THE INDIA MISSION: 
 
 A PAPER BY 
 
 REV. GEORGE L. CHANEY, 
 
 OF BOSTON. 
 
 Head ut the National Conference of Unitarian 
 AND OTHER 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHURCHES, 
 
 OCTOBER 24, 1872. 
 
 BOSTON. 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION. 
 
 1872. 
 
PRINTED AT THE SALEM PRESS. 
 
THE INDIA MISSION. 
 
 In the year 1853-4, the Rev. Chas. T. Brooks went on a voyage 
 to India. He landed at Madras and was welcomed with tears of 
 joy, by Mr. William Roberts and his little church. At length 
 their “prayers had been answered.” So thought these simple 
 people, and a missionary had come to them from the fountain head 
 of christian love and learning. Mr. Roberts was the son of a de- 
 voted christian preacher, a native, who had been won to the truths 
 of christianity as taught by the Unitarian church. The father 
 had died at his post, and the son, his filial piety overcoming his 
 sense of unfitness, had continued his father’s work, hoping some 
 day to receive help from those who were of the same religious 
 family across the sea. 
 
 The Cape of Good Hope seemed at last to have fulfilled the 
 promise of its name, and sent an answer to his prayers, when this 
 beaming Saxon face appeared to Wm. Roberts at Madras. But 
 Mr. Brooks had not come as a missionary ; not even, by intention, 
 as the forerunner of one. He had come on a voyage for the re- 
 newal of his health. He left Madras and sailed on to Calcutta. 
 There again, his coming quickened desire in the hearts of that faith- 
 ful company of believers in one God, and in Jesus Christ, his Son. 
 Since the death of Rammohun Roy and the departure of Rey. Mr. 
 Adam, they had been left without a leader. The appeal of these 
 desolate believers in that distant land so moved the sympathy of 
 Mr. Brooks, that he earnestly pressed their claims upon the Ameri- 
 can Unitarian Associatian, as soon as he returned to this country. 
 The plan of sending a missionary to India was not a new one. 
 In 1821, Henry Ware had been in correspondence with Rammo- 
 hun Roy and his English convert to Unitarianism, Mr. Adam, 
 about this mission, and Norton and Tuckerman and Gannett had 
 given the measure their warm approval. An appeal from respon- 
 sible residents of Calcutta, both native and English, endorsed by 
 the traditional favor of the fathers of our church, and urged by 
 the persuasive eloquence of the poet preacher, whose physical 
 
 (3) 
 
4 THE INDIA MISSION. 
 
 weakness has more than once been the strengthening of his breth 
 ren, could not be denied. Before the close of the year 1855, a 
 missionary was sent to India. This was Mr. C. H. A. Dall, then 
 a young man of rare promise, adding to the honors and graces of 
 the university, an enthusiasm of humanity, and a consecration to 
 the christian ministry, which seemed to make him peculiarly fitted 
 for the work. 
 
 From that day to this, now seventeen years, Mr. Dall has kept 
 his post. Although compelled by the demands of health and the 
 interests of the mission to return to this country twice in this 
 time, his work in India has never been suspended. What that 
 work is, and has been, every reader of the quarterly and monthly 
 journals during this period has had abundant opportunity of know- 
 ing. And _ yet, I question if many men really do know about this 
 work. In truth I did not know myself until I was compelled to 
 inquire about it, as one of the committee, responsible for its 
 management. The letters in which this information was con- 
 veyed to us have not been couched in clear, cool, business-like 
 phrases, which leave the mind master of the situation. Something 
 of the luxuriance of tropical nature makes the letters from India 
 not a little dark and umbrageous, and facts and figures dart in and 
 out of the woods, oftentimes ‘quite obscured by the rhetoric and 
 emotion of the writer. Nevertheless, the facts and figures are there, 
 in the published or unpublished letters sent to the India Commit- 
 tee. Every fortnight, in peace or war, the punctual letter from 
 our India missionary is sure to come. No agent could have been 
 more faithful in the frequency or fulness of the reports; and if 
 some obscurity has veiled their statement of facts, it is only such 
 obscurity as must ensue, when the warm breath of the tropics 
 strikes against the clear, cool windows of the north, through - 
 whose panes we contemplate our Foreign Mission. If you cannot 
 pardon emotion and enthusiasm in a missionary, you cannot have 
 him; for without an emotional and enthusiastic nature, no man 
 would undertake the thankless service. 
 
