rim m mm Mm&lmffi HHHbhHb fmaa ■HI WKSKfflm BUSH 1 ■ Cibrarp of Che Cheotygiccd ^eroinary PRINCETON ■ NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY The Estate of the Rev. John B. Wiedinger BV 2063 .M282 Maclean, Norman, 1869-1952. Can the world be won for Christ? CAN THE WORLD BE WON FOR CHRIST? CAN THE WORLD BE WON FOR CHRIST? BY NORMAN MACLEAN HODDER AND STOUGHTON NEW YORK AND LONDON TO THE CONGREGATION WORSHIPPING IN THE PARISH CHURCH OF COLINTON WHOSE ZEAL IN BEHALF OF MISSIONS HAS BEEN AN EXAMPLE TO MANY T PREFACE HIS book had its origin in a series of articles which the writer contributed to the Scotsman on the Reports of the Com- missions of the World Missionary Conference. These articles, revised and enlarged, are now embodied in Chapters I., III., IV., V., VI., and VII. ; the other six chapters are wholly new. The matters discussed in this book will be found set forth with all fulness of detail in the eight volumes of the Reports of the Com- missions. These Reports are the most valuable documents available for the scientific study of the missionary enterprise. Only the general underlying principles are here discussed, and for the opinions which he formed from the study of the materials, and for the form in which these opinions are expressed, the writer is alone responsible. viii PREFACE The desire of the writer is that through this book there may come to others something of that inspiration which came to those who attended the World Missionary Conference — a gathering which the Archbishop of Canterbury rightly designated as "an assembly without parallel in the history of this or any other land." CONTENTS PAGE The Stupendous Task . . . .1 Insufficiency of present effort — Changed attitude of Missions — Greatness of the field — Africa — Power of Islam — Malay Archipelago — India — Unoccupied fields— Over 120,000,000 outside the reach of Christianity — Church must fall back on God. II Can Christianity Justify its Claim? . .19 Claim of Christianity to be the final religion — Three great arguments for its claim : It embraces (1) Perfect ideal of man ; (2) Perfect ideal of God ; (3) Makes these ideals operative in the lives of men — They who see the Vision must follow it to the farthest ends of the earth. Ill The Common Ground . . . . .33 Common ground of worship — Christianity's im- pact with non-Christian races on this common ground — Animistic religions — Ancestor worship — Hinduism — Need for sympathetic insight and vision — World must accept the highest. x CONTENTS IV PAGE The Problems of the Infant Church . . 49 What the coming of Christianity means — The problems that ensue — Problem of polygamy — Of caste — Of ancestor worship — The necessity for Christianity being again Orientalised — The ne- cessity for the native Church getting a free hand — Mass movements — Judge not. V The Problem of Education . . . .69 The illiterate mass — Mistaken policy in India — Lord Macaulay — Importance of the vernacular — How Christianity became indigenous at the first — Only through the vernacular can it become indigenous now — Importance of Christian colleges as means of reaching the Hindus — The two alternatives. VI The Training of Missionaries . . .89 Necessity for thorough preparation — Essential that language be mastered — Lord Cromer — A ready-made religion and a ready-made civili- sation useless — Necessity for general knowledge, and [insight into what is essential to religion — Missionaries unable to argue with Mohammedans — Character the great power. VII The Problem of Church and State . . 103 Christianity in relation to non-Christian Govern- ments — A varying problem — Changed attitude of XI PAGE CONTENTS Christianity — Will not accept blood-money — Policy of the "Mailed Fist "—Co-operation with Governments in sphere of education— Unsatis- factory attitude of British Government towards Christianity in Africa. VIII The Paramount Factor . . , .119 The native Church— How Christianity spread at the first — World must be evangelised by the native Church— Already begun in Manchuria and Korea — The causes which make the native Church the instrument— Indigenous— Knows the language —A living demonstration— The enthusiasm of first love— Principal Rainy and the native Christians. IX The Impelling Motive— "For My Sake" . . 133 Necessity for a strong base for Christian army— The question of diffusion or concentration — Diffusion the historic policy— Motives impelling Church forward— Needs of man— And the glory of Jesus Christ— Motive of personal obligation to Jesus Christ. s That the World may Believe"— The Call to Union ...... 147 The primal condition laid down by Christ— The citadel within which unity is realised — The belief in the Incarnation and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit — Difficulties in way of corporate union / / xii CONTENTS PAGE Influence of Missions on the unity of the Church — Necessity for an International Board of Missions — Christianity being saved on the mission-field. XI The Great Opportunity .... 167 The open doors — The opened ways — The opened hearts of the nations — The working of God — The plastic condition of non-Christian nations — Lost opportunities in Africa; — Will the opportunity be lost now ? — Will the West deprive the East of its ancient faiths without giving a higher? — Chris- tianity's great opportunity to develop itself in the West — "Now let me burn out for God." XII It Shall, be Won — Nil Despebandum Chbisto Dlce . 181 Mood of pessimism — Mood of optimism — The three great forces : Unity, Prayer, Consecration — The day of triumph breaking over all lands. THE STUPENDOUS TASK Insufficiency of present effort — Changed attitude of Missions — Greatness of the feld — Africa — Power of Islam — Malay Archipelago — India — Unoccupied fields — Over 120,000,000 outside the reach of Christianity — Church must fall back on God. THE STUPENDOUS TASK "Christianity is the Religion, even in Name, op only One-third of the Human Race" rnHE question which the World Missionary Conference has left ringing in the ears of Christendom is this : " Can the world be won for Christ ? " For the first time the whole field of Christian Missions has been explored ; the disunited efforts put forth by the Churches have been surveyed ; the vast areas as yet untouched and unoccupied in the name of Christ have been tabulated; and the Christian world has been brought face to face, for the first time, with the full difficulty of the work which remains to be accomplished ere the Church will have fulfilled the last command of her Lord, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." It has had also presented to it the feebleness of the Won for Christ 3 4 THE STUPENDOUS TASK efforts now made to cope with this great work. For the first time the enterprise of Christian Missions has been scientifically examined and appraised. It now remains for the Churches to learn the lessons which the greatest of Missionary Conferences tried to teach — and, having learned, to act on them. The day is not far distant when Christians took it as a matter of course that Christianity would conquer the world. It did not really matter much what effort was put forth — for was it not written in the Book that it would conquer ? And it would be so ! To those who cherish this delusion it must be a shock to realise that the present amount of missionary activity is wholly insufficient to conquer heathenism. At one time the West thought that the East would inevitably bow down before it and receive its civilisation and its religion. But no longer has the East any thought of bowing down before the West — it is awakened to a sense of its own latent power, and is preparing itself to contest the sovereignty of the world with the West. And the other fact that is apparent is the wonderfully altered attitude of the Christian THE STUPENDOUS TASK 5 world to the non-Christian world. Formerly the Christian missionary went to the heathen, and said, "Your religion is a lie, and if you hold to it you are damned." But now other thoughts and worthier conceptions of God have come to the Christian world, and the missionary no longer says, " Your religion is a lie ; " what he says is, " Your religion has the root of the matter in it ; you, too, feel the hunger for the Eternal even as we do ; you have the half-truth — we bring you the whole truth." In this changed attitude lies a complete revolution in missionary methods. Ere the missionary in these days sets himself to build the city of God, he must first of all ascertain how far the city is built to his hands. The first step towards the successful ac- complishment of any work is to realise its difficulty, and so adjust the means to the task. And the report of the Commission on the Non-Christian World will make the Churches realise as never before the over- whelming magnitude of the work yet to be accomplished ere the world is won for Christianity. If we take the continent of 6 THE STUPENDOUS TASK Africa as an example, we shall realise what heroic effort the Christian Churches must put forth if Africa is not to be lost to the Christian ideal. The total population of that continent is reckoned at 180 millions, only half the population of China, but this popula- tion is scattered over a territory three times the size of Europe. One missionary reports of the sphere of his labours : " The field is as large as Germany ; its population only amounts to a hundred thousand," and in this continent there is a bewildering variety of tribes and languages. The mission - field of one society includes thirty different languages ! In the whole of Africa there are reckoned to be no less than 523 different languages and 320 different dialects, and beyond three small sections of the continent there is not a single tribe with a literature or even an alphabet of its own. And all that mass of humanity is sunk in the degradation of Polytheism, harassed by tribal wars, the prey to grossest superstition. The task of Christianity under these conditions is not the preaching of the gospel merely — it is the bringing of education, of letters, of agriculture, of all the elementary THE STUPENDOUS TASK 7 facts of civilisation. The stupendous work to which the Church is called is not so much the