the Taj itself; but,
 
 HOMEWARD ^TRAVELS. 135 
 
 upon passing through to the veranda on the 
 garden side, in full view of the glorious tomb, 
 as it rises from the rich green of the surround- 
 ing foliage under the brilliance of an Indian 
 sun, in the loveliness of its heavenly white, I 
 felt that I was standing in the sacred precincts 
 of the realms of glory. Its proportions, har- 
 mony, symmetry, and unity are such that one 
 can hardly think it was made by hands. It is 
 one hundred feet in diameter and two hundred 
 feet in height, built in the form of an irregular 
 octagon, and rising from a marble terrace at 
 least two hundred feet square and fifteen to 
 twenty feet high, which in turn rests upon a 
 red-sandstone terrace of about the same height 
 and at least four hundred feet square. At the 
 corners of the second or marble terrace are 
 lofty minarets ; and in the center of the main 
 building rises a magnificent dome, flanked by 
 cupolas of similar form. Both the interior and 
 exterior are decorated with mosaics of precious 
 stones and the most exquisite tracery. The 
 entire Koran is said to be written in the mosa- 
 ics of precious stones on the interior walls. An 
 echo is produced in the dome, which so magni- 
 fies the sound of the voice that conversation is 
 next to impossible beneath it. Common talk- 
 ing tones become like the reverberations of 
 thunder; and a whisper, like the roar of the sea.
 
 136 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 The sarcophagi of Jehan and Noor Mahal lie in 
 the crypt below the dome. The reign of Shah 
 Jehan, when this tomb was built, marks the 
 climax of the nation's glory. The kingdom ex- 
 hausted itself in building the tomb of what 
 they were pleased to call " the king of the 
 world " and " the light of the world." When 
 these were buried, the nation faded away. It is 
 impossible to tell by whom this matchless mon- 
 ument of human genius was designed. It is 
 held by some to have been conceived by an 
 Italian architect who was in the service of the 
 refined and cultured Jehan ; but this, on the 
 other hand, is disputed by those who hold to the 
 purely Saracenic origin and character of the 
 Taj. There is no doubt that European archi- 
 tects were employed at the Mohammedan 
 courts. The buildings in the fort at Agra and 
 elsewhere combine European features of all 
 civilized ages with Saracenic principles. But 
 by whomsoever the Taj was designed, it is 
 purely Saracenic in principle and ornamenta- 
 tion. The day I spent at Agra was one full of 
 surprise and pleasure, and will ever be remem- 
 bered with the keenest interest. 
 
 At night, I took the train for Cawnpore, and 
 spent the forenoon of the next day amid the 
 scenes made historic and perpetually of thrilling 
 interest by the heroic sufferings of. the English
 
 HOMEWARD TRAVELS. 137 
 
 residents during the Sepoy mutiny of 1857. 
 About one o'clock, my family, kindly accompa- 
 nied by Mrs. Badley, reached Cawnpore; and, 
 taking leave of this good friend and the other 
 missionaries, we started on our long and weary 
 journey homeward. 
 
 We reached Bombay, on the morning of the 
 second day. The weather was becoming very 
 oppressive, and we were detained here for more 
 than a week, waiting to obtain passage by the 
 best and fastest line of steamers. On Saturday, 
 the 1 4th of March, we sailed aboard the Bok- 
 hara, of the Peninsular and Oriental Com- 
 pany's line. We had a quiet passage across 
 the Arabian Sea. 
 
 We transhipped at Aden aboard the 
 through-liner Paramatta, on her six weeks' 
 voyage from Melbourne to London. Nearly 
 every part of the world was represented on our 
 passenger-rolls. These through-liners are to 
 the seas what through-trains are on land. Feed- 
 ers from New Zealand, from Japan, China, Ma- 
 laysia, India, Palestine, Egypt, and adjacent 
 lands, bring mails and passengers to convenient 
 points along the path of the great ships. We 
 spent over two weeks in this sea-home, harmon- 
 izing the rest of the world to us, and being har- 
 monized to the rest of the world. The tropical 
 heat continued till we reached the Mediter-
 
 138 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 ranean, where we were struck by a cold north 
 wind, which seemed severe to us. Our course 
 was due northwest from Port Said. All the 
 second day we sailed along the coast of south- 
 western Greece. The atmosphere was so clear 
 that, by the aid of glasses, we could see the 
 shepherds and their flocks on the hillsides, and 
 the people moving about in the villages. 
 
 In the afternoon of the next day we landed 
 at Brindisi, Italy. This is the terminus of the 
 Continental Railway, which, excepting the En- 
 glish Channel, connects the Mediterranean with 
 the Atlantic at Queenstown, at the southwest ex- 
 tremity of Ireland, by rail. The mails and hur- 
 ried travelers take the train made up at Brindisi 
 of mail-carriages, baggage-vans, and Pullman 
 sleepers and, hurrying on, reach Queenstown 
 one week in advance of those who come by sea. 
 We lost some passengers and gained some new 
 ones at this landing. We spent some hours in 
 the town; visited the cathedral, and heard the 
 priests chanting their mummeries; saw the be- 
 nighted women, and an occasional wretched 
 man, worshiping the Virgin's statue; saw others 
 telling their sins, through perforated tin, to a 
 drunken priest, sitting in the confessional box, 
 and felt these people to be even more blindly 
 pagan, as far as they differ at all, than the Hin- 
 dus of India. We went through a room where,
 
 HOMEWARD TRAVELS. 139 
 
 in large glass cases were kept life-sized images 
 of the Savior as he went through the different 
 scenes and acts of his life, together with images 
 of the leading characters who acted with him. 
 At the time of certain Church festivals these 
 images are carried in procession through the 
 streets. One sickens of everything about him 
 here, and feels, as he sees the crowds of lub- 
 berly priests lording it over the oppressed and 
 deluded people, that he would like to hitch them 
 up and make them plow. 
 
 We left Brindisi on Saturday evening, and 
 when we awoke the next morning we were in 
 the harbor at Valetta, the capital of Malta. 
 We were here some hours, and, going ashore, 
 had a ramble through the town. Valetta was 
 built mostly by the Knights of St. John, who 
 owned and occupied Malta from the early part 
 of the sixteenth century till it was wrested from 
 them, in 1798, by Napoleon Bonaparte. In 
 1800 the English wrested it from the French, 
 and it has ever since remained a British pos- 
 session. The island was originally a barren 
 rock, but has been spread over with a thin soil 
 imported from Sicily, and is now made very 
 productive by careful cultivation. Cotton is the 
 staple product of all the three islands included 
 in speaking of Malta, and much of it is manu- 
 factured by English factories on the islands.
 
 140 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 Malta grows much delicious fruit its oranges, 
 olives, and figs being renowned. A clearer at- 
 mosphere is not known. Mount Etna, which 
 is one hundred and thirty miles away on the 
 island of Sicily, can be seen at the rising and 
 setting of the sun at all times of the year. 
 There is no end to the objects of interest in 
 and about Valetta. It has one of the finest 
 harbors in the Mediterranean. This, together 
 with its central position and military strength, 
 render the possession of Malta of great impor- 
 tance to Great Britain. It is one of the best 
 fortified points in the world, having vast store- 
 houses for grain excavated in the solid rock. It 
 is the center of the grain-trade between the 
 Mediterranean and Black Seas. It serves as a 
 station for the British Mediterranean fleet. A 
 new Government grading-dock was put in a 
 few years ago, which is capable of receiving 
 the largest war-vessels; and the hydraulic lift- 
 dock is of great benefit to commerce, especially 
 to steamers of the India route, as by means of 
 it vessels can be repaired without discharging 
 their cargoes. 
 
 Historically and in architecture Valetta and 
 other points on the islands are very interesting. 
 There are old Roman monuments; Saracenic 
 remains; a chapel, built at the point where St. 
 Paul and the company of his wrecked ship are
 
 HOMEWARD TRAVELS. 141 
 
 supposed to have been thrown ashore; the 
 splendid St. John's Cathedral, built by the 
 knights; the armory of this order, containing 
 the finest tapestry, and a very fine collection of 
 knightly armor; the Governor's Palace; the 
 carriage of Napoleon, together with many 
 Maltese peculiarities and niceties, make one feel 
 that he is at the crossroads of all history and 
 modern civilization. Fortunately for us it was 
 Sunday, and we were thus prevented from buy- 
 ing any of the tempting articles brought aboard 
 the ship or offered on the streets. Maltese lace 
 is celebrated for its beauty, and, being in great 
 demand by travelers, is temptingly displayed 
 everywhere. Bales of it are brought aboard, 
 and the shop-windows are full of it. My wife 
 had a fight for conscience' sake, but refused all 
 offers. She was much comforted when, a day 
 or two afterward, an English manufacturer told 
 us that all the lace we saw in Valetta was made 
 in England, and we could buy plenty of the same 
 patterns in any of the good towns of Britain. 
 It is very difficult, he said, to get real Maltese 
 lace, as it is made by hand by the nuns, and 
 except one could procure it from the priests, 
 he could not get it at all. The English are 
 skillful imitators, and their goods go everywhere. 
 The hawkers from Central Asia will offer fine 
 hand-made camel's-hair shawls to the tourist at
 
 142 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 way-up prices, and when he presents the rare 
 article to the friend for whom it is intended, he 
 will likely be told that it is an English imita- 
 tion, made of merino wool, and on sale gener- 
 ally in the home-land. Vast fortunes are made 
 by the sale to Englishmen abroad, at high 
 prices, of ingenious imitations of rare and costly 
 articles. 
 
 Sunday noon we swung out again to the sea, 
 and sailed all the afternoon in sight of Mount 
 Etna, crowned with eternal white, but with a 
 vast crater of blackness on the seaward side. 
 For twenty days after leaving Bombay the 
 weather was beautiful, and the sea was often as 
 smooth as glass. It was especially so from 
 Malta to Gibraltar, which we reached Thursday 
 evening. We stopped but a short time, and 
 then passed out into the storms of the Atlantic. 
 Tkursday night and Friday were severely 
 stormy, and we were all seasick. Saturday was 
 quieter. Sunday morning was foggy ; but about 
 two o'clock in the afternoon the fog lifted, the 
 sun broke through, and the green banks about 
 Plymouth, England, rested our weary, longing 
 eyes. 
 
 Our passage was to London, but we could 
 stop at Plymouth. London was yet twenty- 
 four hours distant through the channel, where, 
 it is said, "all the mad winds and waves of
 
 HOMEWARD TRAVELS. 143 
 
 heaven and earth meet to fight their battles." 
 So, as we had only light traveling baggage with 
 us, we landed, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, 
 from the harbor whence sailed the Mayflower 
 long ago, and for which the first New England 
 settlement was named. And it was Sunday- 
 quiet, English Sunday. The customs officers 
 hurriedly passed our baggage, and we were 
 shortly cozily settled in a snug lodging-house, 
 which had been recommended to us by a pas- 
 senger from Australia. O, the restfulness, the 
 preciousness, of this quiet Sabbath, after living 
 two and a half years where there is no Sabbath 
 in any true sense! At night I went to the 
 Wesleyan Church. The preacher dispensed the 
 word from an old-fashioned high-box pulpit, 
 but not in such a manner as to make any im- 
 pression on as weary a listener as I was. There 
 was just one thing that impressed me here and 
 everywhere it seemed in the very atmos- 
 phere the delicious restfulness. It was Easter 
 Sunday, and Monday was a holiday, and the 
 substantial English farmers came to town. 
 Shops, though, were for the most part closed, 
 and all business suspended. Tuesday we took 
 the train, via the seven-mile tunnel under the 
 Severn River, for Liverpool. We were com- 
 fortably quartered in the Commercial Hotel by 
 eight o'clock at night. Wednesday morning we
 
 144 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 secured passage on the Etruria, the Cunard 
 liner, to sail Saturday. We spent the rest of 
 the week quietly, as there was little of much 
 interest to us about Liverpool. About noon, 
 Saturday, we went aboard, to finish the voyage. 
 As our splendid ship started down the river 
 to the sea, I was standing near the foremast. I 
 cast my eyes upward, and found the American 
 flag floating over me. I never before realized 
 how beautiful and precious the old flag is to' 
 every true American. We had seen it but two 
 or three times in all our wanderings; and when 
 I saw it floating so proudly from the masthead 
 above me, I involuntarily shouted amid tumul- 
 tuous emotion, "Glorious flag!" I suspect those 
 Britishers took me for stark mad ; but what did 
 I care? there was the American flag over me. 
 I am not ashamed to glory in it anywhere. We 
 spent the night doubling Southern Ireland, and 
 on Sunday morning were anchored in the 
 harbor at Queenstown. About the time we 
 started from Liverpool, the American mails 
 from Australia, all the Orient, and Continental 
 Europe, were crossing the English Channel 
 from Calais. They were hurried on with the 
 passengers who came by rail, and overtook us 
 at Queenstown. These mails and passengers, 
 together with a great crowd of Irish emigrants, 
 came aboard about noon. It is very interesting
 