 But, to the facts. What are they? After sixteen years of life 
 and service in India, what have Mr. Dall and his associates ac- 
 complished? For five years, 1855—1860, a small church was 
 maintained in Calcutta, and our missionary’s ministry was pat- 
 terned after the ordinary New England parish; two sermons on 
 
THE INDIA MISSION. 5 
 
 Sunday, baptism of converts, visitation of the parish, publication 
 of tracts and, as often as possible, a lending hand to every needy 
 man or cause. Eighty tracts were printed, forty children and nine 
 or ten adults were baptized, five hundred and twenty sermons 
 were preached, two on Sunday for five years, and still, ‘‘ the 
 heathen, in his blindness, bows down to wood and stone.” Lest 
 any unbeliever should think this poverty of result peculiar to 
 Unitarian preaching in India, I will say that Mr. Bowen, the de- 
 voted missionary of the American Board of Foreign Missions, 
 resident at Bombay, frankly confessed to Dr. Norman Macleod, 
 that in more than twenty-five years of preaching in that city, he 
 had not, to his knowledge, made one convert. 
 
 Clearly something more than preaching, something other than 
 the traditional ministry of the church, was needed for India. Mr. 
 Dall was among the first to discover and adopt the agency of a 
 day school, for secular education, as the best means of reaching 
 and converting the youth of India. He did this in the face of 
 distrust, both at home and abroad. But the wisdom of his course 
 has been acknowledged by the adoption of his method, by all the 
 leading missions of other denominations; so that the inspector of 
 foreign missions declares to-day that ‘‘ no mission is complete-with- 
 out the school.” Ever since 1860, now twelve years, Mr. Dall has 
 put the emphasis of his service upon these schools. Nor did he 
 slavishly copy the schools of New England. On the contrary, he 
 anticipated the probable future of our school system, by adding 
 an industrial element to the usual instruction in letters. He es- 
 tablished a school of useful arts. The result is, that two hundred 
 and forty pupils each year come under the instruction of our mis- 
 sion schools. And during these twelve years, such intimacy has 
 grown up between the missionary and his pupils, that he numbers 
 2,250 boys and men, 260 women and 660 rovers; in all, 3,170 
 people, among the recipients of his teaching or help, and the 
 objects of his personal interest and care. Who of us can number 
 such a parish? ‘Three times a week, Mr. Dall addresses the 
 scholars on religious themes, enforcing the teaching of the chris- 
 tian gospels. Who of us preaches three times a week? Add to 
 the daily task of teaching and superintendence of the schools, the 
 writing and publication of tracts, and the frequent preparation 
 and delivery of lectures, and remember that these things are done 
 
6 THE INDIA MISSION. 
 
 with the thermometer at a height which is never seen in the hot- 
 test months in this country, and you may understand somewhat 
 the labor of a missionary in Calcutta. For one, I find no excuse 
 for easy complaint of my brother Dall, so long as I am glad to 
 shun the mild fervors of a New England summer in the city. 
 Nor do I think a company of ministers in this temperate clime 
 have a right to criticise the list of Hindoo converts, when 
 they have themselves agreed that ‘‘no soul was ever converted 
 in the month of August.” 
 