teaching of a creed as laying the founda- tions of civilisation. But not only is Christianity confronted with the vast mass of degraded humanity opposing all progress by the dead weight of its im- passivity, but it is also met by a persistent, unresting, and powerful opponent — Islam. The rapid advance of Islam is the great danger facing Christianity in Africa. Any one who cares to consider the matter will realise what a loss it would be to the world were Moham- medanism to conquer Africa. It is a religion without any knowledge of the Divine Father- hood or human brotherhood, without com- passion or purity — and to womanhood it means despair. We have only to consider the state of those countries in which Islam has been dominant for centuries to realise how great a calamity it would be were Africa to become its prey. And at present there is no doubt Islam is conquering Africa. It has on its side the power of prestige ! To our Western complacency it seems in- credible that our religion should be despised 8 THE STUPENDOUS TASK as an inferior thing. Yet to the Moham- medan Christianity is a thing to be despised. Islam has already conquered Christianity in Asia — that degenerate Christianity which spent its strength fighting about dogmas and words Mohammedanism swept before it as chaff. The Crescent replaced the Cross in Asia. The Church Mosque of St. John the Baptist dominates that most ancient of cities, Damascus, and the Cross crowned and domi- nated the great Church once. And on the architrave of a beautiful gate in one of the transepts a triumphant verse was carved by the Christian builders : — 1 ' Thy kingdom, O Christ, is a kingdom of all ages ; And Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations." To-day the Crescent has replaced the Cross on that great fane ; and the worshippers within pray to Allah. The inscription alone re- mains — a pathetic and ironic relic. And that Church, now a mosque, visualises for us the fate which has overtaken Christianity in the near East. To Islam it seems as if Christianity were only an imperfect faith, THE STUPENDOUS TASK 9 which served its day and was replaced by the perfect revelation of Mohammed. In Arabia the traveller can see a great cavalry barracks which was once a Christian cathedral, and seeing, he no longer wonders that to the Moslem Christianity should appear a religion susperseded and outworn. And this great religion, issuing from its northern strongholds, is now sweeping over Africa. In the great Mohammedan University at Cairo there are ten thousand students. Thence the propaganda of Islam spreads, and if that propaganda is to be arrested it must be attacked at its source. And the difficulty of that is apparent when we think how to the Mohammedan, with his haughty contempt of Christianity, which is to him but an antiquated religion set aside by Allah, conversion to Christianity is as in- conceivable as a return to Judaism is to a Christian. To-day there are in Africa nearly sixty millions of Mohammedans — a third of the whole population. And when once the African embraces Islam there is little hope of his ever becoming a Christian. To-day Africa has become the battle- ground in which Christianity and Moham- 10 THE STUPENDOUS TASK medanism contend for the destinies of a continent. How comes it then that Islam is sweeping through Africa like a prairie fire ? It is partly because Islam presents a lower ideal, adopts no uncompromising attitude towards matters which Christianity will never permit, counte- nances polygamy, and without demanding sacri- fice confers a higher social status. Its creed is, moreover, of the simplest : " There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet," is its only doctrinal test. The most ignorant can grasp it. It is far other- wise with the " Three Persons but One God," which is the basis of all the Christian creeds. But the chief cause is that every Mohammedan trader is a zealous propagandist. The tradi- tional attitude of the Christian trader is one of indifference, if not hostility, to the mis- sionary enterprise of his faith. The Christian State looked with distrust on Christian missions. Missionaries had to make their way to India in foreign ships. English ships re- fused them a passage. To this day Britain in the Soudan forbids an active Christian propaganda ! But how different all this is THE STUPENDOUS TASK 11 with Islam. Every follower of Mohammed is a missionary aflame with zeal for his faith. The result is that all over the continent the situation is critical. In almost every district it is reported that " the country is now more largely Mohammedan than pagan, and the Mohammedans are steadily pushing into pagan districts." Long ago the churches of Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine succumbed before the virile might of Islam. The question now is, whether the whole of Africa is to share their fate. " Islam is the only one of the great religions to come after Christianity ; the only one that definitely claims to correct, complete, and supersede Christianity; the only one that categorically denies the truth of Christianity ; the only one that has in the past signally defeated Christianity; the only one that seriously disputes the world with Christianity ; the only one which in several parts of the world is to-day forestalling and gaining on Christianity." The menace of Islam is indeed great. And it is now even as it was at the beginning. Then Christianity spent its strength in wrangling regarding metaphysical theology 12 THE STUPENDOUS TASK and the Church was rent by a burning hatred of sect for sect. When Islam emerged from the desert the one sect exulted that the other sect was smitten. In the seventh century the Church failed because it was disunited. To-day a disunited Christianity is impotent to face the peril to Christianity in Africa. While Moham- medanism is spreading like a fire, Christianity creeps like a snail. Its agents, miserably few in number in proportion to the work, are not even properly distributed. There is even over- lapping. "In the Shire Highlands . . . the Church of Scotland mission, properly developed, might have sufficed, . . . but seven other missions have come in. ..." Over against the sporadic, disunited efforts of Christianity there is the united, persistent, conquering campaign of Islam. It is not in Africa merely that Christianity finds itself confronted by the zealous and powerful propaganda of Islam. In India there are over sixty-four millions of Mohammedans, and in the ten years preceding the last census there was an increase in their numbers of about six millions. In China there are over twenty millions of Moslems. In New Guinea THE STUPENDOUS TASK 13 and the Malay Archipelego Islam has now almost undisputed possession, numbering as its adherents about thirty-five millions, and it carries on its propaganda with its ancient thoroughness and fanaticism. And, more startling still, in one province of the Russian Empire, since religious toleration was pro- claimed, one hundred thousand Christians have become Moslem. We took it for granted that by the mere form of a superior civilisa- tion Christianity would win ; but while we rested on a supposition, Islam, with an un- resting ardour, was conquering the heathen world for Mohammed. The Cross stood still, while the Crescent swept from the Levant through India to the islands of the Pacific and penetrated into the deep recesses of Africa. Because Christianity slumbered then it will need a mighty effort now to replace the Crescent by the Cross. But the difficulty of the stupendous task of winning the world for Jesus Christ is far from being realised yet. We have to look beyond Islam and see the forces of the non-Christian religions arrayed in the antagonism of their strength. In India we are faced by a gross 14 THE STUPENDOUS TASK population of three hundred millions, speaking 147 languages, entrenched behind Hindu Pantheism, whose roots lie deep in gross super- stitions, and whose upper branches wave in the thin air of Theosophy. The three hundred millions of China, welded into one by the rites of ancestor worship, without so much as words in their language to express " sin " and " holi- ness," bar the path of Christianity with their hatred of everything to which the word " foreign " can be applied. The sixty millions of Japan, knowing no higher worship than the worship of the Emperor, see in Chris- tianity little but an enemy to their loyalty to the earthly ruler. To these the message of Christianity has already come in some small measure. But beyond these again lies the huge mass of the world's population, which is yet wholly outside the reach of all the evangelising agencies of Christianity. In Africa alone there are yet seventy millions wholly beyond the reach of the furthest outstretched arm of Christianity. After a century of mis- sionary activity there are still in the world one hundred and twenty millions outside the influence of any Christian agency — to whose THE STUPENDOUS TASK 15 ears the evangel of Jesus Christ cannot so much as come. They are distributed thus : — Asia, including Mongolia, Turkestan, Afghanistan, Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepel 42,000,000 Africa 70,000,000 Arabia 3,000,000 Syria 550,000 Sinaitic Peninsula 50,000 Eastern Sumatra and adjacent islands 3,250,000 Medusa, Bali, and Lombok Islands ... 