 HOMEWARD TRAVELS. 145 
 
 to see the excited enthusiasm of these impul- 
 sive people. As they drew near enough on the 
 tug to be able to distinguish the ship that was 
 to bring them over, they threw their hats in air, 
 and shouted in the wildest manner. One can 
 imagine something of the emotions which, at 
 such a time, heave in the breasts of these lib- 
 erty-loving people. Many of them have looked 
 forward for weary years to this time of starting 
 to the land of every good, as they have fondly 
 dreamed. They have toiled for money to pay 
 their passage very much as one would toil to 
 free himself from prison, or to emancipate him- 
 self from slavery. There are families here who 
 are going to join husband and father, who has 
 suffered separation, privation, and toil, perhaps 
 for years, that he might better his own and his 
 posterity's condition. There are young women 
 here who go to wed the lovers gone before. 
 And to one who is touched with sympathy for 
 the emotions awakened by human hopes, fears, 
 and struggles, the sight is interesting in the ex- 
 treme. We often complain of how unworthy 
 the emigrants who come, are of America; but 
 this scene was so touching that I really felt 
 that America was hardly worthy of such enthu- 
 siasm ; for well I knew that the majority of these 
 people would be sadly disappointed of their 
 hopes. If these emigrants were met as they
 
 146 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 boarded the ship by a wise, warm-hearted mis- 
 sionary, and religious services were daily con- 
 ducted among them while on the voyage, much 
 could certainly be done toward the solution of 
 our home missionary problems. While on the 
 voyage, impressions are easily made; and the 
 emigrant is hungry for sympathy, an'd open to 
 counsel. He has about a week of unemployed 
 time, which, it is likely, he will never have after 
 landing. It is easy to see how much more ef- 
 fectively Christianity will lay hold of these peo- 
 ple if it comes with a helping hand when they 
 are in the struggles of their life, and so poor 
 that selfish motives can not be charged, than it 
 can ever do if it is not broached to them till 
 they are settled masters of the situation. I 
 most heartily add my humble second to the 
 motion already made by Dr. Buchtel and other 
 leaders, for a steamship home missionary move- 
 ment. 
 
 We had a somewhat stormy passage across 
 the Atlantic, reaching New York on Sunday, 
 April 20th, having been five weeks and two 
 days on the way from Bombay, and having been 
 traveling and tossing about for three months. 
 How delicious it was to stroll, on that beautiful 
 Sunday afternoon, along the green banks of the 
 gliding Hudson, relieved of the suspense and 
 keen anxiety for the life and health of my heroic
 
 HOMEWARD TRAVELS 147 
 
 wife. But still the thought that we were not 
 permitted to continue in the midst of the 
 Church's glorious conflict at the front, awak- 
 ened a deeper undercurrent of regret, and, should 
 we allow it, would be a source of continual dis- 
 appointment and temptation. But regrets save 
 no souls, and help no cause. Since we can not 
 do what we would, we shall try to do what we 
 can, and be contented in the Lord.
 
 PART H. MISSIONARY LESSONS. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 THE WORK AND ITS MAGNITUDE. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY is for this world, as well as 
 V^ for the (Tons to come. To interpret its 
 purposes and work, and to confine its benefits 
 in our thought merely to the rescue from this 
 world at death of the few it may convert by 
 direct evangelizing agencies, is to rob it of its 
 grandeur, to render it well-nigh contemptible 
 to the practical mind, and to leave utterly 
 meaningless all the glad messages in God's 
 Word which promise the emancipation of this 
 earth from all its evil conditions. 
 
 We hear so often from those who seek an 
 excuse to disobey the positive command of the 
 Savior to evangelize the world, expressions like 
 this: "If the heathen are not enlightened, they 
 will not be responsible ; and since God is good, 
 he can not damn the irresponsible; hence, the 
 heathen must be saved, if they are not enlight- 
 ened ; but if they are evangelized, many of them 
 will reject the light and be lost. Therefore, I do 
 148
 
 THE WORK AND ITS MAGNITUDE. 149 
 
 not believe in sending them the gospel, and I 
 shall give nothing to help send it." One who 
 so speaks, sees no other meaning or purpose in 
 the Redeemer's work than that of getting souls 
 into heaven. In his own salvation he sees only 
 the hope of getting into heaven. If he does 
 any service, it is to advance his chances of en- 
 tering the pearly gates. He goes to prayer and 
 class meeting, refrains from worldly indulgences, 
 and gives what little he does to support the gospel, 
 simply to get to heaven. This is selfish Chris- 
 tianity, and is not Christianity at all in any good 
 sense. Jesus never held up such objects before 
 men's eyes to induce them to be good. He set 
 before us that all our seeming sacrifices in fol- 
 lowing him would enrich us a hundred-fold in 
 this life, and give us life eternal. And Paul 
 says: "Godliness is profitable for all things, 
 having promise for the life which now is, and 
 for that which is to come." 
 
 Jesus is making a new earth. The greatest 
 work of Christianity is to Christianize the earth. 
 Making converts is but a small part of this 
 great work. The word civilize has crept into 
 our speech, and leads our thinking astray. It 
 is not a distinctively Christian word, and leads 
 us to think there is some great power some- 
 where in the spirit of human progress, or in 
 evolutionary laws, or in the discovery of liberty
 
 150 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 and modern institutions, or in something else 
 apart from Christianity which is improving the 
 world. But the fact is, this onward and up- 
 ward movement of Christian humanity, and the 
 betterment of the earthly conditions of the race, 
 is traceable to the power of Christianity. It is 
 true this power is stored in and exercised 
 through various institutions and agencies; but 
 since it comes from Christianity originally, it is 
 more nearly just to speak of the Christianization 
 than of the civilization of the world. 
 
 The difference between the pagan and the 
 Christian worlds is very largely a matter of dif- 
 ference in institutions. In the Christian com- 
 munity we have many institutions which exert 
 a steady and powerful influence for good over 
 every member of society who comes in their 
 reach; while the Strongholds of Satan, which 
 enthrall men in the grip of evil, are reduced to 
 the minimum. In the pagan community the 
 reverse of this is true. The institutions are 
 Satanic, and humanity is so held in their grip 
 of evil that it is impossible for men to be or do 
 good. Institutions through which righteousness 
 and light, love and life, are made powerful to 
 bless mankind, are either perverted or elimi- 
 nated. The State, the family, the Church, the 
 school, are perverted to the enforcement of su- 
 perstition, oppression, slavery, unspeakable cm-
 
 THE WORK AND ITS AfAGNiruoE. 151 
 
 elty, and infinite outrage. Christianity is de- 
 voted to transform all this, and set captive 
 humanity free, and empower us to reach' the 
 circumference of our highest and widest possi- 
 bilities in the great purposes of our Heavenly 
 Father. To show that human degradation is 
 largely a matter of human helplessness in the 
 thralldom of evil strongholds, think of the re- 
 sults that would follow from transferring five 
 hundred infants from paganism to the life of 
 the children of truly Christian parents here in 
 America ; or of changing five hundred American 
 infants of Christian ancestry to the homes, sur- 
 roundings, and life of children in China, Africa, 
 or India. 
 
 But are they responsible for being born in 
 this condition, and must .they be lost if we do 
 not get them converted? That is not the point 
 at all. The work of Jesus is to bring about 
 different conditions for unborn generations to 
 come forth into, just as he has already done for 
 a large part of the race. " For this purpose the 
 Son of God was manifested, that he might de- 
 stroy the works of the devil." The Father hath 
 given to the Son "the uttermost parts of the 
 earth for a possession." And Jesus, through 
 the Holy Spirit, is in the world "to preach 
 good tidings unto the meek, to bind up the 
 broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap-
 
 152 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 lives, and the opening of the prison to them 
 that are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year 
 of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our 
 God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint 
 unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto 
 them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourn- 
 ing, the garment of praise for the spirit of 
 heaviness." This is the character of the work 
 our blessed Redeemer is to do now for benighted 
 and suffering humanity everywhere. This is 
 the great work he is doing for us*; and this is 
 the work of immediate good he asks us to en- 
 list our prayers, our means, and our very selves 
 with him to accomplish for the race. He leads 
 a spiritual emancipating movement of the John 
 Brown order. Every emancipated soul becomes 
 an enlisted soldier, under command of the 
 Emancipator, to extend the blessed work till all 
 are free. 
 
 So much for the character of missionary 
 work. Let this chapter be concluded with a 
 few words concerning the magnitude of the work 
 of Christianizing the pagan world. We hear 
 Christians sometimes complain that we have 
 been giving so much, and for so long a time, 
 that the heathen ought to be pretty well evan- 
 gelized by this time, and wondering if the time 
 is not soon to come when the missionary ex- 
 pense will cease.
 
 THE \VORK AND ITS MAGNITUDE. 153 
 
 Let us compare a little. India and Malaysia 
 together have three hundred and twenty-five 
 millions of people. The United States has sixty- 
 five millions. In 1890 there were in all India 
 and Malaysia two thousand one hundred and ten 
 Protestant missionaries of all denominations 
 (army chaplains not included). In the United 
 States, in 1886, there were eighty-three thou- 
 sand eight hundred and fifty-four Protestant 
 ministers. And yet my readers know how im- 
 perfectly our own sixty-five millions are evan- 
 gelized under the favorable circumstances of 
 our Christian civilization. India, too, is the 
 most thoroughly missionaried of any great 
 pagan field on earth, except Japan. 
 
 Go a little farther. The Methodist Episco- 
 pal Church in, 1891, spent for ministerial sup- 
 port in the United States, in round numbers, 
 ten millions of dollars, and appropriated for all 
 India and Malaysia one hundred and thirty- 
 three thousand dollars. Our Church is the 
 leading missionary Church, and if we have any 
 favored field, it is the one of which I write ; so 
 that India is fully as well treated at the hands 
 of our Church as all heathenism is at the hands 
 of all Protestantism. And you will find by a 
 little figuring that, if we were doing as well by 
 India as we are by our own country, we would 
 be doing three hundred and seventy-five times
 
 154 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 as mucn as we are. And if Methodism is rep- 
 resentative, this is true of the relation of all 
 Protestantism to all unevangelized humanity. 
 
 The calculation is simple. There are five 
 times as many people in our Indian field as 
 at home, and we spend seventy-five times as 
 much for ministerial support at home as we 
 do in India; and the product is three hundred 
 and seventy-five. Now, I am not advocating 
 that this ought not to be as it is ; I simply use 
 it to show the magnitude of the work of evan- 
 gelism. With all we are doing at home, how 
 partially the work is done in the midst of our 
 favorable conditions ! how vast tfye work in 
 heathen conditions, where all human forces and 
 agencies are so insignificant in comparison! 
 We are hearing a shout through all the Church 
 over what we call the " great harvest in India ;" 
 and yet should this harvest continue at its 
 present rate, it will take two hundred years to 
 bring India to Christ. And it is the most 
 hopeful missionary field on earth, aside from 
 Japan. These facts ought not to discourage 
 any one, in face of our Savior's commission 
 and promise; but they should teach us to 
 strengthen our faith and patience, and inspire us 
 to put forth efforts commensurate with the de- 
 mands for success in the work. The one great 
 passion of the Christian's life should be, not to
 
 THE WORK AND ITS MAGNITUDE. 155 
 
 see how much he can spend on himself and his 
 loved ones, and how little he can give to bring 
 the race under the power of Christ, but to studi- 
 ously and prayerfully consecrate himself and his 
 children to Jesus Christ to promote the only 
 truly great work; viz., the world's salvation.
 
 Chapter II. 
 PERVERSIONS OF PAGANISM. 
 
 IF one be ever so doubtful of the existence of 
 a. personal Satanic intelligence, he must be 
 convinced of it, if fair-minded, by the subtle 
 cunning, serpentine wisdom, and far-sighted 
 adaptation of pagan systems to withstand the 
 truth, the spirit, and even the blessings of the 
 Christian religion. 
 
 I wish in this and following chapters to speak 
 of the perversions of paganism which enable 
 it to resist Christianity and prevent the rapid 
 conversion of the world. I shall speak of those 
 perversions which I observed in India, but 
 which, in different forms perhaps, prevail every- 
 where in pagan systems. 
 
 The first difficulty is the extreme poverty of 
 the people. Not that the country is poor in 
 natural resources. It is by no means one of the 
 richest countries in the world, but it could be 
 made to do much better for the people than it 
 does. In territorial extent, India alone is more 
 than one-half as large as the United States, and 
 by irrigation can be made to produce abun- 
 dantly in most parts in many localities, two 
 156
 
 'PERVERSIONS OF PAGANISM. 157 
 
 crops annually. It has some rich gold and 
 silver mines, and many precious stones are too 
 common to have intrinsic value in the markets 
 of the country. India has yielded her wealth to 
 enrich other nations throughout the centuries, 
 while her own people have groveled and suf- 
 fered in the deepest poverty. It is the effect of 
 paganism to destroy enterprise. 
 