 The facts I have stated about the India Mission came in their 
 succinct form, by the hands of Miss Chamberlain, a lady assistant 
 of Mr. Dall, who has visited this country during the last summer, 
 and who confirms their accuracy, so far as her observation ex- 
 tends, by her own testimony. Mr. Partridge of St. Louis, who 
 has visited India within the year, also bears strong testimony to 
 the work. And Mr. Aldrich, who spent a year in Calcutta, in our 
 employ, describes the daily teaching, which is now the main part 
 of our mission, in the same way. He thinks, however, that there 
 is a call in Calcutta for Sunday preaching. And it is probable 
 that the last twelve years of education in the mission and goy- 
 ernment schools have reared an audience of English-speaking 
 natives, who would reward any earnest preacher with their atten- 
 tion, as often as he should address them on living themes. It 
 ought to be stated that the cost of the India Mission including 
 the stations at Calcutta, Salem and Secunderabad, is about $3,600. 
 Of this sum, nearly one-half comes from Mr. Heyward’s bequest 
 for foreign missions. So that only $2,000, at the utmost, goes to 
 India, out of the annual contributions to the Association. Put 
 this sum by the side of the $461,054, the income of the American 
 Board of Foreign Missions for 1871, or the $823,586, the income 
 of the Church of England Society, for the. same year, or the 
 $107,005, the contribution of the little band of the Moravians, 
 and then complain, if you will, of our stipend to India. Unless, 
 however, we are prepared to take the ground that a nation of 
 200,000,000 people, given over to idolatry, has no claims upon 
 ehristian rescue, our complaint must be, not at the size, but at the 
 littleness, of the outlay. 
 
 I dare not attempt, within the space fairly appropriated to this 
 subject, to portray all the difficulties in the way of Hindoo con- 
 
THE INDIA MISSION. rf 
 
 version, which even such study as a distant inquirer like myself 
 could give has revealed to me. 
 
 I will only ask you to imagine that Lord Cornwallis, in- 
 stead of failing in his endeavor to subjugate this America of 
 ours, had succeeded ; that Yorktown, instead of witnessing his sur- 
 render, had been red with his triumph; imagine that the last 
 century had been a century of British rule instead of American 
 independence in this land; imagine that the surrender of Wash- 
 ington had been followed by a succession of governors sent over 
 from England who, in order to fill the coffers of a scheming corpora- 
 tion, and increase the government revenues, scrupled at no act of 
 injustice, breaking sacred oaths and treaty obligations, on pretexts 
 which were more often the invention of a greedy ambition than the 
 offence of a rebellious people; conceive these invaders, under 
 cover of relieving your several states of the burden of eovern- 
 ment, gradually stealing first the functions, then the emoluments, 
 and, finally, the very land and property of these United States ; 
 conceive a man with the thieving ability of the Tammany leaders, 
 the audacity of Brigham Young, the brutality of Nana Sahib, the 
 ambition of a Bismarck ; imagine Warren Hastings and Clive let 
 loose upon this conquered land and followed in their career of des- 
 potism and robbery by other governors, whose virtues never stood 
 in the way of new aggrandizements; behold this country, con- 
 quered, spoiled, and reduced to terrified subjection, instead of 
 being the compeer of England, claiming and receiving damages 
 for secondary wrongs; behold all this,—and then imagine a com- 
 pany of missionaries of the Church of England landing on these 
 shores and attempting to convert us to the Established Religion! 
 Would you join? 
 
 I have drawn no imaginary picture, except in its location. India, 
 not America, is the land we saw. Cornwallis has had a recompense 
 for his American defeat in the success of his Indian campaign ; 
 and to-day, a people, only induced by compulsion to accept Eng- 
 lish commodities, is urged to adopt, of its own free will, the 
 English religion. No wonder christian missions make slow prog- 
 ress in a country, under subjection to a christian people, whose 
 tardy and partial justice has not yet obliterated the memory of 
 terrible wrongs, or removed the disabilities of Hindoo birth and 
 nationality ! 
 
8 THE INDIA MISSION. 
 
 Other things being equal, American missions ought to be more 
 acceptable to the inhabitants of India than those of England. If 
 any English-speaking nation can persuade them to accept chris- 
 tianity, we are that nation. 
 
 But above and beyond the antagonism between the conquering 
 and conquered nation, there exists the opposition of irreconcil- 
 able customs and principles. Idolatry cannot be shaved down 
 into conformity with the spiritual and truthful worship of Him 
 who is a Spirit. 
 
 Neither the prejudices nor the privileges of caste can ever be 
 reconciled with the requirements of human brotherhood. The early 
 espousal of women and their systematized ignorance can never 
 consist with the purity and dignity of a christian home, and per- 
 manent widowhood is a burden upon woman so unjust, that chris- 
 tian manhood could never consent to it. These principles and 
 customs are ingrained in the constitution of Hindoo society. They 
 are planted there by centuries of religious sanction and imposi- 
 tions. It is this which gives them their permanent hold upon the 
 people. It is this which renders any reform in India impossible 
 which leaves its religion unchanged. 
 