2,000,000 Malay Peninsula 1,000,000 121,850,000 If in that aggregate of the races still unreached by Christianity are included the populations in areas nominally reached, but really untouched by the gospel because of the feebleness of the Christian effort, the total population of the world still wholly outside the possible influence of Christianity cannot be far short of two hundred and fifty millions. (These figures are necessarily only approximate.) Such, then, is the stupendous task which lies before Christianity. All that vast mass of ignorance, superstition, idolatry, and degra- dation has to be permeated by the influence 16 THE STUPENDOUS TASK of Jesus Christ ere the world can be won for Christianity. More than a hundred years have passed since Carey set forth to India, and the work of winning the world began anew. Only the fringe of the great territory has been touched ; only a handful out of the great hosts has been gathered into the Christian fold. We have so far only been playing at the work. We have relied on a campaign of flying columns for the conquest of the world. The call which now rings in the ears of the Churches is a call summoning to a concerted world-wide campaign. The day of playing at this work is past. The day of self-sacrifice is come. What Christianity is summoned to prove is this: to establish its claim to wield the destinies of the world. Is it a living and a conquering energy — or a decadent and a spent force? In Abyssinia a degenerate Christian Church is yielding day by day converts to Islam. Is that to be the fate of Christianity as a whole ? As one surveys the ancient races entrenched in their hoary faiths, and the vast territories still unoccupied and untouched by Christianity; as one sees the forces of ignorance and super- stition and lust massed, presenting a solid front THE STUPENDOUS TASK 17 against the progress of the gospel ; and as one looks at the Christian Churches and sees how few they are who feel the call to go forth and conquer the world, and how few are willing to make any sacrifice for the glory of their Lord — then there comes the hesitating doubt : can this task ever be accomplished ? And the question rings in the ear, uncertain of its answer, "Can the world be won for Christ?" But the question throws us back on God. With Him the answer lies. Can the Church find now, as the Church ever found of old in the day of trial, such new treasures of power and energy, and vitalising force, such new revelations of the riches and the glory of God, that it will arise and go forth and conquer, not in its own strength, but in the irresistible might of God ? Therein lies the hope of con- quering the world for Jesus Christ. The summons that rings through Christendom is a summons calling the Christian host, if it would conquer, to fall back on God. To the world the task may seem impossible, and its performance a vain dream, but what are Christians in the world for but to achieve the impossible by the help of God! Won for Christ. 3 CAN CHEISTIANITY JUSTIFY ITS CLAIM ? Claim of Christianity to be the final religion — Three great arguments for its claim : It embraces (1) Perfect ideal of man ; (2) Perfect ideal of God ; (3) Makes these ideals operative in the lives of men — They who see the Vision must follow it to the farthest ends of the earth. II CAN CHRISTIANITY JUSTIFY ITS CLAIM? rpHE claim of Christianity is this : that it - J - is the final religion. It arrogates to itself the unique and pre-eminent place as the religion destined to sway the spiritual forces of the whole world. In this Christianity is not alone, for Islam also has dreamed of a world-empire, and dreams of it still. It is that dream that hovers before the eyes of the devotees of Mohammed as they sweep through Africa with the cry ere dawn, " Come to prayer, come to salvation, for prayer is better than sleep." Judaism dreamed the same dream. There has been no great religion but has felt the stirring of it. The question is : Can Christianity justify its claim to be the final universal religion? Can it be that its dream is baseless as these others ? The power behind the missionary enterprise depends on the answer. If we are 21 22 CAN CHRISTIANITY convinced that Christianity's claim to be the world-religion springs from its inherent truth, that it enshrines the highest ideal of God and man, and that it alone worthily satisfies the soul's hunger, then there comes the passionate desire to make that religion which is the highest and the noblest operative throughout the whole world. It is only when our souls are convinced that Jesus Christ is God's last and greatest Word for men, when we see Him towering above all powers and systems and teachers, alone, unapproachable — only then are we able to follow Him to the uttermost ends of the earth. And if we follow Him at all, we must be prepared to follow Him there. There are three great reasons on the ground of which we can claim that Christianity is the absolute and final religion. 1. It enshrines the perfect ideal of man. 2. It enshrines the perfect ideal of God. 3. It makes these perfect ideals operative in the lives of men and in the develop- ment of nations. 1. The highest ideal of man. Men in every age have fashioned for them- JUSTIFY ITS CLAIM? 23 selves the ideal man. He has gleamed before the eyes of men as perfect in physical form — the ideal of beauty ; as perfect in mind and in will — the ideal of power ; as perfect in spiritual per- ception, spurning the seen and the temporal, merged in the unseen and eternal ; but when we come face to face with Jesus Christ, all the veils of words and all the mists of dogma swept aside, and we see Him walking in Galilee, setting His face towards the Cross, there rises in our souls the abiding conviction that He is the perfect ideal, God's highest thought for men. All others are sin-soiled and imperfect. He alone is without spot and without blemish. What humanity has hungered for — He is. Peasants and fishermen did not imagine Him ; it would have been a miracle greater than the wonder of His personality, if they had invented Him. He is without thought of self; He is crucified to the world. Children crowd round His knees ; the poor find their riches in Him ; the pain-tossed in the light of His coun- tenance become oblivious of their pain ; the sorrowful are comforted ; the outcasts find themselves again. 24 CAN CHRISTIANITY His life is the life of sacrifice. All ages have felt the nobility of that. The degraded and the low cannot fall below the feeling that the greatest thing in life is to lay it down. The drunkard will rush to death to save a child from death — his heart feels the spirit of sacrifice which naught can quench. And Jesus Christ is the embodiment of all self-sacrifice. He lays down His life of Himself. The Cross is Sacrifice's last word. The world of men may undergo changes which will make humanity well-nigh unrecog- nisable centuries hence. But whosoever has seen Jesus Christ in the perfection of His sin- less life, of His self-forgetting love, of His tender sympathy, of His unclouded joyousness, of His self-sacrificing death, has felt the assur- ance that humanity cannot advance beyond that perfect Ideal which He enshrines. He is God's last word as the ideal for His children. 2. Christianity enshrines the perfect ideal of God. Apart from Christianity we would have many conceptions of God — but without Christianity we would never have those conceptions of God which are the highest, the noblest, and JUSTIFY ITS CLAIM? 25 the best. We could conceive the omnipotence of God — a God that could crush the universe in the blindness of His power ; but the soul that knew it was being crushed would be greater than the blind, unknowing power that crushed it even though that power were omni- potent. We could conceive God as pervading all things, the life of all that is — as the " God- intoxicated " Hindu has conceived Him, an impersonal life and power ; but He would be a God with no eye to pity, no heart to sympathise, and no arm to save. But the great things — we could have no conception of them apart from Jesus Christ. And these attributes which are the highest in God are Love, Fatherhood, and Sacrifice. God's love is revealed in Jesus Christ alone. How otherwise could the love of God be revealed? Love is not a glory in the heavens. Love reveals itself through a personality, looks out through human eyes, speaks through human lips, manifests itself in the thousand activities of sympathy and tenderness. The Divine Love moved among men in the person of Jesus Christ, and when we hear His voice saying, "He that has seen Me has seen the 26 CAN CHRISTIANITY Father " — we, seeing Him, realise what the love of the Father is. For that Love has become visible and operative among men. And love is sacrifice. The earthly father who sacrifices himself for his child would be greater than a God who knew not that love which is sacrifice. Only Jesus Christ brings us the knowledge that the love of God is the love that sacrifices — the love that lays hold on us, and will not let us go, and empties itself, and endures a cross that we may be blessed and saved. Human love says : Let me carry your burden ; the Love Divine says also : Let Me carry your burden — though carrying it mean a cross and a crown of thorns. And all this brings to the heart the deepest of all things — that God is Fatherhood. For Fatherhood is Love and Sacrifice — and these are the great truths Christ reveals to our souls. Only the voice of Jesus can teach our faces to turn upward, and our lips to falter, "Our Father." The great things, that God is Father, is love, is self-sacrifice, is righteousness and yet forgiveness, is justice and yet mercy — these things come to us through Jesus Christ alone. The perfect ideal of God, with all the JUSTIFY ITS CLAIM? 27 attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence, holi- ness, love, with all the power and all the will to help and to save, is enshrined in Christianity. Through it alone comes to men the vision of God, the Lover of our souls, the Father of our spirits, the preserver of our bodies, which men beholding have in the ecstasy of self-surrender laid hold upon saying, "Abba Father." 