 The principle, "Except a corn of wheat fall 
 into the ground and die it abideth alone, but if 
 it die it bringeth forth much fruit," applies to 
 wealth as well as to souls. This great principle 
 the people of India have never learned. Hoard- 
 ing is the curse of India, and has always been. 
 It collects and holds the treasures of exchange, 
 and thus robs the industries and commerce of 
 sinews and wings, and invites the invasion of 
 civilized and powerful robbers from without. 
 Treasure is hoarded in the form of jewelry. 
 One never sees gold in circulation in India, be- 
 cause the rich natives buy it, and mold it into 
 jewelry, and thus keep their wealth locked up. 
 So everywhere you travel you are in the midst 
 of hidden wealth that you do not dream exists, 
 and oppressed all the time with sights of the 
 abject poverty of the people. I have frequently 
 heard it said that the average income of labor- 
 ing people in India is about nine dollars a year. 
 Bishop Thoburn makes the liberal estimate of
 
 158 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 twenty-five dollars a year. This is an average. 
 Many get much less. On this a man supports 
 his family, and often an unemployed relative 
 and his family. The, best of them have but 
 one meal and a little lunch a day, and many 
 have but one scant meal a day all through life. 
 There are one hundred millions of people who 
 have no other home or shelter than that afforded 
 by some spreading tree. "The streets and the 
 lanes" of the city, and "the byways and 
 hedges" of the country, afford dwelling-places 
 for one-third the people, as they did at the time 
 our Lord uttered the Parable of the Great Sup- 
 per. One can call together a congregation of 
 five hundred beggars any day in almost any of 
 the large cities of India, with the promise of a 
 half-cent or some trifling bit of food. 
 
 Now, this poverty is a seemingly insurmount- 
 able obstacle to gospel progress in India. The 
 one opening which offers young men a chance 
 is the Government service. Appointments to 
 vacancies in Government clerkships are made 
 from among those who make the best record in 
 college. The scramble is intense. Many of 
 these young men were married early, and have 
 families. They work so hard and eat so little 
 that fainting and sickness are not uncommon in 
 the halls of learning, and insanity and death 
 sometimes result.
 
 PERVERSIONS OF PAGANISM. 159 
 
 Mr. Wishard, the Young Men's Christian 
 Association representative from the colleges of 
 America and Europe to the colleges of the Ori- 
 ent, told the writer, in Calcutta, that the deep 
 poverty of the students, their fear of giving 
 offense to natives having influence with Gov- 
 ernment, and the pre-occupation of their stu- 
 dent-struggle after a clerkship that would give 
 bread or, rather, rice and curry to their fam- 
 ilies, made it almost impossible for him to get 
 near them, and made them deaf to the gospel. 
 He said that when he tried to get them to talk 
 of their own religion, they frankly admitted 
 they knew nothing of it, because they have no 
 time to investigate it. Nobody, no mission, no 
 message, is interesting to them, unless it helps 
 them to get food immediately. Starvation has 
 immediate terrors; and one can see from this 
 how the many-sided degradation of poverty 
 shackles human souls, and prevents that free- 
 dom of action necessary to accept the gospel 
 offers. The force of this difficulty which the 
 gospel meets, will appear as it is remembered 
 in connection with other hindrances yet to be 
 spoken of. 
 
 Paganism perverts or, rather, destroys 
 mankind physically. It is said there are no 
 sound bodies among pagans. The poverty of 
 diet, the lack of salt because of its expensive-
 
 160 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 ness, owing to taxation and Government mo- 
 nopoly and the filth of person and surround- 
 ings, make skin-diseases prevalent ; itch, scurvy, 
 rashes, etc., affect all, more or less. The awful 
 diseases of unbridled licentiousness spread and 
 burn among all classes, and poison the whole 
 current of blood and life in their descent to pos- 
 terity. Scrofula, leprosy, and other dreadful 
 blood-diseases, are quite common. The latter 
 is not contagious, nor is it even infectious, ex- 
 cept in the case of persons having moist palms 
 or feet, or except it be contracted through the 
 mucous membrane of the mouth or nose. The 
 pus must have contact with a susceptible skin, 
 and warmth and moisture are said to render the 
 skin susceptible. But it is. hereditary ; and in 
 case it does not appear in a leper's children, as 
 it sometimes does not, it is certain to appear in 
 the grandchildren. In pagan lands they neither 
 separate the lepers from the masses nor segre- 
 gate the sexes. Leprosy could be exterminated 
 entirely if this were universally done. 
 
 Besides all these skin and blood diseases, 
 heathen people are the easy victims of all the 
 sicknesses that flesh is heir to. They are ut- 
 terly ignorant of anatomy and the simplest facts 
 of hygiene. It is commonly accepted in South 
 India, among the ignorant masses, that the 
 stomach is a tortoise, and hunger is his squirm-
 
 PERVERSIONS OF PAGANISM. 161 
 
 ing. The natives will sometimes justify the 
 theft of food, on the ground that the tortoise in- 
 side compelled them to take it. The heart, to 
 them, is a little whirling wheel; and in the 
 head a bird is supposed to be imprisoned. 
 This is a fair sample of the pagan's science of 
 human anatomy. He is equally ignorant of 
 the relation between health and the environ- 
 ments with which he corresponds. He knows 
 no relation between food and strength, or food 
 and sickness. If he eats half a peck of green 
 mangoes a luscious India fruit and then has 
 the cholera-morbus, it does not occur to him 
 that the fruit is the cause of his misery. When 
 he is surrounded by festering filth, whose stench 
 would nauseate a glue-maker, and the cholera 
 breaks out in his home or neighborhood, he 
 does not think to ascribe it to his unsanitary 
 surroundings. He is equally ignorant of the 
 laws of contagion and infection. One sees 
 smallpox victims, when the pock is in full 
 bloom, mingling freely with the crowds in the 
 bazars, and no one seems to avoid them. I 
 have seen children in Sunday-school covered 
 with smallpox scabs. No one thinks of leaving 
 his residence, or taking any sort of sensible 
 precautions, when his home is surrounded by 
 cholera patients. Of course this condition is 
 somewhat modified in the larger cities of India,
 
 1 62 Tiro YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 where thousands of English live, and enforce 
 such sanitary measures as are possible; but of 
 the great masses of raw heathen, the statements 
 do not exaggerate the facts. 
 
 Disease to them, along with almost everything 
 else, is sent by the gods. When cholera breaks 
 out in a neighborhood, they put a yellow flag 
 about a foot square over the front door, and 
 daub the front of the house with saffron. This 
 is to charm away the god of the disease. They 
 send for the priest, he being their physician. 
 He daubs the sufferer's body with some filthy 
 stuff the filthier, the holier ties a yellow 
 string about his waist, and says some mun- 
 thrnms (prayers). That is the treatment for the 
 individual victim. To prevent the rest of the 
 family from taking the disease, he brings a 
 sacred cow, gaudily trapped with decorated 
 leather hangings and bells, with horns painted, 
 and garlands of flowers about the head and 
 neck, and, with smoking censer in hand, drives 
 her through the rooms of the house,' all the 
 time muttering prayers to the god or goddess 
 which is supposed to be the author of the 
 affliction. But the filth festers, germs multi- 
 ply, the disease spreads, and the thousands 
 suffer and die in all their helplessness and 
 night. That there are no healthy heathen is 
 generally true, with exceptions now and then, of
 
 PERVERSIONS OF PAGANISM. 163 
 
 course. What a wonderful field awaits the 
 medical missionary! 
 
 I come now to the mental perversion of 
 paganism. The thought-systems of pagan peo- 
 ples are as false as their religion. The devil 
 has sciences in the world. Astrology, alchemy 
 in its modern form, the " black art " these 
 are Satanic sciences. The pagans are, in all 
 things, "too religious." The fundamental order 
 of things with them is false and illogical, and 
 has been through the thousands of years of 
 their history. Through all the ages they have 
 exercised themselves to believe lies and con- 
 tradictions, and from his earliest efforts the 
 pagan child is trained to thus pervert his mind. 
 And these perversions are religiously sacred. 
 It is true they are under " strong delusion that 
 they should believe a lie." Such havoc has 
 paganism wrought that it seems impossible for 
 them to think the thoughts of Christianity. It 
 is the common complaint of teachers in schools 
 and colleges that the native mind is almost in- 
 capable of logical reasoning. The students are 
 proficient in studies in which the memory is 
 exercised, but very deficient in mathematics 
 and other studies that require analytical thought. 
 The thinking habits of the pagan mind are 
 such as to exclude utterly the right thinking 
 necessary to salvation by faith. Of course this
 
 1 64 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 m 
 is true in the case of sinners everywhere; but 
 
 the mental perversion is much deeper and 
 stronger in a pagan sinner than in a Christian 
 sinner. The miracle of conversion must begin 
 farther back, and the transformation is im- 
 mensely greater. This mental perversion is a 
 barrier in the missionary's way so discouraging 
 that it can be surmounted and overcome only by 
 a faith inspired and sustained by the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 Their ideas of music are so different from 
 ours that we can not melt them with the power 
 of our songs. They would be amazed at the 
 strangeness of the noise. You will see this 
 better from a little incident that occurred 
 during our first year in Madras. I had opened 
 a large high-caste boys' school, and had a 
 Christian teacher at the head of it. I was very 
 anxious for him to have the children learn to 
 sing. He spoke English quite well, and, after 
 I had repeatedly urged him to have them sing, 
 I asked him one day why he did not obey me. 
 He said, with evident hesitation and embarrass- 
 ment: " Sahib, I can't bray like an English- 
 man." This was his idea of our singing. It 
 would have about as much of a religious influ- 
 ence over them as the braying of donkeys. 
 They have a musical system of their own, and 
 our Christian hymns set to these lyrics are now
 
 PERVERSIONS OF PAGANISM. 165 
 
 being used with great profit in North India. 
 But it was not till within the last two years 
 that the difficult task of reducing their tunes 
 to the musical scale was accomplished ; and 
 it was thus made possible for our mission- 
 aries to master them. This was done by one 
 of our woman missionaries in North India. 
 But this book can be used only where one 
 of the sixty different languages of India is 
 spoken. 
 
 On the line of art in the forms of painting 
 and sculpture, the same depravity of taste is 
 seen. A landscape painting has no meaning to 
 a pagan. His pictures and sculptures are all 
 of idolatry and gross obscenity. He can appre- 
 ciate no other sort. A lady friend of ours sent 
 us a silken wall-banner, with a picture of the 
 Falls of Minnehaha beautifully painted upon it. 
 An Eurasian woman asked what it represented. 
 When asked what it looked like to her, she 
 answered, " The picture of an organ-stool." 
 This woman was far advanced toward English 
 thought and taste. She was part English stock, 
 was a devout and joyful Christian, lived in 
 English style, and associated with English and 
 Eurasian people. She had always lived in flat 
 Madras, six feet below the sea-level, and had no 
 idea what a waterfall is like, and no artistic 
 imagination to fancy one. This barrenness of
 
 1 66 Tiro YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 
 
 mind and heart, and this awful perversion of 
 faculty, seems like a desert waste for gospel 
 seed; but with the showers of grace from the 
 ever-present Holy Spirit, even this seeming bar- 
 renness is changed to " good ground."
 
 Chapter III. 
 PERVERSION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 
 
 OATAN'S skill and cunning is nowhere more 
 O clearly seen among pagan peoples than in 
 the perversion of what may be called religious 
 ideas. 
 
 With them, our religion is sin, and what we 
 call sin is religion. For instance, the newly 
 arrived missionary goes into the bazars to preach 
 in the open air to such a company as can be 
 called together. He goes, conscious that he is of 
 a superior race. He remembers he came from 
 a people of cleanly habits, of decent dress, of 
 physical comfort, of general culture, of free in- 
 stitutions, of the true religion, while the people 
 to whom he has come have none of these things, 
 but the reverse of most of them. He can not 
 help but be conscious of his superiority. The 
 very fact that he is a missionary to them is the 
 assumption that he is on a higher plane, and 
 has come to help them up. But he has also 
 the spirit of humility, and fears that the people 
 to whom he has come will think he thinks he is 
 better than they, and so will not come near 
 enough to him to be helped. 
 
 167
 
 1 68 Two YEARS IN INDIA, 
 
 But his thinking is wide of the fact. He 
 has come into an atmosphere of intense spirit- 
 ual pride. They do not think he is better than 
 they, nor superior. In fact, if a strict Brahman 
 were eating in an inner apartment of his house 
 with the door locked, and it came to his knowl- 
 edge that the missionary's shadow had fallen 
 across his outside doorstep, he would throw 
 away the remainder of his food lest he should 
 suffer contamination by the out-caste's pres- 
 ence. 
 
