RY LABOR IN 
 
 INDIA. 
 
RESULTS OF MISSIONARY LABOR IN INDIA. 
 
 —_—__—} o_—__—_—_ 
 
 REMARKS OF REY. E. H. LEAVITT, OF CINCINNATI, OHIO, ON INDIA MISSIONS, — 
 MADE AT A MISSIONARY MEETING AT COLUMBUS, OHIO, 
 WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 20, 1862, 
 
 Published by Request. 
 
 As some time has passed since my return from India, I feel that there is a 
 special propriety in leaving to the venerable brother who is to follow—still 
 fresh from the scene of twenty years’ faithful labor—all detail of facts and 
 incidents relating to actual missionary life. 
 
 I propose merely to present one or two points upon which to base a few 
 remarks of a general character. 
 
 The returned missionary finds himself constantly besieged by the question 
 on the part of earnest and intelligent Christians, “‘ What are the positive, 
 tangible results of missionary operations in India up to the present time ? 
 not what could, would or should have been done, but what actually has 
 been done ? 
 
 The question in this broad form brings under survey in the reply two great 
 facts, of the most encouraging character. These we regard as the absolute 
 sum-total of existing results from the various missionary agencies and pro- 
 cesses which have been for the last half century at work in India. 
 
 I. An extensive and growing knowledge, on the part of the masses, of the _ 
 great saving truths of Christianity. The degrees of this popular knowledge 
 are of course very various. In the most favorable cases it amounts to a clear, 
 intellectual conception of the doctrine of the atonement. More largely it is 
 confined to a simple acquaintance with the fact, that Christians claim to be in 
 possession of a Divine revelation, the great purpose of which is to set forth 
 Jesus Christ as the only possible Saviour of men. It must be remembered, 
 that in a Christian sense, this is mere dead knowledge—a floating popular idea 
 of a foreign religion—to a large extent indeed, an idea not more distinct or 
 favorable with regard to Christianity than the notions pervading the Ameri- 
 can mind with regard to Hinduism or Mohammedanism. The impressions 
 which it makes are as varied as the minds with which it comes in contact. In 
 
- 9 RESULTS OF MISSIONARY LABOR IN INDIA. 
 
 a very few individuals of more than average intelligence and independence, it 
 excites a genuine interest and leads to earnest investigation. The Hindu 
 mind, in its ordinary, stereotyped mould of blind and passive, but immovable 
 Jixedness in traditional custom and opinion, regards it, as a rule, with profound 
 indifference—at best, as a mere piece of curious intelligence, with which none 
 but the Christian himself can have at stake the slightest personal interest. On 
 the contrary, whenever it touches the fierce, intolerant and aggressive spirit of 
 Mohammedanism, it is sure to arouse the most violent hatred and opposi- 
 tion. The reception of Christianity, however, by the native mind, has merely 
 an incidental connection with the definite purpose I have in view in these rapid 
 statements. ‘That purpose is to fix. distinctly in your minds the single fact, 
 that information with regard to the vital doctrines of the gospel, sufficient upon 
 the Divine conditions to save the soul, already extensive, is, through the various 
 diffusive agencies of missionary operations, rapidly becoming universal. The 
 proofs could be produced, did time permit, to demonstrate the entire safety 
 of this proposition, guarded, as it is, by the preceding qualifications. 
 
 Now, in the eyes of one who would seek to reduce this whole question of 
 the results of missions to a cool, business-like calculation of capital invested 
 and profits realized, the above statement may seem a most insignificant show- 
 ing in return for more than half a century’s expense and labor and sacrifice— 
 but I demand for it, from every earnest friend of Christ and His cause, the 
 most serious consideration. In the arithmetic of heaven there is an infinitely 
 different standard of valuation from that just suggested by which to try 
 causes and consequences. And by that Divine standard, the bare fact that 
 such a knowledge of saving gospel truth, however dim and imperfect, is even 
 now actually permeating that prodigious mass of intelligent and immortal 
 humanity, entails upon the conscience of the universal church a most solemn 
 and awful responsibility. 
 