3. Christianity makes these ideals operative in the lives of men and in the development of nations. It would have been a poor thing to reveal the ideal were there no power conferred to realise the ideal. Christianity reveals a perfect ideal and the power through which it is realised. It has satisfied the soul hunger of humanity — for it has brought God to them. It has revealed the right way of coming into communion with God. Whereas men had rooted religion and the proper access to God in their own efforts, saying, Keep the law, render sacrifices, and God will be pleased, Christianity revealed the source of all the life divine in God. " By the grace of God I am what I am " became its watchword. Through the vitalising energy of 28 CAN CHRISTIANITY the Holy Spirit God came into the hearts of men, making them His temple, and in the power of God, the life of righteousness became not a mere dream, but a living, practical reality. And men, no longer running with stumbling feet, but lifted into the chariots of God, wafted on the wings of His Spirit, rose out of the dust, laying hold on their heritage as Sons of God. For well-nigh two thousand years now it has held the field of the world, and in lives risen from the dead, in nations transfigured, and in a world transformed, Christianity has justified its claim to be the world-religion. The gigantic enterprise of Christian Missions does not rest on a tremendous assumption. That enterprise rests on its own inherent truth, on the experience of that multitude no man can number, who finding Christ found God. On the bosom of that river that sprang in the manger of Bethlehem, there has come to the sons of men whatever of beauty, of goodness, of self-sacrifice, of mercy, of truth, of love that have enriched and now enrich the world. Its power is so great to elevate that whosoever re- ceives it, through that very receiving advances JUSTIFY ITS CLAIM? 29 a thousand years in one day. It comes to the pagan, delivering him from the tyranny of ghosts and devils, and with the revelation of one God, who is Father and is Love, transforms life into jubilee and joy. The world, which to the Hindu is but a " weary and unprofitable maze," for which the best he can desire is that it may be annihilated as speedily as possible, Christianity transfigures ; and over everything the sunshine, and the birds, and the sward growing green, writes : " Your Father doeth — your Father knoweth." It came centuries ago to a little rocky wind-swept isle in the Hebrides, and from that isle over a land filled with skin- clad savages the message ran, and the Scotland of to-day is the fruit. And from that Scotland now the message goes East and South, and whithersoever the message comes, the same forces begin to operate. With it comes deliver- ance from terror, from cruelty, from hell upon earth ; and the forces are unloosed which evolve the Christian states and the civilisa- tion of the future. These ideals which operate through Chris- tianity the world cannot outgrow. They are so great that they demand eternity for their 80 CAN CHRISTIANITY realisation — so great that we have not yet realised even a fraction of them. So far from Christianity being outworn, the fact is that Christianity in the fulness of its ideal has never yet been tried. Living Christianity is the projection of the perfect life of Christ, of the perfect teaching of Christ, of the perfect revelation of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ, into the midst of every generation. These things are so great that the servants of Jesus Christ are unable perfectly to do them. The evils in the midst of Christendom are due not to the Christian ideals, but to the failure to realise these ideals. These ideals of righteousness, purity, holiness, of growth into all the perfection of God — eternity alone will suffice for their realisation. Therefore time shall not outgrow them, and the march of humanity cannot leave Christianity behind — provided humanity shall continue to march God- ward. The claim of Christianity to sway the destinies of men is based on this impregnable foundation — its own inherent truth. Because it is the highest it claims for itself the whole world. And whosoever has realised the truth of its claim will follow the Lord Jesus Christ as He JUSTIFY ITS CLAIM? 31 goeth forth to reveal the highest of man, and the highest of God, and the highest of eternity — to the farthest ends of the earth. They who see the vision must needs follow it, or else the vision passes and they lose it. THE COMMON GROUND Common ground of worship — Christianity's compact with non-Christian races on this common ground — Animistic religions — Ancestor worship — Hinduism — Need for sym- pathetic insight and vision — World must accept the highest. Ill THE COMMON GROUND r I 1HE greatest of all missionaries was St. -*- Paul, and the principle underlying his toils was this : "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." That was the spirit in which Christianity conquered at the first : it is the spirit in which it must conquer now. And the problem which the Commission on the missionary message in relation to non-Christian religions set itself to solve was just this — how best Christians can become all things to all men. The magnitude of the problem can only be realised when we think of the bewildering varieties of the human race and the multi- tudinous stages of human development from the Animistic worship of man at the lowest to the deep thought of the " God-intoxicated " Won for Christ. 35 36 THE COMMON GROUND Hindu. To Brahmin and Moslem, to the disciple of Confucius, and to all the strange forms under which men worship, can Chris- tianity present itself on common ground, and make good its claim to become all things to all men. The very fact that they worship, whatever the race or creed, is the common ground. "As birds," wrote an Indian thinker in the Vedante, " repair to a tree to dwell therein, so all the universe repairs to the Supreme Being." The expression is infinitely varied, the thing expressed is one. The Red Indian blowing a few whiffs of tobacco towards heaven to propitiate the Great Spirit, and the Catholic with his good incense fumes, are not so far apart as they seem. Those who think that humanity will pass beyond that, forget the power of an instinct mightier than all reason. And the greatest thinkers the world has produced — be he Plato, or Aristotle, or Kant, or Hegel, or Newton — in this they are at one with the lowest fetish-worshipper — they obey the instinct which impels to worship. It is on this common ground that Christianity to-day seeks to meet the non- Christian religions. Let us see how best THE COMMON GROUND 37 Christianity can present its message to the non- Christian nations on this — the common ground of worship. The first that naturally falls to be considered is the religion of primitive races. Animism is the worship of souls — chiefly the spirits of departed ancestors. But it includes also the spirit of the flood, and thunder, and plague, and diverse others. The one feeling which Animism inspires is terror. " Ghosts of the most diverse kinds lurk in house and village ... in the forest. They terrify the wood- cutter ; in the bush they hunt the wanderer, malicious demons ... lie in wait for the child from the day of its birth ; they swarm round the houses at night ; they spy through the chinks of the walls for their helpless victims. The dead friend or brother becomes an enemy, and the coffin and grave are the abode of terror." It is a world filled with fear, at which the aboriginal tribes in Africa gaze. And the terror which dominates them is only equalled by the depths of degradation to which their lives descend. We can realise what a deliverance there comes with the message of Christianity to these poor slaves 38 THE COMMON GROUND of ignorant terror. To be told that the Unseen, which they deemed to be full of hostile forces, was really filled with goodness and love is for them the breaking of their chains. The message of salvation is redemp- tion from the tyranny of evil spirits. " Before I became a Christian," said one who found the great deliverance, " I was always in fear — afraid of the spirits, afraid of the idols, afraid of shadows, afraid of things moving in the dark — but now, thank God, I am free, and am afraid of nothing." Low and degraded though the beliefs of Animism be, yet they are " the effort of fellow-men to grapple with the great problem of existence," and the mis- sionary must rejoice in every element of truth he may find. The Unseen is very real to these harassed people — the missionary has to reveal its true contents. Sacrifice is every- where — the missionary can rear on it the truth of Christian sacrifice. " To lighten a dark room one does not need to sweep out the dark." The reason why Islam makes such great strides in Africa is that it comes as a deliverance from the terrors of Animism. The sad thing, from the Christian standpoint, THE COMMON GROUND 39 is that this deliverance should be the im- perfect deliverance of Islam, and not the full deliverance which comes from the revelation of Divine love. To the Animist, the message of one God, and that a God of love, comes as tidings of great joy. Because there is but one God, there is deliverance from the fear of gods many, gods capricious, gods vengeful, and gods unspeakable. The new life which opens before the convert is a "jubilee of liberty and joy." The centuries have deadened us to that joy, but on the mission field we realise again what thrilled the souls of the early Christians nineteen centuries ago ; we feel the throb of the words which sounded in the ears of those early converts from Polytheism, ringing from the depths of a prison — " Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say rejoice." To the Animist Christi- anity comes as deliverance from an incubus of terror, and for him its watchword is — Rejoice. The problem facing Christianity increases in difficulty as it confronts the hoary civili- sation and the ancient religions of China and Japan. Confucianism is the dominant religion of China, with its essential teaching of a high 40 THE COMMON GROUND regard for the family and the State. It knows nothing of a Divine love, and has little sym- pathy with the poor, the outcast, and the erring. It is entrenched behind the national pride which regards all the rest of the world as "Barbarians." Christianity comes to China only as a foreign religion — that of those who insulted China, seized her territory, and de- moralised her people with opium. " Race pride and patriotism both protest against acceptance of a creed from such a quarter, and label the Chinese who do accept it as disloyal renegades." And the whole fabric rests upon ancestor worship as the corner- stone. " By it the life of the nation has been moulded to a -cohesion which has out- lived the changes and vicissitudes of five thousand years." "The man who neglects it seems an inhuman monster, a wretch who has renounced father, and mother, and ances- tors." Parents guard their children jealously from all