 The writer was" sitting in a compartment of 
 an English railway corriage, with some other 
 missionaries, one day, on our way to Conference. 
 A high-caste native gentleman came in with us, 
 and sat just opposite me. He had some small, 
 round, brass vessels, one upon another, in which 
 he carried different articles of food that had 
 been religiously prepared, and was safely pro- 
 tected from all contamination. With these lit- 
 tle vessels he had a few oranges and bananas, 
 which, not being so susceptible of contamina- 
 tion, were carried without cover. I was describ- 
 ing to a brother missionary a variety of orange 
 that he had not seen, and pointed to the caste 
 man's vessels in describing the size. The man 
 threw up his hands, and made a furious demon- 
 stration. I had not touched his vessel, and did 
 not understand his excitement ; and stupidly
 
 PERVERSION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 169 
 
 picked up one of his oranges as an object of 
 comparison. At this he made a wilder demon- 
 stration than before, showed great anger; and 
 on my dropping the orange, jerked it out of the 
 window, parted his little chatties (brass vessels), 
 took the one containing water, and poured from 
 it on his hand to wash away the contamina- 
 tion of having touched the same orange I 
 had. I felt in my soul that the man was not 
 complimentary, to say the least. I tell this 
 little incident to show the intense spirit of 
 division and the spiritual pride of the caste 
 people. 
 
 One can see from it how an audience in India 
 would receive the primary truths of Christian- 
 ity "And hath made of one blood all nations 
 of men;" "We are all created by one God, who 
 is our Father; and we are all equal and breth- 
 ren in his sight." These statements are in 
 direct contradiction to the primary principles of 
 their religion. With them, men are created in 
 distinct strata ; and there can be no crossing the 
 lines by those who were born in one caste into 
 another caste, either above or below him. A 
 man can become an out-caste very easily, but 
 he can not change castes. There is no inter- 
 marriage or other social intercourse between 
 the castes. There is commercial intercourse 
 among all castes, and religious intercourse be-
 
 170 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 tween the Brahman and all other castes; for 
 the Brahman demands contributions, and hom- 
 age of other sorts, from all other classes. Upon 
 this caste-principle is based the exceptional 
 privileges of the Brahmans who are deified by 
 it and the honors and privileges of all other 
 higher classes. Upon the preservation of their 
 caste is based their religious hopes and eternal 
 welfare. So the green missionary, who, in his 
 efforts to make them realize his great love for 
 them, proclaims the Fatherhood of God and the 
 equality and brotherhood of man, will be sur- 
 prised at the storm of rage he may awaken, if 
 he makes his meaning felt; for with them it is 
 easy to go down, but impossible to go up. The 
 struggle all the time is to retain the level one is 
 born in. So, to them, our great principle of 
 human equality simply brings all classes down 
 to the level of the pariah (that is, the soulless 
 out-caste) ; for it is impossible to bring him up. 
 Now, the Brahmans and other high-castes rule 
 the mob. They play at will upon their supersti- 
 tions and fears, and can infuriate them even to 
 violence against their best friends and inter- 
 ests. 
 
 Take another example. Let the missionary 
 preach, as Jesus did, that " not that which goeth 
 into the mouth defileth a man; but that which 
 cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man."
 
 PERVERSION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 171 
 
 His doctrine appears utterly diabolical to them ; 
 for they hold as primary that the reverse of this 
 is true. And so intense is their belief in the 
 corruption of unsanctified or religiously con- 
 taminated food, that they will die of starvation 
 rather than take the chances of ignorance as to 
 the character of what they eat. 
 
 Major Marshall who has had a lifetime 
 service in the British army in India, and who is 
 a devout member of our English Church in 
 Madras told the writer, that, in times of 
 famine which occur about once in seven 
 years, when the thousands are starving in every 
 city he had tried to give food to starving natives. 
 Seeing a starving man running along the road, 
 falling now and then, and lying till his strength 
 enabled him to get up and go forward, he said 
 he had placed milk and boiled eggs and white 
 bread where this starving man would see it, but 
 would not know who had placed it ; then he had 
 withdrawn to where he could see and not be 
 seen, and had watched the famishing man come 
 up, look longingly at the food, and go on to 
 starve without touching it. 
 
 And so, in many things, their ideas of sin 
 are reversed. What we believe and do relig- 
 iously, they avoid as sin; and what we call sin 
 in principle and practice, that they do relig- 
 iously. Maidens consecrate themselves to lives
 
 172 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 of shame as a religious service ; and many such 
 anomalies occur. So we must begin away back 
 with primary ideas in our religious training; for 
 our terms do not convey to them the meaning 
 we intended.
 
 Chapter IV. 
 WOMEN IN PAGANISM. 
 
 OF woman in paganism it may be said in 
 general that she does much of the heav- 
 iest and filthiest work. She builds roads, car- 
 ries the hod, and does this grade of manual 
 labor generally. The men do the sewing when 
 any is done and much of the cleaner and 
 lighter kinds of work. But this is by no means 
 the deepest shadow of the picture of woman's 
 condition. In paganism the beastly, brutal 
 qualities and tendencies of men are developed, 
 and the restraining, refining, and spiritual qual- 
 ities are suppressed until they seem entirely 
 lacking. Gratitude, mercy, pity, sympathy, and 
 such graces, are strikingly exceptional, while 
 "the works of the flesh" vaunt themselves with 
 fiendish audacity. From this almost any one 
 can see the character and spirit of the average 
 lord of the helpless woman. 
 
 But now let us see this helpless woman from 
 her pagan lord's standpoint. She is not a spirit- 
 ual being his equal in everything but mere 
 animal force ; his superior in many of the finer 
 qualities of spiritual being as she is in the 
 
 173
 
 174 Two y^ARs IN INDIA. 
 
 estimation of every refined Christian man. 
 Quite the contrary, she is an animal creature, 
 who exists for the convenience and service of 
 her lord. A Hindu has a far higher regard for 
 a cow than for a woman. When he is seen 
 upon the streets with his wife as is sometimes 
 the case among the lower castes she must keep 
 so far behind him that no one would guess that 
 she is in any way related to him. If you 
 speak to a high-caste man of his wife or wives, 
 he is displeased, if not offended. He has 
 learned that ivife, in the Western significance, 
 means partner, and conveys the idea of equality 
 with the husband. It is humiliating to him. 
 When he speaks of his wife or wives he says, 
 "My female/ or "the females of my house." 
 But this is still not the worst phase of the 
 picture. 
 
 Did woman occupy merely the position of a 
 domestic animal, she might find some liberty 
 and advantage in the indifference and disregard 
 of the lords of creation. Unlike mere animal 
 creatures, she is the source of calamity and all 
 sorts of misfortune, throngh her sins, to her 
 lord and other relatives. So she must be im- 
 prisoned in the zenana, the house of her hus- 
 band, from her girlhood to her grave; because, 
 by looking upon other men, and variously in 
 the exercise of her freedom, she may sin, and
 
 WOMEN IN PAGANISM. 175 
 
 thus make her very shadow prolific in woes to 
 all upon whom it may fall. It is not, as with 
 us, through the disobedience of a first mother 
 Eve and through her tempting of her husband 
 till he shared in her guilt, that all calamity 
 and death have come upon us; but it is through 
 the sins of the wife, or woman now living, that 
 the husband and other relatives must suffer. 
 
 Here is the explanation of the cruelties per- 
 petrated upon Hindu widows : The husband was 
 brought to his death by the sins of his wife ; 
 her shadow is deadly ; henceforth she, if a child, 
 must not play with other children, lest she 
 smite them by her dread spell; her head is 
 shaved ; she is limited to one poor meal a day 
 for life; she is avoided by all; she is the victim 
 of every whim, caprice, and brutal passion ; and 
 the older she grows, the more desolate and 
 helpless her life becomes. The lowest estimate 
 I have seen of these wretched women in India 
 is twenty thousand child-widows, and nine mill- 
 ion widows of all ages. Estimates as high as 
 twenty millions are made. Of course the widow- 
 hood is enforced. First, it is a Hindu law that 
 a widow shall not re-marry, for it is the duty 
 of the State to protect the lives of male sub- 
 jects against these murderous creatures; and, 
 second, no man with any sense about him is 
 going to marry a woman who has brought death
 
 176 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 to one husband already. Marriage is always a 
 risky business where women have such deadly 
 power; but where a woman has exercised it 
 upon one husband, no other man would wish 
 to be allowed to put himself into such a death- 
 trap. 
 
 Now think of the effect of this principle as 
 an obstacle to gospel work. It robs woman of 
 all moral courage just the thing indispensable 
 to her if she would listen to and obey the gos- 
 pel in braving all tradition, institutions, priestly 
 warnings, superstitions, and objections of rela- 
 tives, in fleeing from the kingdom of darkness 
 to that of light. From her earliest perceptions 
 she has been taught that upon her conduct de- 
 pends the welfare yes, the very life of all 
 her relatives, especially of her husband and of 
 those nearest to her. So thoroughly are girls 
 schooled in such teaching that they fear even 
 their own thoughts, they hide their faces and 
 slink away into their dark prison-rooms, and 
 spend their lives the victims of every imagi- 
 nable terror. O Christians! what chains of hell 
 are these! We Christians know that no people 
 can be converted unless the women are. A 
 people never rises above the moral and spirit- 
 ual plane of its womanhood. Women in pagan- 
 ism are in the most unevangelizable position 
 possible.
 
 WOMEN IN PAGANISM. 177 
 
 The sphere of Christian woman in saving 
 the nations is as important as that of the 
 brethren. Men have always thought they were 
 sufficient to the task of the world's evangeliza- 
 tion, but they are not; for they can not evan- 
 gelize pagan women. They may get companies 
 of men together, and preach Christ to them 
 with all force and earnestness; but few men 
 will be saved while Satan rules the wives and 
 the homes through the abominations of pagan- 
 ism. The Lord's servants and handmaidens 
 are indispensable to each other in the work of 
 pulling down the strongholds of evil, and build- 
 ing up the Christian institutions the family, 
 the home, the Church, the school, the State, 
 and the social circle. Just in proportion as 
 woman is important in every line of human life 
 and destiny, it is important that she should be 
 taught what her husband and brothers are 
 taught. This work men can not do, but women 
 can. They are doing it, by finding their way to 
 pagan woman in her prison-home, and there 
 teaching her, with infinite patience and persist- 
 ence, the folly of her own thinking, and the 
 glad message of life and deliverance in Christ. 
 Woman's work must have all the departments 
 that of men requires, and some special branches 
 school and zenana work, literature, orphanages, 
 Bible-reading, and all the lines required to make 
 
 12
 
 178 T\ro YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 redeemed woman the partner and helpmeet of 
 redeemed man. 
 
 How slowly this work must progress; and 
 yet how surely! The gospel has found its way 
 to these depths. It is preached to those in 
 chains. Those sitting in darkness see its great 
 light slowly dawning within and around them. 
 Christian ministers to body, mind, and spirit are 
 doing their patient, hopeful work. Christian 
 civilization, with its inventions, institutions, and 
 its spirit of progressive enterprise, is battering 
 at the walls of the city of conservatism, whose 
 citadel is the tomb of departed centuries. The 
 right of a benighted past to rule the earth in 
 the enlightened present is challenged, the battle 
 joined, and victory has cast the balance with 
 the armies of the new heavens and the new 
 earth.
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 THE CONSERVATISM OF PAGANISM. 
 
 ONE of the glorious watchwords of Chris- 
 tianity is " progress." Everything must 
 progress or die. The very dead earth beneath 
 our feet is being wrought upon by the forces of 
 evolution; and from out of present cosmos is to 
 come the ultimate "new heaven and new earth." 
 
 With us evolution is a universal law, bring- 
 ing transformation to all the works of God, and 
 man as well. With this idea of progress we 
 associate the idea of improvement. Our prog- 
 ress must be in improvement, to be progress. 
 Our homes, institutions, methods in everything, 
 and our very selves, must be better to-day than 
 we were yesterday ; must be better to-morrow 
 than we are to-day. We Methodists, who be- 
 lieve in Christian perfection immediately at- 
 tained, still believe in progress on all lines of 
 Christian character; but we believe in progress 
 in perfection to perfection. 
 
 The first perfection is what God wants us to 
 be and do to-day; the second is that better 
 being and doing of to-morrow. And so we have 
 a progressive standard of perfection, which we 
 
 179
 
 i s Tiro YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 hold Christians should continually and pro- 
 gressively attain always forgetting the things 
 behind, always pressing to the mark. 
 
 Christians who differ from us have a fixed 
 standard of perfection which is to be attained 
 in death, according to Augustinian theology; or 
 through the purging of purgatorial fires, accord- 
 ing to the Romish doctrine. 
 