 Political economists and clever magazinists tell us that the best 
 missionaries are the plough, the railroad, the printing press and the 
 canal. The railway car compelling Brahmin and Sudra, soldier, 
 priest and farmer to travel side by side, — this is the great destroyer 
 of India’s caste-bound civilization. Notso. The Brahmin at the 
 end of this journey is a Brahmin still, and no length of travel will 
 land a Sudra any higher up in the social scale than when he 
 started. 
 
 A writer upon this subject says that among the Sepoys, a Brah- 
 min in the ranks would obey the orders of a low caste officer, but 
 out of the ranks, the private would say to his military superior — 
 ‘¢ Stand off! I am holier than thou.” . 
 
 No; nothing will cure the evils that flow from a false religion, 
 but the good that comes from.a true religion. 
 
 And whatever may be said of the comparative morality of chris- 
 tian and heathen people, and certainly the displays of honesty by 
 nominal christians in India are not calculated to make the Hindoo 
 or Mohammedan blush at the comparison, there is yet this grand 
 distinction of the christian religion. The evil practices of its 
 
THE INDIA MISSION. 9 
 
 professors can never find shelter under its sanction. If christians 
 are low-lived, inhuman or dishonest, it is always against the pro- 
 test of their religion. But the worst evils of Hindoo society are 
 under the sanction, yea, they are the traditional requirement, of the 
 Hindoo religion. Does not this show that the only hope for India is 
 in the change of its religious belief and trust? Some trust in iron 
 chariots and some in herses of steam, but for me, my single hope 
 for India is in the knowledge of the one true and only God. 
 
 The problem simply stated is this: here are two hundred 
 millions of human beings, of the same race as yourselves, their 
 fathers going eastward from the old home of the Aryan race, ours 
 coming west. They are idolaters and their religion upholds them 
 in idolatry. If we are idolaters it is not the fault of our religion. 
 We have something, therefore, to give them; a religion, which 
 will do for them what it does for us,— rebuke sins and show the 
 way to holiness. Shall we give it to them? We can only refuse 
 at the price of losing it ourselves; christianity will not keep, save 
 in its dispersion. 
 
 Two ways of commending it to India are open to us, one the 
 preached word ; and for this I would send to India every year, one 
 of the best scholars, the most persuasive preachers, the leading 
 minds of the liberal church. A visit by such a man and a ministry 
 of three months in Calcutta would make an impression upon the 
 religious belief of both native and European residents there. It 
 would not occasion any longer absence from the home field, 
 whether parish or college, than most ministers take every few 
 years for a trip to Europe. It would put our permanent missionary 
 in India on a stronger footing and give his ministry the backing 
 of high examples of christian learning and character. It would 
 sharpen the powers and renew the intellectual life of men among 
 us whose learning needs the provocation of dense darkness. If, 
 in return, it brought such a man as Chunder Sen to this country, 
 it would be an exchange that would involve no robbery from us. 
 The other way of commending our gospel to India is .by the 
 acted word ; and for this I would strengthen and increase the pres- 
 ent facilities for practical christianity there. Besides the schools, 
 there should be a pleasant, central reading room and library, with 
 all the apparatus of our mission for christian work applicable to 
 that locality. I have left myself no time to speak of that native 
 
10 THE INDIA MISSION. 
 
 theistic church, called the Brahmo Somaj which, without compro- 
 mising his christian name and profession, our brother Dall has 
 joined within the past year. It is not easy to ascertain the num- 
 ber of this society ; one says four thousand and another forty thou- 
 sand. Mr. Dall says ‘‘you might as well attempt to count the 
 number of trees in a forest, first touched by the rising sun.” 
 
 The progressive wing of this body led by Chunder Sen is nearly, 
 if not quite, identical in its platform with this National Conference. 
 Its motto, or cry, as it is called (they have no formal creed), is 
 ‘God our Father, Man our Brother, Christ our Guide.” 
 