possible influence from Christianity, fearing lest, when they die, they should be left with none to worship them — " un wor- shipped beggar ghosts in Hades." The pros- pect of their children abandoning ancestor THE COMMON GROUND 41 worship is a nightmare for the Chinese — the children shrink from causing such dread to their parents. And everywhere idolatry has entered into the very web and woof of society. The great difficulty of presenting Christianity to the Chinese mind can be realised from a vivid illustration used by Dr. Campbell Gibson, " If I addressed this assembly," he said to the World Missionary Conference, "and called you all criminals, you would resent it strongly; but if I called you sinners, you would accept it humbly. In the Chinese language there are no words to express sin and sinners but crime and criminals." A Chinaman, when asked what his sins were, answered, "My wife and my mother-in-law." In China heathenism would almost seem entrenched within an impregnable fortress. And yet there, too, Christianity can build upon common ground. As with the Animist, Monotheism appeals to the Chinese, not as deliverance from terror, but as emi- nently reasonable. The atmosphere of sym- pathy, love, and friendliness which Christianity brings, makes its appeal. " The devotion, self- forgetfulness, and self-sacrifice of some Chris- 42 THE COMMON GROUND tians make a deep impression. China has no such men and women," so writes a Chinese. And to the spiritual need revealed in ancestor worship Christianity brings the knowledge of Him in whom all parents and all children live and move and have their being, bound to Him in filial bonds. " The so-called worship of ancestors," writes a missionary, "can easily be Christianised, and should be maintained in this form as a valuable national asset." "It is certainly possible to imagine a transformation of it into the Christian idea of the great Communion of Saints, which binds the seen and the unseen in one vast fellowship." Apart from ancestor worship, China to-day presents the strange spectacle of being a nation practically without a religion. To early Christianity Rome made its appeal — could it be won for the faith? To-day it is the Chinese and the Japanese — the races in whose hands the future of the East will lie, and which are now palpitating with the stir- ring of new life — which make the great appeal to the Christian Church. "Will their future be the upward path of those who follow the Highest, or the path of tragedy down to the THE COMMON GROUND 43 unknown and troubled sea ? " When the Church went forth on the great adventure of conquering the Eoman Empire, it was a puny, feeble thing compared to the Church which faces the Empires of the East. And the con- quering power is still within it. To-day, in the far East, the discerning eye can see how "the whole confused world of Chinese religion is being shot through and through with broken lights of a hidden sun, which is coming forth in splendour to run a new race in the heavens." It is, however, in India — that " challenge of the ages " — that Christianity meets its most formidable foe — Hinduism. If the tree be judged by its fruit, then Hinduism stands condemned. All Christian writers are at one as to the "petrifaction of society in the caste system," " the abuse of child marriage," " the infamies of popular idolatry," which prey upon the heart of India. Yet Hinduism has enshrined in its " immemorial thought " profound and vital truths, through which it shares much common ground with Chris- tianity. The Hindus are doubtless the strongest believers in the immortality of the soul whom 44 THE COMMON GROUND the world has ever known. With Hinduism the one redemption is the realisation of unity with the Supreme Being. This, too, is the ideal of Christianity. Only in that is satis- faction to be found. In this Hinduism differ- entiates itself from all other non-Christian religions. " Though we were to win all you are seeking," its sages say to the Animist, the Confucian, and the Moslem, " we should still be unsatisfied." To the Hindu the world is a mere illusion. The world is nothing compared to God. And it is truly better to say with Hinduism that the world is nothing and God all than to say with the modern materialist that the world is all and God nothing. To the Hindu, existence is the cardinal evil ; but to the Christian the cardinal evil is sin. Of the world the Hindu says, " Let it be obli- terated " ; but Christianity fills the world with God, and elevates its every trade and call- ing into a holy ministry. In Hinduism the supreme good is absorption in the Supreme Being. And to the Christian also the supreme ideal is to be filled with the Life Eternal — to realise more and more " the life of God in the soul of man." The terms differ, the THE COMMON GROUND 45 images vary, the modes of stretching out the hand alter, but the one thing the worshipper craves is life. And the satisfaction of that craving for unity with God can never find its highest satisfaction except through the fulness of eternal life which Christianity reveals, and which the Spirit of God commu- nicates to the souls of men. All religions are a " prayer for life." The supreme answer to the prayer is Christianity. Its culmination and power came when, on the day of Pente- cost, the barriers suddenly were thrown down, and on the hearts of men there poured the encompassing sea of the Spirit. And still the same vivifying Spirit flows into the believing hearts, so that the souls of men find the fulness of life abiding in God, and God abiding in them. This is the answer to the cry which the Hindu has raised for weary centuries — the cry for absorption in God. If there be one thing most necessary for the effective representation of Christianity to the non-Christian peoples, it is this — the power of vision and of an understanding heart which will enable missionaries to realise the inner meaning of the religions which they seek to 46 THE COMMON GEOUND supplant. The Rev. Dr. M. Chatterji, of the Punjab, himself a converted Hindu, tells how, for a long time, he stumbled at the doctrine of Atonement. The Hindus have a vivid sense of the punishment due to the individual for his sin, and to them it is inconceivable that another should suffer for their sins. Chris- tianity suffers great wrong by the crude repre- sentations of its doctrines by those who lack the imagination and the understanding which can root its truths in the beliefs which they find operative in the hearts of those they seek to illumine. To a race who hunger for the Unseen, who are ever looking beyond the visible, to whom eternity is the one reality — Christianity can come as the satisfaction of its hunger. It can meet it on common ground. A great revolution has taken place in the manner in which Christianity presents itself to the non-Christian religions. When a truth has operated for good in the life of a heathen nation, however dim and imperfect it may be, Christianity does not now seek to attack it, but to outflank it. It merges the im- perfect in a higher truth. The other religions are no longer regarded as of the devil — they THE COMMON GROUND 47 are recognised as " languages in which God has spoken to man, and man to God." Again and again there occur sentences like this, written by missionaries : " One cannot hear an unhappy old woman cry before a daubed red stone with the cry of her heart, ' O God, help me ! ' without realising that the utterance of her need itself has a religious value, and brings a return to her spirit." But the recog- nition that through these religions there come broken syllables of the Eternal Yoice to the souls of men only reveals the true way of bringing the perfect knowledge to their hearts. And that Christianity is that perfect knowledge — of that there is no doubt. For whoever compares Christianity to these others — the perfect ideal of purity and self-sacrifice it enshrines in the person of its Founder, the revelation of the Supreme Being as Father- hood, Love, and Holiness which it brings, and the blessings which it confers on humanity of freedom, and mercy, and beneficence — cannot but feel that it is the highest. The claim for Christianity is this — the world must accept the highest, and it is the highest. And therefore the call rings in the ears of 48 THE COMMON GROUND Christendom to-day : Arise and accept your high calling to make the highest operative throughout the whole world. It is a call to all that is heroic in the Christian Church. If the Church will only present the person of its Founder to the world, then the world will receive. For to-day the quarrel of the non-Christian world is only with Christians — but not with Christ. THE PKOBLEMS OF THE INFANT CHURCH What the coming of Christianity means — The problems that ensue — Problem of polygamy — Of caste — Of ancestor worship — The necessity for Christianity being again Orientalised — The necessity for the native Church getting a free hand — Mass movements — Judge not. IV THE PROBLEMS OF THE INFANT CHURCH TT7HAT does it mean to the heathen when * * to some dark place the missionary comes and lights the torch of Christianity? That great master of English, Henry Drummond, visualises what it means in a sentence : " At Tongoa, on the verandah, in the moonlight, I heard the evening psalm going up on this side and on that. Less than four years ago, from this same verandah, the missionary saw the smoke ascending from roasting human flesh." You see what it means in a flash. Where the awful rites of cannibalism degraded men lower than the beasts, where cruelty and ignorance and vice made their habitation, hither comes Christianity — and in a little while the low music of psalm and prayer rises on this side and on that. The history of missions is the record of that wondrous revolution. To some place in Won for Christ. 