 But all Christians honor and look to the 
 future. We are to be better in the future our- 
 selves, and men and things of the future are to 
 be superior to the present. Perfection is in 
 the future, arid yet to be attained. We orate 
 about "The Coming Man," "The New South," 
 "The World of the Twentieth Century," "The 
 Day of our Lord," "The Coining Resurrection," 
 "The New Heavens," "The New Earth;" and, 
 if we be true Christians, our hearts are full of 
 rich anticipations of joys and glories yet to be 
 experienced. Our "path is as the shining light, 
 that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 
 
 And it is no disrespect to our ancestors for 
 us to do better than they did, but to their honor; 
 for did they not instruct and inspire us ? 
 
 The dying Methodist preacher voiced the 
 sentiment of departing Christian generations 
 when to his preacher son he said as a last 
 message : " My son, I have done what I could ; I 
 pray that you may do better than your father."
 
 THE CONSERVATISM OF PAGANISM. 181 
 
 But in paganism all this is reversed. The 
 heathen gaze is to the past. Never having 
 heard of redemption and " the glory to be re- 
 vealed," he still mourns the departure of the 
 perfection to which the Ancients had attained. 
 These Ancients lived among the shadows of the 
 past, beyond the horizon of history. Who they 
 were, no one pretends to know. But they were 
 all-wise and perfect; and what they said and 
 did, and all in institution, method, implement, 
 and writing, is perfect, sacred, holy ; and it is 
 the grossest sin to change. The pagan believes 
 that what he has, originated with the Ancients 
 of his race. He accounts for differences by be- 
 lieving that what ether peoples have, is best for 
 them, and was given them by the Ancients of 
 their race ; but what he has, is sacredly for him. 
 His highest maxim is, " God forbid that I should 
 depart from the wisdom of the Ancients." 
 Hence, he excuses himself from being mission- 
 aried in any sense, and from trying to improve 
 any one else. 
 
 Things as they are, are as well as they can 
 be. With him, perfection on all lines has been 
 attained in the lustrous ages of the curtained 
 past. The very best thing he can do, is to 
 imitate and copy as nearly as possible, and pre- 
 serve and hand down his abominations and 
 everything else to posterity.
 
 i8? Tiro YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 Now, one can see how this thinking, like a 
 chain of adamant, holds the heathen world in 
 what it is, and impedes (it can not stop) the 
 progress of the gospel and every civilizing in- 
 fluence. The English Government, desirous of 
 developing the resources of India, offered to 
 furnish modern plows gratis to the natives who 
 would use them. The native plow, which the 
 Ancients gave him thousands of years ago, is 
 an upright stick, sharpened and bent forward a 
 little at the bottom, about four inches in diame- 
 ter, with a peg in the top and back for a handle 
 to be held in one hand, and a crooked beam 
 fastened in front. To this he hitches bullocks, 
 and with it scratches the earth. When sowing 
 rice, he submerges the little field in water to 
 the depth of three or four inches, and then 
 drags his stick around in it till it is stirred into 
 a batter. But when asked to exchange this 
 plow for the English plow, he answers like this : 
 "The Englishman's plow is a better plow than 
 mine; but the Ancients gave the Englishman 
 his plow, and me my plow ; so I shall keep my 
 plow, and the Englishman his plow." 
 
 In many parts of Southern India they have a 
 peculiar method of drawing water. An arrange- 
 ment like the old-fashioned booms of the East- 
 ern States, and about as high as a telegraph 
 pole, is set up ; but it lacks the weight of stone
 
 THE CONSERVATISM OF PAGANISM. 183 
 
 at one end which our American arrangements 
 had. Instead -of that, a man climbs the pole, 
 and, steadying himself with a bamboo pole, 
 walks forward to sink the bucket, and back on 
 the pole to raise it again. A man stands at the 
 well, and pours the water into the trenches. 
 This is for irrigating the fields adjacent. Morn- 
 ing and evening, this poor creature spends a 
 couple of hours, more or less, walking backward 
 and forward in the burning sun, to water the 
 fields. The English have tried to introduce 
 improved ways of raising the water; but the 
 native holds to the old way with all the tenacity 
 inspired by his superstitious veneration. 
 
 The fisherman still puts out to sea on the 
 rude catamaran, made of three logs lashed 
 firmly together by sea-grass ropes. This he 
 propels with a paddle, about six feet long; and, 
 without clothing, hat, or shade, spends the hot 
 day in the boiling sun on the sea. About him 
 is every sort of the varied sea-craft of the En- 
 glish, from the spledid royal mail and passenger 
 steamship to the fleet, yet strong, pleasure and 
 fishing sail-boat ; and yet it no more dawns on 
 the native fisherman's mind to change and im- 
 prove his craft than it does upon the bluebird to 
 build an eagle's nest. 
 
 Apply this to religion, and imagine the re- 
 ception the missionary will meet with. He may
 
 1 84 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 be listened to with curiosity, and received with 
 every mark of attention and courtesy ; but when 
 he seeks to enforce the claims of Christianity 
 on the details of practice, the native will excuse 
 himself by saying : " Jesus Christ had the most 
 beautiful character known to the world. He is 
 morally superior to Krishna, or any other of our 
 gods; but he is the Christian's God. He is for 
 you to obey and worship. The Ancients gave 
 us our religion, our institutions, our laws of 
 marriage, the family, our rites and laws of 
 purity. God forbid that we should depart from 
 their wisdom!" 
 
 The wisdom of darkness has done its utmost 
 to forge strongholds from which it is impossible 
 to save men ; but the wisdom of God is deeper, 
 his power greater. These walls are crumbling ; 
 these strongholds are being pulled down; and 
 the mantle of heathen darkness is being lifted 
 from all the earth.
 
 Chapter Vl. 
 BENEFITS OF BRITISH RULE. 
 
 THE rule of Great Britain over India was 
 not established by force of arms. It was 
 brought about by the irresistible logic of condi- 
 tions, necessities, and events, for which the En- 
 glish were not primarily responsible. Britain's 
 first foothold in India was gained by a profit- 
 able commercial establishment, having soldiers 
 enough for protection only. English officers 
 and soldiers came to be employed by the native 
 rulers; and English physicians, politicians, and 
 adventurers gained influence in most of the 
 native courts. So, gradually, the English be- 
 came prominent military, political, professional, 
 and commercial factors in India; and when rival 
 claimants contended for the sovereignty of a 
 State, as very generally happened, one party 
 was pretty sure to ask for the assistance of the 
 powerful foreigners. This gave the English 
 the opportunity to dictate terms to those who 
 were in such straits as to gladly accept what- 
 ever they could have guaranteed to them. 
 Where force was used, it was in the name of 
 some native claimant, who, on being established 
 
 185
 
 1 86 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 by the help of the English, surrendered the 
 Government into their hands. Many of these 
 native States became hopelessly indebted to the 
 English for such services, and being unable to 
 meet their accounts, turned over their revenue 
 departments and all to more skillful rulers. 
 These native princes retain their titles and 
 honors, and usually enjoy ample pensions from 
 their English masters. Empire in India seems 
 to have been thrust upon England ; and now, 
 finding herself under the burden of this respon- 
 sibility, she knows not how to lay it down, nor to 
 commit it to other hands. England and India 
 are married, and divorce would be disastrous. 
 Of course it is not meant that England has 
 not used military power in enforcing her rule 
 over India. She could not rule there were her 
 authority not supported by a large standing 
 army. It is meant, however, that she did not 
 originally gain her dominion by military con- 
 quest; but having established her sway in ne- 
 cessitous conditions by the dominating spirit of 
 Englishmen, and by their genius for political 
 organization, her rule will continue until it is 
 superseded by the better order it shall bring 
 forth. There is an eternal fitness in English 
 empire in India. No other nation could do so 
 well for India, nor could India be so useful to 
 any other nation.
 
 BENEFITS OF BRITISH RULE. 187 
 
 It is impossible to estimate or state all the 
 benefits of English rule in India. We can only 
 imagine what would be the state of things if 
 India were left to herself, or were governed by 
 some other nation. We know that English rule 
 brings the Western civilization, with all that 
 belongs to it both the good and the bad into 
 conflict for supremacy with the ancient systems 
 and institutions of the East. A representative 
 Englishman is a civilization in himself. He 
 stands everywhere for all that is English. Put 
 him down in what conditions or land you will, 
 and, as far as he has the means and the power, 
 he will express himself in building up about 
 him the institutions that have been wrought 
 into him from his infancy. His dogged tenacity 
 for whatever is English, though somewhat try- 
 ing to those Americans who think that all good 
 and glory are within our National borders, is, 
 nevertheless, the very soul of Anglo-Saxon dom- 
 ination. By it they slowly, but effectively, over- 
 came their Norman conquerors; by it they 
 remain English in all the world; and by it they 
 are making all the world English. Nothing 
 has ever conquered the Anglo-Saxons but Chris- 
 tianity; and Christianity, with the Anglo- 
 Saxons for its missionaries, will conquer the 
 world, just as surely as the ages come and go. 
 
 One of the greatest benefits of English rule
 
 1 88 Tiro YEARS TN INDIA. 
 
 in India is, that it makes room for Englishmen. 
 England is so great that it takes an earth to 
 give her people elbow-room. Think of her 
 crowding millions of strong-bodied and strong- 
 souled men and women ; of her accumulated bill- 
 ions of wealth; of the serious, practical, indus- 
 trious, adventurous spirit of her people; of the 
 great number of her great men in all the lines 
 on which greatness can reveal itself, and do you 
 wonder that her dominion reaches every quarter 
 of the globe; that Englishmen are braving all 
 dangers, enduring all hardships, in searching 
 out the obscure corners and hidden treasures of 
 the earth, and English enterprise and capital are 
 building railroads and telegraphs, and penetrat- 
 ing the wastes of barbarism with the lines of 
 civilization and salvation ? It requires, in round 
 numbers, three hundred thousand registered 
 ships to enable the English to transact their 
 share of the world's ocean commerce. It is a 
 great blessing to the world that there is room 
 for this pent-up life and power and activity to 
 be employed to bless and emancipate mankind. 
 What wars, what excess, what ruin this genius 
 and force would work were there not room for 
 them to be expended as they are ! India is 
 by far England's greatest foreign possession. 
 Under her sway more than sixteen thousand 
 miles of railway have been built, thirty million
 
 BENEFITS OF BRITISH RULE. 189 
 
 acres of land are irrigated from Government 
 canals, a foreign commerce amounting annually 
 to more than seven hundred and sixty million 
 pounds has been developed, and a Government 
 revenue in excess of three hundred and fifty 
 millions is collected each year. English rule, 
 capital, organization, and leadership make this 
 all possible. 
 
 India, under the dominion of her present 
 rulers, gets all her people can be induced to re- 
 ceive of the benefits of English Christian civili- 
 zation. She is being welded into a great empire. 
 Peace and safety reign throughout her borders. 
 The ravages and outlawry of the Thugs and all 
 such tribes and bands have been entirely sup- 
 pressed. Property and life are in even greater 
 safety in most parts of India than in America. 
 While there is more petty thieving and sneaking 
 crime, daring robberies and murders are almost 
 unknown. 
 
 Sati, the burning alive of the widow on the 
 funeral pile of her husband, the offering of hu- 
 man sacrifices to the Ganges River and under 
 the wheels of the Juggernaut car, and in the 
 worship of the goddess Kali, the religion of whose 
 worshipers was to destroy human life, and many 
 other of the most shocking cruelties and grosser 
 superstitions and impositions of paganism, have 
 been suppressed. A splendid educational system
 
 igo Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 has been developed. One boy in five and one girl 
 in fifty now attend school, and thousands in all 
 the great centers of population are taking regu- 
 lar college and professional courses. But of 
 still greater significance is it that throughout 
 the empire the preaching of the gospel or of any 
 other religious doctrine is under the protection 
 of law. Under English rule the most aggressive 
 Protestant Christianity is establishing its insti- 
 tutions of enlightenment, humanity, and evan- 
 gelism, and sending forth the heralds of Jesus 
 to preach the gospel to the salvation of many, 
 and as a witness to all. This is a consumma- 
 tion we are exhorted in God's Word to pray for, 
 "tljat the word of the Lord may have free 
 course and be glorified ;" and he who can read 
 the signs of the times can see the hand of the 
 Eternal Spirit in all these movements, bringing 
 to pass the prophecies and fulfilling the prom- 
 ises of universal evangelism.
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 HINDRANCES FROM CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 IT is often said in Christian lands that infidel- 
 ity has no missionary agencies nor mission- 
 ary zeal. This is true in reference to the 
 attitude of infidelity to evangelism and the 
 Christian civilization of the world ; but it is 
 not true in reference to the spread of the 
 poison of infidelity itself. Infidelity wages no 
 war against the abominations of heathenism. 
 It has no sympathy for the millions in the 
 thralldom of idolatry. Its war is all against 
 our Divine Savior and his truth. 
 