 The social significance of Mr. Dall’s joining this native society 
 is far more important than its doctrinal bearing. Who that has 
 read the wonderful preaching of Sen, with its profound apprehen- 
 sion and devout acceptance of spiritual christianity, could avoid 
 clasping the hand of fellowship with him and his fellow believers? 
 But it is not this agreement of view, so much as the acceptance 
 by a white man of place and membership in a native association, 
 which makes Mr. Dall’s action so noteworthy in India. The prac- 
 tical value of this bold step lies in its appeal from the caste of 
 color to the brotherhood of christian equality. 
 
 Is it generally known to what lengths this prejudice of race and 
 color governs society in India? That the presence of a native 
 gentleman of culture and refinement is not tolerated in good soci- 
 ety in Calcutta? Looked at from this point of view, our mission- 
 ary’s action in joining a Hindoo fraternity was not unlike the 
 devotion of the Moravian missionaries to the West Indies, who 
 became slaves that they might teach those bound in slavery and 
 convert them to christianity. Not that, Mr. Dall would not find 
 peers in intellect and character among his new associates, but the 
 victory over social prejudice in joining this fraternity is of the 
 character pointed out. It is the very demonstration of christian 
 charity, for want of which, confessed christianity makes so slow 
 progress in India. 
 
 I say confessed christianity makes slow progress. But the influ- 
 ence of English education and missionary devotion cannot be 
 tested by the length of the church roll any more than the power of 
 the church in America can be measured by the number of pro- 
 fessed church members. English education effectually cures its 
 pupils of idolatrous belief, however short it comes of changing idol- 
 atrous practice. The graduates of the twenty thousand schools 
 
THE INDIA MISSION. 11 
 
 maintained wholly or in part by government patronage in India 
 are candidates for a better religion than popular Brahminism. 
 The forty thousand pupils in India who are yearly learning the 
 English language, and through that door entering into the thought 
 of English history and literature, are sure perverts from the 
 faith of their fathers; what shall they be? There is only one 
 alternative; christians or atheists. The rebound from spiritual 
 despotism is always towards utter unbelief. Thousands in India, 
 finding their attenuated faith in the superstition of their childhood 
 cut in two by the sharp knife of a government culture, which 
 makes no provision for religious education, are to-day sunk in the 
 gloom and sorrow of atheism, or lifted into a perilous frivolity, 
 having no knowledge or fear of God before their eyes. If you 
 have a religion which can supply this lost faith in spiritual reali- 
 ties, you have a call to India. If not, then stay away. 
 
 I cannot believe, however, that the indifference, yes, I will say 
 the unfriendliness, with which our mission to India has sometimes 
 been regarded is due to the absence of vital christianity among us, 
 so much as to the ignorance of the subject into which we have 
 suffered ourselves to fall. Would the women of our churches rest 
 idly in their pews and sewing circles, if they knew that one’ hun- 
 dred millions of their sisters in India were kept in the lowest 
 ignorance, on the shameful pretext that knowledge would become 
 in woman’s hands an implement of lust? What do those earnest 
 women, who are striving here in Boston to uplift the standard of 
 female education, say to this darkened land where the jewel of 
 truth is worn only by the courtesan and regarded as the evidence 
 of her degradation ? 
 
 Already through the Zenana schools, under the patronage of 
 other christian bodies, thirty-nine thousand, six hundred and forty- 
 seven women and girls are receiving an education. Miss Cham- 
 berlain is laboring in our employ in the same direction. Give 
 her your organized help, women of the Unitarian church! Be 
 yourselves, as the women of other denominations are, a mission- 
 ary power, and press on the work of uplifting woman’s culture 
 and woman’s influence in the far East! 
 
 The theme is broad and I must leave it scarcely visited, as our 
 pioneer in the India mission did, when he showed his face to the 
 longing company at Madras and sailed away. 
 
 But surely you will send another after me. You will not hear 
 
12 THE INDIA MISSION. 
 
 this cry of a shipwrecked land, beyond the sea, and send no life- 
 boat to the rescue. You will feel in the degradation of India 
 something degrading to yourselves, as christians, so long as you 
 do nothing to change it. You will maintain, enlarge, develop and 
 finally perfect the India Mission. 
 
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