61 52 THE PROBLEMS OF Africa where the Arab slave-drivers drove their nefarious traffic, where warring tribes drenched the land with blood, comes the missionary and builds his church, his school, and his hospital. And soon the children are learning to read, the sick are tended, and peace lies like a shaft across the land. "A few years ago," says Rev. J. Nettleton, of Fiji, " in the South Seas you could buy a man or a woman for a guinea ; to-day you could not buy a scraggy old woman for a million pounds." We see there what the coming of Christianity means. It reveals the un- purchasable value of human life. Christianity is to-day, as it has always been, the deliverance, not from a future hell, but from the present hell of human degradation and misery. No sooner does Christianity come to a non- Christian land than the process of building up the infant Church begins. "Every soul that is attracted by the gospel and separated from heathenism is a living organism, and immedi- ately it allies itself with other living organisms of the same type and character." Thus an organised church springs up, and having learned to walk, anon begins to work, and immediately it finds itself confronted with various problems THE INFANT CHURCH 53 — among these many which the Church in the West has solved long ago, and which the Church in the mission-field must in its turn now solve. One of the Commissions of the World Missionary Conference has dealt with these problems, and their report makes us realise how complex the task of win- ning the world for Christianity really is. There is the question of what standard the Church will demand of her converts be- fore receiving them. Take the African who has more than one wife. Will the Church require him to put away all the wives except the first ere receiving him into member- ship ? This is the usual condition ; but it seems an intolerable wrong to these other women whom he married ere Christianity came to him. How pressing this problem is could be realised from the words of Professor Marais, of South Africa, who dissented from some very moderate sentences in the report which left it optional for missionaries to baptize a polygamist while denying him all office in the Church. Professor Marais would have no compromise with "this deadly foe to pure family life." In India, will the Church demand that the 54 THE PROBLEMS OF restrictions of caste, which grip the Hindu with the strength of centuries, be completely broken? Within the caste-system, 170,000,000 of Hindus are bound together in a unity so strong that the sense of individuality is deadened, and it is next to impossible for a Hindu to separate himself from the social scheme into which he has been born. The millions within this system look upon the multitude outside it with loathing and contempt, and regard the small fraction that have become Christians as pariahs and outcasts. The Church, outside of this system which has been all potent for centuries, is an alien to the life of India, and is not Indian except in a geographical sense. No question is more urgent than that of the attitude which Christianity must adopt towards this all- powerful system. Many missionaries forbid the retention and use of caste names among Indian Christians. It may well be asked whether Christianity has any right to obliterate family traditions and that self-respect which is in itself a virtue and an inspiration. " Why should not a baptized Brahmin hand down the fact of noble ancestry and pure blood in a family name to his Christian descendants?" It is THE INFANT CHURCH 55 surely a doubtful procedure to press inter- marriage, or even inter-dining, between people of different caste. Even in the West inter- dining between the castle and the cottage is not even dreamed of. Matters such as these are yet to be adjusted. There is in China the question of ancestor worship, deep-rooted with the sanction of long centuries ; must the attitude of the Church be one of utter and uncompromising hostility ? All over the world where the new ferment of Christianity sets working amid humanity, questions such as these at once knock at the Church's door demanding an answer. Formerly the Church's answer was an uncompromising negative. But in these days we are rather tired of negations. Every system is not neces- sarily false because we do not possess it. When a system has survived for ages, it has survived not because it was false but bacause it had some great truth at the root of it. The central fact of Christianity is the realisation that everywhere is some gleam of that light which lighteneth every man, but which shone resplendent in One. So even of caste and ancestor-worship. The missionary in our day 56 THE PROBLEMS OF must ask what is the truth in it. We know to-day the great power of heredity, the great importance of keeping the race pure — and even in caste we can see a seminal truth. But the problem is, how far the Church can recognise that seminal truth in consonance with the great truth — the core of its teaching — the brotherhood of man. These are but some of the problems which confront Christianity when it comes face to face with heathenism. It is not only in these matters that the modern missionary has altered his standpoint. The whole relation of the Western Churches to the East has been revolutionised. When the era of missions dawned the idea seemed to be to deport to the East the Christian Church as it existed in the West. We now realise the futility of this. For Christianity in the form we possess it is not the Christianity that will commend itself to the East. It was in the East that Christianity sprang. In Galilee a Teacher taught a handful of peasants in vivid meta- phors, in the guise of simple stories, the great truth that there was one Father, and that all men were brothers. But the cold, unimagi- native Western minds made these metaphors THE INFANT CHURCH 57 the basis of creeds and dogmas and legal systems. And this huge system of law and doctrine they began to send again to the East in the name of Christianity. The problem now is this — whether this Christianity is worth exporting to the East ? Christianity arose as an Oriental religion, and must it not again be Orientalised ere it can sweep through Asia with its vitalising breath ? We are learning now that it is not we of the West who will Christianise the Orient — it is the native Church itself that must do it. We have not the key to that life lived in the plains of India. We can only bring the seed ; it is the native Church itself that must sow it broadcast over the land. From this has sprung a wholly altered relation of the Western Churches to the East. At first the native Church was wholly dependent on the West. Now the aim is to train up the native Church to be as soon as possible self- supporting and self-acting. " The aim of all Western Mission Work," declared an Indian delegate to the World Missionary Conference, " should be to make itself unnecessary." " We open the doorway," said another, "and we 58 THE PROBLEMS OF have to see that we get out of it as speedily as possible." Hitherto the Western Missionaries have stood in the doorway and prevented the egress of the influence of the native Christians on their own race. Doubtless the Missionaries distrusted the capacity and wisdom of the infant Church. But it is only by experience that capacity and wisdom come. "It was," declared Dr. Hodgkin, of China, " a very young and a very inexperienced Church to which the Holy Ghost said, ' Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.' " But upon the native Church this policy of the Western Church has acted as a withering blight. Kept in tutelage, it did not acquire that confidence in itself which must precede initiative. Taught the dogmas of the West, it was not encouraged to think out for itself the great truths of Christianity. So far it has produced no original thought ; kept in leading strings, it has set forth on no voyage of conquest or discovery. The Western Church has feared lest, its control being removed, indigenous Churches might grow up in the East different and separated in sympathy from the Churches THE INFANT CHURCH 59 in the West. This was the matter which Bishop Gore emphasised when he declared that continuous life depended on continuous principles, and that the Church had to insist on the principles which are eternal. This is doubtless true. But surely God can be trusted with the future of His own Church. The native Church may make mistakes, but have not the Churches in the West made mistakes ? The promise of the Church being guided by the Holy Ghost into all the truth is not a promise to the white men and the Western Church alone. All that the Western Church can do is, in the words of Dr. Campbell Gibson, " to impress on the Eastern Churches the great affirmations of divine truth which are the essence of the Church and of the spiritual life." This the Western Church has done, and will continue to do. If the East is to be won for Christianity, it can only be won by the native Church — by men who can think the thoughts, feel the emotions, and see the things which are only visible to the Eastern eye. The aim of the modern missionary is not, then, to reproduce in the East the Church of the West ; his aim is to raise up a Church 60 THE PROBLEMS OF which in time will produce its own St. Paul, who will speak to the East the language of the East — and then the day of conquest will come. It is now abundantly manifest also that it is not through acting upon individuals only, but acting through mass movements, that Christianity can hope to advance with any rapidity. These mass movements occur when whole communities at one time turn towards Christianity. They have occurred in many parts of India and China, and notably in Korea. Many missionaries look with suspicion on these movements. When an entire clan and an entire village suddenly desire to adopt Christianity, their motives are open to sus- picion. It is often the yearning for escape from some misery. It is a movement towards material and social betterment. But surely that is no ignoble desire. Every step upwards begins on an elementary plane. When the level is once changed higher levels are attain- able. " Hundreds of our best people," writes a missionary, " were swept in on the tide of the mass movement, who, as individuals, would hardly have been sought or reached by any THE INFANT CHURCH 61 other method." " Nineteen-twentieths of our Christians," writes another, "are the result of mass movements. Some fall away, more re- main, and the general result has been most encouraging ; we have