 Infidelity never goes to a heathen country 
 where there are no Christian missionaries. It 
 teaches no heathen to read, builds no schools 
 nor colleges, nor orphanages nor hospitals. But 
 after Christianity, with sacrifice and toil, has 
 brought forth a community of educated pagans, 
 in the hope that the light of Christ may reach 
 them through the doorway of this Christian 
 learning, right in the wake of these years of 
 toil and sacrifice conies the poison-current of 
 infidel literature. We hear a good deal of Vol- 
 taire and Paine and Bradlaugh and Ingersoll 
 
 191
 
 i92 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 and Huxley and Tyndall in America, but not 
 nearly so much as in the Christian college and 
 university centers in pagan lands. 
 
 Madras, India, is one of the oldest English 
 Presidency capitals of the empire. It is the 
 missionary headquarters and college seat for 
 several of the leading denominations of Europe 
 and America. There are between two thousand 
 and three thousand young men in college in 
 Madras every year. As the years have gone by, 
 these colleges have raised up a large and influ- 
 ential educated community. Faith has been de- 
 stroyed in the old pagan systems ; and this com- 
 munity is in a state of religious chaos. The 
 great hope and effort of the missionaries is, that 
 the Christian faith may follow the Christian 
 learning. But just at this point comes from 
 the home of the missionaries to these educated 
 heathen it seems right from the bosom of 
 Christianity great bales of every sort of skep- 
 tical and infidel literature, the blasphemous 
 denial and ridicule of Christ and his work for 
 men. And all this is done in the name of lib- 
 erty, progress, and advanced learning, skilled to 
 deceive these children of darkness, whose eyes 
 are only so much opened that they may see men 
 as trees walking see everything confusedly 
 minds in the state of chaos from which alone 
 the brooding Spirit of God can bring the order
 
 HINDRANCES FROM CHRISTIANITY. 193 
 
 and power of faith. What is true among the 
 educated Hindus of Madras is true of every mis- 
 sionary center of education in paganism. Dur- 
 ing our pastorate in India, there was, almost in 
 the shadow of our English Methodist Episcopal 
 Church in Vepery, Madras, a distributing center 
 of infidel tracts and skeptical and heretical 
 books. It was in charge of an English Govern- 
 ment officer; and every Sunday morning, while 
 I was preaching in the church, he was distrib- 
 uting, gratis, literary blasphemy to many edu- 
 cated natives. 
 
 In Japan, and every hopeful missionary field, 
 the work is greatly hindered by this counter- 
 current, coming from the very heart of our 
 Christian civilization. Gospel-work is greatly 
 hindered, too, by the crimes perpetrated by 
 Christian nations and individuals against the 
 helpless heathen peoples of the world. The 
 Gentiles have ever been the victims of the 
 avarice and brutal passions of the so-called 
 Christian peoples. The present age is no ex- 
 ception. My space-limit allows me only to 
 mention some of the stupendous outrages per- 
 petrated by Christian Governments, or through 
 the legalized commerce of Christian nations. 
 
 In the Ganges Valley, northwest of Calcutta, 
 lies the great wheat-belt of India. Notwith- 
 standing there are millions in India itself whose 
 
 13
 
 194 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 whole lives are spent in semi-starvation, and 
 hundreds of millions elsewhere who are always 
 in want of food, yet, by the hand of the greatest 
 Christian nation on earth, more than half of that 
 rich wheat-land is planted in poppies to pro- 
 duce opium, for which the Chinese are com- 
 pelled by military power to furnish a market, 
 and to devote their millions to destruction, 
 both soul and body. This blood-curdling crime 
 is committed by Christian England, simply be- 
 cause there is more immediate revenue to be 
 derived from destroying the Chinese with opium 
 than in raising wheat for the hungry. 
 
 The people of India were originally, per- 
 haps, the most temperate people on earth. The 
 Hindu and Mohammedan religions both forbid 
 the use of intoxicants. Among all the vices of 
 these people, they were comparatively free from 
 drunkenness. Temperance does not yield a di- 
 rect, but it does an indirect revenue. Intem- 
 perance yields an immediate revenue, but de- 
 stroys the very source of future revenue. But 
 immediate revenue must be had; and the peo- 
 ple must .be taught to drink and become 
 9 drunken. The sap of the palm-tree is very 
 copious; it is also easily rendered intoxicating. 
 It can be gathered, fermented, and, after all 
 taxes are paid, be sold so cheaply that a man 
 can get drunk twice for one cent. When
 
 HINDRANCES FROM CHRISTIANITY. 195 
 
 it is sold so cheaply, of course the revenue is 
 small on a small quantity, and hence the people 
 must be taught to consume large quantities to 
 make it profitable. The method by which the 
 largest revenue could be secured was found to 
 be that of selling the right to open abkari and 
 toddy-shops, or drinking-places, in a certain dis- 
 trict, for from one to five years, to the highest 
 bidder. The public auctions of these privileges 
 were advertised thoroughly, a*nd so managed as 
 to get the highest possible sum for the Gov- 
 ernment. Then, these avaricious venders were 
 let loose on the people, practically without re- 
 straint, to make them drunkards. There were 
 no restrictions as to age. The drink was dis- 
 tributed gratis at first, until the people began to 
 get a taste for it. The people being limited to 
 one meal a day, of course their systems could 
 not long resist the effects of the intoxicants; 
 and the burning appetite was very soon formed. 
 Then the money that should have gone for 
 food was spent for drink; and there is no doubt 
 that millions have thus been hurried to the 
 grave to make revenue for the Christian Govern- 
 ment. It brought more revenue to the Govern- 
 ment to destroy the people in drunkenness than 
 could be derived from their productive indus- 
 tries; and so they destroyed them. I am glad 
 to say that this highest-bidder system has been
 
 196 TH'O YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 changed in the last four years, and its worst 
 features toned down; but not till after the 
 drinking habit had been thoroughly fixed upon 
 the people. 
 
 It was found exceedingly expensive to per- 
 mit soldiers in the British army in India to be 
 married. To prevent this, camps were estab- 
 lished in connection with many regiments of 
 the English army for kidnaped women and 
 girls. To protect the soldiers from contagious 
 diseases, a law was passed by the British Parlia- 
 ment subjecting all public women to inspection 
 by the Government surgeons. This legalized 
 the whole matter, and the vice nourished and 
 the crimes perpetrated under this act are simply 
 horrifying. And when, through the agitation of 
 missionaries and Christian women in England, 
 this hellish law was repealed, many leading offi- 
 cials, and even some bishops of the Church of 
 England, made a great outcry against what they 
 called " goody-goody sentiment." How long 
 will it take missionary sacrifice and fidelity to 
 overcome the influence against evangelism 
 which the history of this crime will exert? 
 
 I need not speak of the rum-traffic from 
 Christian America by which the people of Africa 
 are being destroyed. Nor need I refer to the 
 recent commercial circular from the State De- 
 partment of our Nation to other nations seeking
 
 HINDRANCES FROM CHRISTIANITY. 197 
 
 to open markets for American distilled and malt 
 liquors. The heartless and cruel avarice of 
 Christian nations still seeks wealth in taking 
 advantage of the weak and ignorant Heathen 
 people, and does not scruple to destroy them 
 and spread ruin and woe among them, any more 
 than when the Spaniards robbed, and murdered, 
 and enslaved the defenseless people of the West 
 Indies in the same pursuit. The difference is 
 in form, and not in fact. The method is not so 
 brutal, but the nations still enrich themselves 
 by sacrificing the rights, happiness, and lives of 
 heathen millions. Christian nations have mur- 
 dered more heathen than they have converted 
 during the nineteenth century. 
 
 Roman Catholicism is a great hindrance to 
 evangelism wherever it exists in mission-fields.^ 
 Sometimes the priests stir up the heathen, and 
 join with them to exterminate Protestant work 
 and workers. But in every place where Roman- 
 ism and Protestant missions work together, the 
 former interferes with the latter in two ways : 
 First, it requires no change of heart and life in 
 its converts ; it makes no spiritual condition to 
 discipleship. It simply substitutes one form of 
 idolatry for another. It requires of converts 
 that they shall be baptized, worship the image 
 of the blessed Virgin, pay Peter's pence, and obey 
 the priests ; and assures salvation as the result.
 
 198 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 In villages where the people are very poor, 
 and have no temple or image, they paint one side 
 of a large, rough rock near the village with red, 
 and make it their god. The poor creatures will 
 worship any sort of thing or image. When the 
 bronze statue of Empress Victoria was set up 
 in Madras, the natives were so bent on worship- 
 ing it that the police had to interfere to prevent 
 it. The Romish priests take advantage of this 
 bent of the people, and attract them to worship 
 statues of the Virgin. I have seen in Madras a 
 statue of the Virgin standing in an alcove over 
 the entrance to a Romish chapel, and the gran- 
 ite base on which the statue stood was plastered 
 with red paint to attract the worship of the 
 idolaters. Romanism is the worst form of idol- 
 atry on earth, because it is mistaken for the true 
 light. 
 
 Protestant requirements are much higher and 
 more difficult for an idolater to grasp, because 
 they are spiritual, and he can offer no more 
 than the Romanist; viz., salvation as the reward. 
 Besides, the Romanists often use money to buy 
 up so-called converts, in order to get them under 
 their power. In the second place, evangelism 
 is hindered by Romanism through the dead 
 formality and immorality of Romish Christians. 
 The heathen, like the sinner in America, knows 
 nothing of Christianity except what he sees in
 
 HINDRANCES FROM CHRISTIANITY. 199 
 
 the conduct of professed Christians. The pres- 
 ence in many pagan lands of large communities 
 of nominal Christians, who exceed the average 
 pagan in the excess, beastliness, and cruelty of 
 their conduct, neutralizes the sacrifices and toils 
 of many missionaries. 
 
 It was this religious deadness and moral de- 
 pravity of the two or three millions of English 
 and Eurasian professed Christians in India that 
 Bishop Taylor saw was the block in the way 
 of the conversion of the heathen. He at once 
 started on his four years' campaign to evangel- 
 ize these Christians. The succass of his efforts, 
 and of those who succeeded him, has given us 
 live English-speaking Churches all over India, 
 and some of the best missionaries in the world.
 
 Chapter VlII. 
 
 THE GOSPEL THE ONLY HOPE. 
 
 THE people of India are not an inferior race. 
 They are of the same parentage and stock 
 as the Germanic races, which people most of 
 Europe and North America. The Hindu-Ger- 
 manic family-is of Aryan stock, and is superior 
 to all other branches. "The ancestors of the 
 Hindus, the English, and other Aryan nations," 
 says Max Miiller, "had once the same faith, and 
 worshiped for a time the same Supreme Deity, 
 under exactly the same name a name which 
 meant Heaven Father." 
 
 If the Hindu branch, that migrated south- 
 ward from the central Asian home of the fam- 
 ily, had come west, and our ancestors had gone 
 south, and thus the circumstances and condi- 
 tions met by each branch had been exchanged, 
 our positions would now very likely be reversed,- 
 and they would be sending missionaries to en- 
 lighten us. The great difference we find be- 
 tween these two branches of the same family 
 speaks forcefully for the Divine power of Chris- 
 tianity, which, a little more than a thousand 
 years ago, rescued the Germanic branch from 
 
 200
 
 THE GOSPEL THE ONLY HOPE. 201 
 
 the depths of the grossest barbarism, and en- 
 abled them to bring forth the modern age of 
 progress and Christian civilization. The dis- 
 puting unbeliever would call attention to differ- 
 ence in climate, and other, accidental causes, in 
 accounting for the present superiority of both 
 the man and the civilization of the Western 
 branch. It is, however, a mistaken notion that 
 hot climates are not favorable to the highest art, 
 culture, and civilization. Modern science was 
 born in Arabia, the hottest country in the world. 
 The* universities of Bagdad, Alexandria, and 
 of other tropical centers, make most of those of 
 which we are so proud in modern times seem 
 almost trifling. Eighteen years were required 
 to complete the course of study. Science, art, 
 literature, philosophy, and religion were all 
 born, and for the most part matured, in tropical 
 or semi-tropical climates. In our boasted mod- 
 ern civilization of the temperate zone, we are 
 merely learning to make practical use of .the 
 splendid achievements of those in torrid climes, 
 who, centuries ago, penetrated to nature's heart, 
 and brought to light her secrets. 
 
 The fundamental difference is not of climate, 
 nor of any external condition, but of faith of 
 religion. True religion is a key-position, on 
 which, if one be right, all other things come 
 into order. Having " first the kingdom of God
 
 202 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 and his righteousness, all these things shall be 
 added." Just so far as we are nearer right in 
 this than our Hindu brethren, just to that ex- 
 tent we are superior to them on other lines. 
 They are in the fell grip of two strongholds, 
 under which a great brood of evil laws and 
 customs, which oppress certain classes to the 
 seeming advantage of others, are brought forth. 
 Thus the whole system, by which every mem- 
 ber of the community is degraded and op- 
 pressed, is bound upon them by being -in- 
 trenched in their selfishness and fears. The . 
 two strpngholds I refer to in which the entire 
 Hindu community is helpless are idolatry and 
 caste. Idolatry holds the people down in every 
 sense. In a village, situated in a malarial dis- 
 trict of Southern India, a well-to-do native citi- 
 zen had a mind to build a second story to his 
 dwelling. He informed his neighbors of his 
 intentions; and, after considering the matter, 
 they interfered to check him, giving as their 
 reason that the swaney that is, the village 
 idol lived in a one-story house, and no man 
 should rise above his god. Arid they actually 
 prevented the man, who had the means, from 
 raising himself and family above the poisonous 
 surface atmosphere. 
 
 A recognized authority on these subjects 
 says: "Caste is the chief characteristic of Hin-
 
 THE GOSPEL THE ONLY HOPE. 203 
 
 duism. Caste and Hinduism must fall together; 
 for whatever may be the evils of the former, 
 the masses believe that it has religious sanc- 
 tion, and must be observed at all cost." The 
 late reformer, Keshub Chunder Sen, said: 
 "Were I engaged in the work of reforming 
 this Country, I should not busy myself in lop- 
 ping off the branches, but I should strike at the 
 fatal root of the tree of corruption; namely, 
 idolatry. Ninety-nine evils out of every hun- 
 dred in Hindu society are, in my opinion, at- 
 tributable to idolatry and superstition." By 
 what weapon can this blow to "the fatal root" 
 be struck? Many would respond: "Education 
 and modern civilization will prove effective." 
 But, powerful as these agencies are, we regret 
 to say they are not sufficient to work the neces- 
 sary transformation. The difficulty is, the Hin- 
 dus love their idolatry 'and caste. They defend 
 them in the name of national spirit, and of 
 patriotism, and of respect to ancestry, and so 
 on; and keep them intrenched within the cita- 
 del of conservatism. Civilization and education 
 are imported novelties to them, that the masses 
 know little or nothing about. When a college 
 graduate starts to England to complete his edu- 
 cation, he is bound under the most solemn vows 
 to remain true to the faith of his fathers; and 
 when he returns, with the highest school-train-
 
 204 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 ing the world affords, he must make expiation 
 for the necessary transgression of caste while 
 away from his native land. It did seem for a 
 time that education, and other Western influ- 
 ences, would conquer these strongholds of dark- 
 ness; but of late years a strong reactionary 
 tendency has shown itself, and this very educa- 
 tion is being turned to the defense of the an- 
 cient thralldom. "A whole literature of pon- 
 derous tomes is springing up in Southern India, 
 with no other object than the exaltation of 
 caste." 
 
 The following quotations are from leading 
 educators long in the service of the Government 
 universities of India. Principal Wordsworth 
 speaks of the large class of educated natives, 
 whose learning is employed to "vindicate su- 
 perstition and tyranny." Again, he speaks of 
 a notable advocate of reform as " fighting single- 
 handed." Mr. Sherring goes so far as to say 
 that, with some noble exceptions, those who 
 have had the advantages of education are, "of 
 all classes, the most disappointing. With all 
 their weight of learning, the possession of which 
 enables them to carry university degrees and 
 honors, they are perfectly content to mingle 
 among the most superstitious and ignorant 
 Hindus, to do as they do, to obey their foolish 
 dictum as law, and to have no other aim in life
 
 THE GOSPEL THE ONLY HOPE. 205 
 
 than to conform to the most rigid usages of their 
 ancestors." 
 
 Mr. Cotton, an unexceptionable witness, speaks 
 *in similar strain: "Caste exercises a predomi- 
 nant influence among all classes of the com- 
 munity. Educated Hindus are puzzled to make 
 out what they owe to their society, and why 
 they render to caste their tribute of submission, 
 when there is nothing to compel their obedi- 
 ence. Nevertheless, the institution is as power- 
 ful among those who disregard many of its 
 rules as it was with their fathers, who rigidly 
 observed them all. They find it as hard to 
 bear excommunication themselves, and are as 
 disposed to inflict that punishment upon wrong- 
 doers of their community, as were their ances- 
 tors in the past. They find it as desirable to 
 cling to their caste-fellows, despite many disa- 
 greeable features in their life and character, as 
 their predecessors may have done." 
 
 Quotations like these, from candid men of 
 experience in all parts of India, testifying to 
 the failure of purely educational and civilizing 
 influences to break the power of idolatry and 
 caste, could be multiplied indefinitely; but one 
 additional on this line must suffice. Principal 
 Wordsworth, acknowledged to be one of the 
 warmest friends of India, and from his position 
 having the best means of ascertaining the truth,
 
 206 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 makes the following severe remarks regarding 
 the action of some educated Hindus : u I need 
 hardly say that I consider the existence of the 
 Hindu child-widow one of the darkest blots 
 that ever defaced the civilization of any people, 
 and it is the direct and necessary consequence 
 of the system of infant marriage. Some years 
 ago I should have expected that these senti- 
 ments would have found an echo in the bosom 
 of every Hindu who had received an English 
 education, and particularly among those persons 
 who were attempting to appropriate the polit- 
 ical methods and ideas of Englishmen. I have 
 no such delusion now. I find some of them 
 employing all the resources of theological soph- 
 istry and cant, not simply to palliate, but to 
 vindicate what is plainly one of the most cruel, 
 blighting, and selfish forms of human supersti- 
 tion and tyranny. I find others maneuvering 
 to arrest every sincere effort at reform; sophis- 
 ticating between right and wrong; defaming 
 the character and motives of reformers ; and 
 laboring to establish, by arguments as ridiculous 
 as they are insulting, that English domestic so- 
 ciety offers a warning rather than an example 
 to Hindus! I find them vindicating early mar- 
 riage as the only safeguard against universal 
 sexual license, a confession of moral incompe- 
 tence which I should have thought that any
 
 THE GOSPEL THE ONLY HOPE. 207 
 
 people with a grain of self-respect would have 
 shrunk from advancing." 
 
 There are so-called reformers ; but their re- 
 forming goes no farther than speech-making. 
 A native newspaper thus compares their public 
 and private life: "A Demosthenes at debating 
 societies, whose words tell as peals of thunder; 
 a Luther in his public protestations against pre- 
 vailing corruptions ; a thorough-going cockney 
 in ideas and tastes, he is but a timid, crouch- 
 ing Hindu in his home, yielding unquestioning 
 submission to the requisitions of a superstitious 
 family." 
 
 Education does not give these people the 
 force to free themselves. There are many who 
 long to see caste abolished, and to be set free 
 from idolatry ; but they hav not the force to 
 break away themselves, and, braving excommu- 
 nication, become the leaders of a national re- 
 form movement. A prominent official of the 
 empire says in a .letter to a friend : " Only a 
 great religious revival can furnish sufficient 
 moral strength to work out the complex social 
 problems which demand our attention." T^o 
 become, like. Luther, tne leader of a great relig- 
 ious reform, one must rise from his own cringing 
 servitude to that which he would reform, and 
 live and walk by faith in God. The gospel is 
 the only hope; the sword of the Spirit is the
 
 208 Tiro YEARS AV INDIA. 
 
 only weapon that can strike the effective blow 
 at " the fatal root." // is sufficient. Let evan- 
 gelism go first; then education and all other 
 benefits of "Christianity will follow in richest 
 blessing. 
 
 The words of the great Dr. Duff may be appro- 
 priately added: "What, then, can exorcise this 
 demon spirit of caste? Nothing nothing but 
 the mighty power of the Spirit of God, quicken- 
 ing, renewing, and sanctifying the whole Hindu 
 soul. It is grace, and not argument; regener- 
 ation of nature, and not any improved policy of 
 government; in a word, the gospel the ever- 
 lasting gospel, and that alone, savingly brought 
 home by the energy of Jehovah's Spirit, that 
 can effectually root out and destroy the gigantic 
 evil. And it is the same energy, in working 
 through the same gospel of grace and salva- 
 tion, that can and will root out and destroy the 
 other monster evil under which India still 
 groans Idolatry^ with its grim satellite, Super- 
 stition. As caste and idolatry sprang up to- 
 gether from the same rank soil of old nature ; 
 growing with each other's growth, and strength- 
 ening with each other's strength ; luxuriating 
 in mutual embrace and mysterious wedlock for 
 untold ages ; flinging abroad their arms, * branch- 
 ing so broad and long' as to smite the whole 
 land with the blight of their portentous
 
 THE GOSPEL THE ONLY HOPE. 209 
 
 shadow, both are destined to fall together. 
 The same cause will inevitably prove the ruin 
 of both. The same light of sound knowledge, 
 human and Divine, accompanied by the grace of 
 God's Spirit, will expose the utter folly and irra- 
 tionality of idolatry and superstition, and, at one 
 and the same time, lay bare the cruelty and in- 
 justice of that strange, half-natural, half-artificial 
 caste system, which has done so much to uphold 
 them. Then will the stupendous fabric of idol- 
 atry be seen falling down like Dagon before the 
 Ark of the living God; while the anti-social, 
 tyrannous dominion of caste will be resented, 
 abhorred, and trampled under foot with an in- 
 dignation not lessened by the reflection that, 
 over ages and generations without number, it 
 hath already swayed undisturbed the scepter of 
 a ruthless despotism which ground men down 
 to the condition of irrationals, and strove to 
 keep them there with the rigor of a merciless 
 necessity." 
 
 Let Milton's noble prayer conclude the chap- 
 ter: "Come forth from thy royal chambers, O 
 Prince of all the kings of the earth! Put on 
 the visible robes of thy Imperial Majesty; 
 take up that unlimited scepter which thy Al- 
 mighty Father hath bequeathed thee ; for now 
 the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all crea- 
 tures sigh to be renewed." 
 
 14
 
 Chapter IX. 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF STEWARDSHIP. 
 
 MONEY is power. The use it is put to de- 
 termines the kind of power. It is saloon 
 power, tobacco power, political, power, social 
 power, fashion power, commercial power, edu- 
 cational power, gospel power, just so far as it 
 serves in these lines. Money is the means by 
 which one sets in motion agencies to do his 
 will, and through which he exercises the in- 
 fluence of his personality and principles upon 
 the world. The selfish and narrow view of 
 money-getting is to regard a man as engaged 
 in the toil of life merely to make a living or 
 to accumulate lucre to spend on himself and 
 those near him. The soul of such thinking is, 
 that earth affords only a scant sustenance, and 
 each one "must grab for himself; and the more 
 he can get, the better living he may enjoy. 
 Such thinking rules men in their struggles to 
 accumulate, in their use of the money they 
 acquire, and in their judgment of the justice 
 or injustice of the laws and circumstances 
 by which .some get rich while many make 
 only a living. But there is certainly a more 
 
 210
 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF STEWARDSHIP. 211 
 
 ennobling thought for Christians, both as to 
 our own purpose and in judging our com- 
 petitors. The more money one can make, the 
 greater ' influence he can wield. Every Chris- 
 tian is responsible to God for wielding the 
 greatest possible influence; hence, every Chris- 
 tian should make all the money he can, without 
 in any way crippling his goflly influence, and 
 use all he makes in promoting the highest 
 interests of his race. This implies a comfort- 
 able living for himself and family, the educa- 
 tion and equipment for usefulness of his chil- 
 dren (which means the support of Church and 
 State and school and like institutions); then, 
 the further enforcement of Christian principles 
 and heralding abroad of the glad message of 're- 
 demption, as far as his means enable him to 
 do. The philosophy of hoarding for money's 
 sake, is idolatry; that of piling up for children, 
 is pessimism. 
 
 The world is dying from lack of the felt 
 power of redeemed personality and principles 
 of divinely imparted righteousness. We need 
 more men who are " rich toward God " in their 
 worldly possessions. There are not too many 
 rich men, but too many poor rich men. How" 
 did Jesus become poor for our sakes, that we 
 through his poverty might be rich ? He in- 
 vested all he had, even his life, for us, cast his
 
 212 Tiro YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 bread upon the waters, and awaits its return to 
 him. He would say to each of us with means 
 small or great : " If thou wouldst share with me, 
 go thou and do likewise." " Then Jesus called 
 his disciples unto him, and sard, I have com- 
 passion on the multitude, because they continue 
 with me now three days and have nothing to 
 eat : and I will not send them away fasting, lest 
 they faint in the way. And his disciples say 
 unto him, Whence should we have so much 
 bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a mul- 
 titude ? . . . And he took the seven loaves 
 and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, 
 and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to 
 the multitude. And they did all eat and were 
 filled : and they took up of the broken meat 
 that was left seven baskets full." (Matt, xv, 
 
 3 2 33 3 6 and 37-) 
 
 This assembly in the desert is humanity in 
 
 miniature as it has been spiritually ever since. 
 We have here, (i) The Savior. (2) Twelve dis- 
 ciples, together constituting the infant Church. 
 (3) A multitude of four thousand men, with 
 women and children, probably aggregating at 
 least ten thousand. (4) Great [physical need; 
 three days with little food, so hungered that 
 should they have gone to search for food many 
 would have fainted by the way. (5) A very 
 scant supply ; not enough for the Savior and
 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF STEWARDSHIP. 213 - 
 
 disciples alone. (6) Selfish questionings aud 
 fear of the unbelieving disciples, and the com- 
 passion of the Savior for the host. (7) Never- 
 theless, the consecration and delivery of what 
 they had to the Master's hand. (8) The multi- 
 tude satisfied, and much remaining. 
 