many examples of true piety and loyal obedience to Christ among those who came to us at first from mixed motives." Whatever may have been the motive of the clan or village when it moved in a mass, the third and fourth generation, trained and taught, have left that motive far hehind. The policy of diffusion over the mass rather than concentration on the individual is un- doubtedly the policy of the future. It was the policy by which Christianity won its vic- tories at the first. It was by movement in mass that Scotland was won for Christianity by St. Columba. With King Brude his clan moved in a mass, and Columba received them. And yet there are modern missionaries who look askance at movements in the mass. They must have a high individual standard ere admission to the Church be granted. Terrified lest the Church should be swamped by a flood of " baptized heathenism, " they often go to the opposite extreme. It is re- 62 THE PROBLEMS OF corded that a missionary who laboured with devotion for twenty years in a certain town was so scrupulous that he only twice ventured to baptize an inquirer. In both cases he found himself grievously deceived. During the same years other men working by his side, by other methods, baptized many hundreds of converts, and built up a strong Christian Church. Missionaries too often forget the weary centuries it has taken to produce the present standard in the West, and how poor a thing that standard is even after all these centuries, and they expect the standard of the West without the Christian heredity of cen- turies which lies behind the West. Evolution marches with very slow and tardy steps. "A mass movement," writes a missionary, "is an open door, and the Church should press through it with all her might." That is what the Church did in the days of St. Columba ; it is what the Church must still do. In India there are fifty millions of outcasts ready and willing to embrace Christianity. The sad thing is that Christianity seems unable to supply the requisite evangelists and teachers. It is by demonstrating to the full, what has already THE INFANT CHURCH 63 been demonstrated in a measure, that the religion of Jesus Christ can inspire that vast mass of degraded humanity with self-respect, can raise up to higher levels of thought and ideal, can transform its mud into gold ; that Christianity will prove to the world its power to deliver and to save. There is one sad note that occurs over and again in this report — it is this. The early missions committed the mistake of teaching through English. Instead of bringing Christi- anity to the children in the schools through their own language, they brought it through the English language, which they laboriously taught. Thus the native Church has so far produced no literature of its own. But what is worse is that the work of the mission- aries is so often hampered and nullified by the Atheistical and Materialistic literature which the West pours into the East. From Japan comes the Atheistical teaching of Europe pouring into the Christian spheres in China ! When the West has left these pamphlets far behind, they do their baneful work in the unknowing East. And one thinks of Islam — every trader a propagandist; and one thinks 64 THE PROBLEMS OF of Christianity, with its labours so often nullified by those reared within its pale, and who have received through it the best in life — and one realises that the greatest obstacle to the triumph of Christianity is not the enemy without, but the enemy within. The Moham- medan does not pride himself on counteracting the progress of Islam — the Christian trader and civilian too often does. "The missionary is hampered, " wrote R. L. Stevenson from Samoa, " he is restricted, he is negated by the attitude of his fellow-whites, his fellow- countrymen, and his fellow-Christians in the same island." The teaching of Christianity is sore let and hindered in the mission-fields by the low lives of men who live under its name. "You come to us with your religion," says the Asiatic and the African ; " you degrade our people with drink; you scorn our religion, in many points like your own ; and then you wonder why Christianity makes such slow progress amongst us. I will tell you : it is because you are not like your Christ." , Thus one of the grievous problems facing the infant Church in the midst of heathendom is how best to protect itself against the debasing THE INFANT CHURCH 65 influence of degraded men, nominally Christians, and against the attacks of those who, reared in the bosom of Christianity, yet would fain destroy it. It must always be remembered that the standard by which the infant Christian Church in the midst of heathenism is to be judged is not the standard to which the Christians in the West have attained after the growth of a thousand years. There are those who, seeing the imperfections and feebleness of the converts, and lacking the imagination which in the blade beholds the yellow har- vest, are loud-voiced in condemning missions. After many generations Christianity has in the West formed "beaten tracks of respecta- bility " ; and along these a multitude who reject the Mastership of Christ are impelled to walk by the forces which pulsate in the very atmosphere they breathe. They owe the decency and security of their lives to the very Christ whom they spurn. And these, looking at the mission-field, demand of the converts of yesterday a character which they themselves owe to the Christianity of many centuries. Nowhere is the precept of Christ, Won for Christ. Q 66 THE PROBLEMS OF " Judge not," more requisite than in dealing with the infant Christian Church in non- Christian lands. The Christian converts must be judged, not in contrast with the Christians of the West, but in contrast with the heathen- ism from which they have sprung. The atmo- sphere surrounding the Christian converts is the atmosphere of that heathen society in which the Europeans cannot bear that their children should grow up. All that has to be taken into account. It was thus that Origen judged the early Christians of his days : " Compared with contemporary pagans, the disciples of Christ shine like stars in the firma- ment." Against the background of heathenism, with its foul speech, its unspeakable licen- tiousness, its polygamy, and its child-murder, its bondage to terror and its indifference to life, its falsehood and dishonesty, let the converts to Christianity be seen, with the dawn of the Christian virtues in their souls, with the speech growing clean, with the mind being illumined, with the heart being softened by love and kindness, with the family life being cleansed, with meekness and gentleness and self-sacrifice beginning their perfect work, THE INFANT CHURCH 67 and then they too, like the Christians of old whom Origen saw, will shine before the eye like stars in the firmament. We must look at the infant Church with the calm eyes which behold, not the present but the future which shall be. Now is the sowing-time — anon shall be the harvest. It took aeons to pile up the rocks and rear the hills and establish the solid earth ; we must not wonder that the Spirit of God, working in the tenderest of all things — souls — should need centuries for His perfect work. If the con- verts to Christianity must be judged, let them be judged by Christians who have vision and imagination. That they should be judged and condemned by those who are not them- selves Christians is futile. For it is the right of every man that he should be judged by his peers. THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION The illiterate mass — Mistaken policy in India — Lord Macaulay — Importance of the vernacular — How Christi- anity became indigenous at the first — Only through the vernacular can it become indigenous now — Importance of Christian colleges as means of reaching the Hindus — The two alternatives. THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION rn HE Commission of the World Missionary -*"■ Conference on Education in relation to the Christianisation of national life, which had Bishop Gore, of Birmingham, for its chairman, has rendered the most valuable service to the missionary expansion of Christianity. There is nothing like it in the literature of missions. Professor Sadler, one of the greatest authorities on the science of education, describes it as "the first serious attempt to arrive at a concerted policy in the field of Christian education." It has explored the whole field of missionary enterprise, and presents facts which are of vital import to the work of Christianising the world. The problem of education is the greatest problem facing the Church in heathen lands. To 71 72 THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION realise its vastness one has only to think that out of a population of 293,000,000 in India, 277,000,000 are illiterate, or, to put it otherwise, out of 34,000,000 young people of school age, only 6,000,000 have any educational facilities. Ignorance is the handmaid of superstition, and that vast mass of illiteracy is truly appalling. But even the children of the Christian Church are left also in large measure uneducated, for out of 400,000 Christian children in India, only 168,000, or 45 per cent., are in school. Thus, there is not only the overwhelming mass of illiterate heathenism, but there is actually an ignorant Christian Church growing up in India. If these facts are not enough to make us realise the extent of the educational problem, there is this further fact that, out of 1,000 women, only seven can read or write. When, sixty years ago, the first girls' school was opened in South India, the people exclaimed, " From the beginning of the world it has never been known that a woman could read." But it is the women who make the home, and to be effective the light must shine through the wife and the mother. It is through the schools that THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 73 Christianity has rendered its most effective work. And the evangelising agencies, such as the Salvation Army, which have neglected the school, have failed to make an impression on India. But the effort that has been put forth by the Christian Church on behalf of education has not so far borne commensurate fruit. The reason of that is that the education which the Church imparted has been conducted on wrong lines. So long ago as 1835 a far-reach- ing decision was arrived at by the Indian Educational Committee, when, by the cast- ing vote of Lord Macaulay, it was decreed that the medium of instruction in the colleges of India should be English and not Sanscrit or Arabic. This was the period of which Lord Curzon declared that the withering blight of Macaulay's rhetoric passed over the field of education in India. Neither Sanscrit nor Arabic was the vernacular of India any more than Latin that of England ; but the lead thus given had the effect that English became the medium in the higher mission schools for the instruction of the students. In a sense this was perhaps inevitable. 