 This picture indicates the present spiritual 
 situation of mankind. Looking from the human 
 side we see, (i) The Savior. (2) The disciples. 
 One-fifth of the race, or about five hundred mill- 
 ions, are more or less under the influence of 
 Christianity. One-fifth of these, or perhaps one 
 hundred millions, are quite thoroughly evangel- 
 ized. A still smaller number than this are de- 
 vout and intelligent communicants the true 
 followers of Christ. (3) The multitude. At least 
 ten hundred millions, or two thirds of the hu- 
 man race, in entire ignorance of the gospel, and 
 all of the other one-third, save one hundred 
 millions, in great spiritual darkness and need. 
 Fourteen-fifteenths of mankind are in almost 
 as great helplessness as men were nineteen cen- 
 turies ago when the angels first proclaimed the 
 glad news over the moonlit flanks and folds of 
 Judean hills. A vast multitude is still waiting 
 under the cruel oppression of fear, born of the 
 superstitions of ignorance, for a coming Re- 
 deemer. They burn in the fires of their own 
 passions. They are galled to despair in the
 
 214 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 thralldoin of the giant institutions of immemo- 
 rial antiquity. They are storm-tossed and 
 wrecked in voyages to sacred shrines ; robbed, 
 murdered, plague-smitten, buried by the merci- 
 less simoon in burning desert sands. They are 
 enduring hardships unheard of, sufferings un- 
 speakable^ on weary pilgrimages, and ;n brutal 
 self-tortures in hopeless searches for the bread 
 of life. (4) The scant supply. We are not dif- 
 ferent from the twelve disciples. We ask : 
 " How can we give the bread of life to so vast 
 a multitude ?" They said : " We have but seven 
 loaves and a few little fishes." We say : " We 
 are too poor ; we can not provide for our own 
 needs. Whence can so much be accomplished 
 here in this spiritual desert ? It can not be done. 
 We must look out for ourselves, lest we scarcely 
 be saved from the wreck and ruin of all hu- 
 manity. Send the multitude away that they 
 may provide for themselves ; do not let them 
 look to us, nor ask us to be burdened with them. 
 We have not enough for ourselves." Under 
 such a spirit, many yield to inaction. 
 
 But let us try to see as the Savior sees, (i) 
 He has a different spirit, and sees by faith the 
 inexhaustible resources. He is not anxious for 
 himself or the disciples. He has compassion on 
 the multitude. For them he is moved with pity, 
 sympathy, love, helpfulness. He rebukes the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF STEWARDSHIP. 215 
 
 disciples' selfishness. He would say : " ' Have 
 faith in God.' Trust yourselves to him, forget- 
 ting your need. l Give ye them to eat.'" Our 
 lack is not in poverty of means, but in our 
 faithlessness. Jesus Christ is with us as he was 
 with them in the desert. He has not merely 
 left us the gospel as an instrument by which 
 we alone are to save the world ; he still re- 
 mains in the lead of evangelism, and the same 
 infiuiteness is behind the consecrated offerings 
 of the Church for supplying the world's soul 
 needs that was behind the loaves and fishes 
 with which Jesus fed the multitude. (2) He 
 sees a very different use to which our scant 
 means are to be devoted. We look upon the 
 little we have as our only supply, and would 
 hold it for our own exclusive benefit ; but the 
 Savior requires that it be consecrated to his 
 will and delivered into his hand, not because he 
 is unconscious or indifferent to his disciples' 
 need, but because he wishes to save the multi- 
 tude as well, and this consecration of the little 
 we have is- necessary to that end. " Fear not, 
 O disciples !" hear him say, " as I fear not for 
 myself. You have me for your Savior. You 
 will never lose me nor come to want. You will 
 never lose me, nor be lost while working with 
 me to save others." You, knowing the Savior, 
 are in eternal safety. The multitude with no
 
 216 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 Savior is in midnight despair. Notwithstand- 
 ing all your need, "give ye them to eat." If 
 we will do all we can, the Savior will make 
 abundance, the multitude will be saved, and 
 much will still remain. 
 
 It is the law of Christian distribution that 
 we must come to the Master of the feast with 
 emptied baskets. The emptied basket shows 
 faith, obedience, enthusiastic love. It speaks a 
 powerful language and is a successful pleader. 
 It is useless to ask for increased power to do 
 good when we are not using all we have. Much 
 of the praying for missions is useless, for the 
 answer is forestalle'd. When one with basket, 
 pockets, and arms full of ability to send forth 
 laborers into the great unevangelized fields 
 where the grain droops in waiting for the sickle, 
 prays the Lord to send forth laborers, while he 
 tightens his grasp on what God has given him 
 to send them with, be sure his prayer can not 
 be answered,, except by some stroke which 
 would transfer his means to more liberal hands. 
 Such praying is mockery and blasphemy. It 
 accuses God of the stinginess of the miserly 
 suppliant. 
 
 The littleness of our means is no valid ex- 
 cuse for not delivering ft to the Lord. The one 
 talent must yield its return as well as the five, 
 and the punishment for its non-use and the
 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF STEWARDSHIP. 217 
 
 reward of its use are just as great. Given into 
 the Savior's hand, our offerings, little or great, 
 will be as the planted mustard-seed, the little 
 leaven in the measure of meal, the handful of 
 corn on the mountain, the seven loaves and the 
 few little fishes yes, the cloud no bigger than 
 a man's hand that God shall multiply into 
 amazing greatness. 
 
 Selfishness always seeks the hiding of ex- 
 cuse to escape duty-doing. It tries to take a 
 stand against giving to foreign missions, be- 
 cause it is in favor of the home work. This 
 excuse is not valid: (i) Because home and for- 
 eign missions have been mutual stimulants. 
 Much more is done at home than would be if 
 we had no missions abroad. The same spirit 
 that sends gospel help to China and Africa, 
 sends it to the foreign influx, the mining-camps, 
 and the city slums of our own land as well. Mis- 
 sions of all kinds are children of the gospel 
 spirit, and he who favors one must favor all. 
 (2) Because Methodism is the greatest home- 
 mission Church in America, as well as the 
 greatest in the foreign work. We all recognize 
 our own land as the most important mission- 
 field on earth for Americans. With even Bishop 
 Taylor this is a common remark. 
 
 Let us see how fully our Church realizes and 
 acts upon this principle. Remember that each
 
 2i8 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 * 
 
 Church is a home-mission station, and we are 
 spending over eight millions a year for regular 
 work in America. But leaving this out of the 
 calculation, let us compare only what may be 
 called missionary grants. We gave for the 
 home work as follows : 
 
 From the Missionary Society's funds, in 1891, $478,562 69 
 Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education So- 
 ciety 322,656 oo 
 
 Church Extension (approximately), 225,000 oo 
 
 Woman's Home Missionary Society, cash and 
 
 supplies, * 316,222 oo 
 
 Children's-day collections 74,577 oo 
 
 Total $1416,917 69 
 
 This omits tract and Bible causes, and all 
 that was given to local educational and other 
 enterprises. We sent abroad, the same year: 
 
 Missionary Society funds $576,042 
 
 Woman's Foreign Missionary Society funds, . . . 263,660 
 
 Total, $839,702 
 
 This is all that was sent abroad, with the 
 exception of some small grants from the Sun- 
 day-school Union and Tract Societies. 
 
 Now, let us make some other comparisons, 
 to show what a home-mission Church Method- 
 ism is. We had, in 1890, in all, 23,350 churches. 
 Of these, but 581 about two and a half per 
 cent are outside of the United States. The
 
 RESPONSIBILITY OF STEWARDSHIP. 219 
 
 total value of our church property was $99,- 
 000,000, of which less than $2,000,060 less 
 than two per cent is outside of the United 
 States. We have, in all, 15,877 traveling preach- 
 ers; but 182 of these, and 122 missionaries of 
 the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society a 
 total of 304; less than two per cent in all are 
 beyond our borders. On the line of education, 
 the value of buildings and grounds is, in the 
 United States, $13,000,000. Value of the same 
 in all other lands is $400,000, or three per cent. 
 This was partly received from foreign sources. 
 Value of endowments and endowment proper- 
 ties, in the United States, over $22,000,000; 
 and less than $400,000 about two per cent 
 abroad, and this largely received from foreign 
 sources. 
 
 The comparison shows that only about one- 
 fiftieth of the Church's strength is expended 
 abroad. No complaint is made. This should 
 be so. But no one has any valid excuse for not 
 giving to the cause of missions on this line. 
 While only two per cent of the Church's strength 
 is abroad, eleven per cent of the increase in 
 membership, in 1890, was in the foreign field 
 total increase, 100,000; out of the United States, 
 11,000. 
 
 We have been praying the Lord of the har- 
 vest to send forth laborers, and the laborers are
 
 220 Two YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 ready to go. Our Missionary Society could send 
 one hundred missionaries in ninety days, if they 
 had the money. We have prayed God to let 
 us Christianize the heathen, and they are coin- 
 ing faster than we are willing to furnish the 
 means to baptize them and give them pastoral 
 care. 
 
 Twenty thousand in India are anxiously 
 waiting for us to send them some one to help 
 them to the Christian life. Money is mighty 
 now to help the gospel. In India, thirty-five 
 dollars will build a church that can not be 
 built without the money; thirty dollars will 
 enable a pastor-teacher, who can not otherwise 
 give his time to this work, to labor in the 
 blessed harvest for twelve months ; fifteen dol- 
 lars will send a boy to a Christian boarding- 
 school a year ; and thirty dollars will keep a 
 young man in college, fitting himself for the 
 ministry, the year through. We have no ade- 
 quate conception of the power of our little 
 offerings to do good in these lands. Many a 
 Christian squanders the salary of two pastor- 
 teachers every year for tobacco. God gives 
 him the means to send the gospel and a rudi- 
 mentary education to two communities of peo- 
 ple who are famishing for the light ; and he 
 selfishly wastes it, indulging himself in a filthy, 
 injurious habit. O for the day when Christians
 
 OF STEWARDSHIP. 221 
 
 will cease extravagance and waste, and, living in 
 plain and simple style, will devote their means 
 to the service of the Savior's cause ! How can 
 a Christian man smoke a five-cent cigar with 
 comfort of conscience, when, in so doing, he 
 consumes one month's Christian schooling of 
 some poor heathen child ? The man who 
 smokes one five-cent cigar a day, robs thirty 
 children of their only hope of rising above the 
 cruel thralldom of their hereditary helplessness. 
 Suppose Jesus were living in your place or 
 mine, what would he do concerning this mis- 
 sionary cause? When one has decided this, he 
 has found the line of his own duty. It is a 
 helpful question to ask in other matters, as 
 well. 
 
 Let those to whom much is given, give 
 much; but let him who has little, give all he 
 can. Let each boy and girl, man and woman, 
 have his box, not of precious ointment to pour 
 upon the Savior's head, but of savings for the 
 Lord's treasury to give wings and voice to the 
 gospel message, that the wilderness and the soli- 
 tary place may be made glad, and the desert to 
 rejoice and blossom as the rose. 
 
 It seems fitting that the following words 
 from Bishop Thoburn should conclude this 
 little book. May the spirit that actuates him 
 become the common spirit of Christendom !
 
 222 TVo YEARS IN INDIA. 
 
 * 
 
 ^'These are wonderful times. This long-slum- 
 bering Eastern world is waking up. The Sun of 
 righteousness is mounting higher in the heavens. 
 The darkness of heathenism is beginning to 
 flee away, and Christians are taking heart as 
 never before. The time has come for our dear 
 friends in America to open wide their eyes and 
 see the wonderful signs of promise which God 
 is displaying before their gaze. Every Chris- 
 tian should thank God that he is permitted to 
 live in such an era in the world's history. Let 
 us all prove worthy of our opportunities, and 
 worthy of the blessed name we bear. Let us 
 act and talk and pray as those who realize that 
 they bear the name of the Savior of men and 
 are to be known by that name forever. If all 
 Christians in all lands could only realize for a 
 few short years their unspeakable privileges and 
 responsibilities, the work of the world's conver- 
 sion would soon be accomplished." 
 
 THE END.
 
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