74 THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION "Whosoever knows that language," declared Macaulay, " has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and stored in the course of ninety generations." But the result of that access has not been what Macaulay expected, or what the missionaries expected. Instead of training up leaders for the native Church in India, the mission schools have "made the students in thought and habits almost foreigners, and largely out of touch with native thought and feeling." " Students," wrote a missionary from Ceylon, " are prepared for the London B.A. The vernaculars are ignored . . . and youths whose parents talk an Eastern tongue, and who themselves rarely think in any other, are crammed, repeating English, Latin, Greek, or French . . . and do nothing for their own people. They cannot write to their parents in their own tongue, nor read letters sent to them." This isolation to which the education of the mission schools dooms the young Indian is terrible — he cannot become of the West, and he is cut off from the East. " As educa- tion is conducted at present," writes an Indian THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 75 gentleman, " our girls seem to have been made for studying English and passing University examinations. The poor girls are bribed with scholarships ... to continue their studies until they lose all their vitality. ... It is forgotten that the condition of society is such that girls, in spite of University degrees, will not be allowed after marriage to work indepen- dently of the husband. More attention ought to be paid to secure for our girls the kind of education they really stand in need of." Truly the rhetoric of Macaulay has produced a withering blight. Education has been merely exercising the memory, not the thinking faculty. The result has been that the native Christian Church is exotic, and all the mis- sionary activity of a century has failed to produce a native Church "Christian in con- viction and indigenous in thought." The ludicrous result has been that one can hear an educated Indian often speak with a broad Aberdonian accent, acquired from his Pro- fessor in the Scottish College — but that is the most evident result of his training ! To this it is not sufficient answer to say that the mission schools have supplied what the Indian 76 THE PKOBLEM OF EDUCATION parents want. They desire an English train- ing for their children, but they desire it because along that line the gratifying of ambition lies — the securing of commercial and civil posts. For the Church does not labour to gratify the worldly ambitions of the Indian ; its aim is to lay the foundations of an indigenous Church of India ; and if its methods fail to produce that, then the failure is grievous indeed. And so far the mission schools have failed in that. It is not through the foreign tongue that a path is won to the heart of humanity. There are stretches of country in Scotland where, if the preacher goes to the people with the English tongue, they are as the rock and he as the storm that beats vainly against it. But let him go to them with their mother-tongue old and dear — Gaelic — and they are as the field of corn and he the breeze that plays upon it. East or West, humanity is the same. The deep things of life only come home to the heart and soul through the mother-tongue. Only through the vernacular can the heart of India be won for Christ. So long as Christianity is in India associated with English, it is only the reli- THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 77 gion of the foreigners — a puny and feeble exotic. The great problem facing the Church is how to train up the preachers and leaders of the native Church so that Christianity may no longer appear to the people as a foreign import pertaining to the conquering race. A very valuable section of the report of the Commission on Education draws an interest- ing parallel between the way in which Chris- tianity became indigenous in the various provinces of the Roman Empire in the early centuries and the way in which expansion is now sought. Then Christianity became in- digenous at once ; and Ephesus, Alexandria, Rome, Africa, settled down as Christian com- munities, developing their special character as Alexandrian, Roman, African, and later as Celtic and Germanic and Anglo-Saxon Chris- tianity. In that period there seemed no risk of Christianity becoming exotic in any dis- trict. This was owing to the fact that Chris- tianity came into an Empire which was already furnished with schools, so that Chris- tians and non-Christians shared a common education. Schools were everywhere, and 78 THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION Christianity used no effort to start schools of its own for secular education. But now in India, no sooner does the process of education begin than thereby the Christian school begins the process of separating its scholars from the illiterate community whence they spring and from the social life of their own race. But there are some parts of heathenism where the conditions of the ancient Roman Empire are now reproduced. In Japan education is universal, and the percentage of children without schools is less than in Great Britain. There Christians and non-Christians receive the same education, and the danger of Christians becoming exotic is averted. In China also a national system of education is being established. But an edict has recently been issued exalting Con- fucius to the level of "heaven and earth," and requiring teachers and students to do reverence to his tablet. To this Christians object as idolatrous, and it forms a barrier against the use of the national schools by Christian children. But doubtless this will be overcome. The Chinese ideal of Christianity is that the Christian converts, with the wives and children, THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 79 should continue to share the social life of their own race, and that each Church should develop its own local character and colour. Thus did Christianity spread at the first; and thus only can " the glory and the honour of all nations " be brought within the circle of the Holy City. But the method of education which the Church has so far been compelled to adopt has not in this direction been suc- cessful. Warneck, speaking to Mr. J. R. Mott on the true missionary method, said, "You men of the Anglo-Saxon race act as if the Lord on the Mount of Ascension had com- manded His disciples, ' Go ye into all the world and teach the English language to every creature.' " Beneath the geniality there is a biting truth. Christianity has thus come in foreign garb, through a foreign language, and the result is that, so far as the Church is concerned, the deep and subtle powers of the Indians for meditation and devotion, their great ascetic instincts — the qualities which make the Indian thinkers appear as " God- intoxicated" — these are all outside of Chris- tianity. By the Hindu the Indian Christian Church is still regarded as altogether alien — 80 THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION so says Rev. Dr. William Miller, the highest authority on Indian missions. When the true aim of missions is considered — the building up of an indigenous Christianity — then nothing more pitiful can be conceived than this, taken as an example, that the native candidates for ordination in the Anglican communion should have, as they now have, to instruct them- selves and be examined in the Thirty-nine Articles — articles full of Western controversies. Well might Bishop Gore raise indignant hands to heaven as he denounced the folly of teaching the native evangelists of India these Western documents that breathe, not the atmosphere of Christian love but that of bitter and out- worn controversies. It is truly unspeakable folly to introduce to the East the language of Western strife, and to forget that the main aim of missions is the presenting of Christianity in the form best suited to the Oriental spirit. It is only through the power of education that Christianity can solve the difficulties which now harass it. One of these is the difficulty of raising up leaders in the native Church capable of directing its energies and shaping its policies. So far the native Church has been THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 81 sterile ; it has depended on the West for leadership. Lord William Cecil emphasised the remedy for this : get the best men and give them the best education. There was only one thing to do — educate ! It is futile for Chris- tianity to commend itself in China unless it appeals to the intellectual life of China. From the past China has turned its face to the future, and in the seething ferment of its new life its one cry is for education. Christianity has to study how it can meet that cry ; it has to discover the best method by which it can knit the intellectual training to the spiritual training, and both these to the industrial train- ing. And in India the only way by which Christianity can gain access to the millions which are shut in by caste, behind the barriers of the inveterate prejudice of many centuries, is by education. There is to-day a tendency to depreciate the work of the great missionary colleges which seek to leaven the Hindus with the inspiration of Christian ideals. 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