 It is a responsibility only to be measured by the worth of myriads of 
 undying souls in this passing generation, and those that are to follow to the 
 verge of time: for, does it not logically follow from the clearest declarations 
 of the Divine Word—from the strongest utterances of our Calvinistic creed— 
 that our Missionary efforts have, just at the existing stage, gone far enough to . 
 place the people of India as a people, between two tremendous alternatives— 
 either, that knowledge must live and breathe with Divine energy and become 
 the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation, quickening and 
 raising from their long grave, those dry bones in the valley of vision—or, in 
 its national contempt and rejection, be heaped into an accumulated load of 
 guilt, which must sink the race deeper under the fiery billows of the Divine 
 indignation? The wrath of the God of the Bible, flames out ever against 
 idolatry as the most intolerable insult to his glorious majesty—and between 
 that just wrath, like a destroying flood and the doom of these deluded multi- 
 tudes, what is there but the Cross of Calvary, thus dimly seen through the 
 
RESULTS OF MISSIONARY LABOR IN. INDIA. o 
 
 mists of prejudice and superstition? And shall that cross be held up by 
 Christ’s church with a timid and trembling hand? Is it not her pressing duty 
 to gird up all her strength and set it on the mountain top if need be, at. what,, 
 ever cost and labor, only so that it may be fair in the sight of these sin-bitten 
 and perishing myriads? But supposing even this done, have we even yet 
 reached the limit of the church’s duty and responsibility? Might not the 
 lamb of Calvary be lifted as clearly and fully in the sight of all India as it was 
 in the sight of guilty Jerusalem, and yet prove for the one as for the other, a 
 stone of stumbling and a rock of offence? Mere knowledge of Christ crucified 
 however intellectually perfect, would be as powerless to save as the dumb 
 cross of wood or stone, set up by the superstitious hand of Popery!. We 
 come to this point then, that our responsibility as Christ’s church, does not end 
 with the question, however important, “‘ How shall this imperfect knowledge of 
 Christ be made universal and perfect—but how shall this knowledge, in whatever 
 degree and extent, present or prospective, be made the savor of life unto life 
 rather than as it is now and will be remaining as tt is of death unto death ? On 
 the strength of God’s word and the result of actual experience, may | not un- 
 hesitatingly reply—by the power of the Holy Ghost, working through the 
 divinely appointed means—the earnest spirit—the wrestling prayer—the faith- 
 ful labors of the Evangelical church, not in any single or separate member, but 
 as the whole and undivided body of Christ. And now, suffer me, in bringing 
 this line of remark to a close, to show why I have so anxiously endeavored to 
 find the exact place for this immense obligation, connected alike with India and 
 every other similar field of missionary operation—to place it, if | may use so 
 homely a phrase, upon the broad shoulders of evangelical Christendom. It 
 is simply this, that there is, alas! an unconscious but not the less actual feeling 
 in the Christian mind at home, which palsies the hand of the missionary enter- 
 prise—a feeling, that having at a great price set up the machinery necessary 
 for the work, beyond the mere seeing to the supply of the material means, 
 men and money, her duty is done and her responsibility ended. In other words, 
 the strong tendency is, to shift the excluseve accountability for results upon the 
 laborer actually in the field. It is a pernicious and damaging mistake. — It 
 ignores the great fundamental principle of a common and sympathetic spiritual 
 life, binding together the entire mystical body in a union so intense and in- 
 timate, that “if one member suffer all the members suffer with it ”—that if 
 circulation be cold and feeble in the great and central functions it will be just 
 as dull and stagnant in the smallest and remotest members. 
 
 In this view then, we ask, What are missionaries ?_ I know what the popular 
 idea is, unduly depreciating their ability while it unduly exalts their piety— 
 with what an uncomfortable halo of impossible, at least extraordinary, spirit. 
 uality the missionary finds himself invested in the eyes of religious romance. 
 But when called upon accurately to define them as a class, I assuredly would 
 not as a general rule put them ina line with men of a.spiritual life remark- 
 
4 RESULTS OF MISSIONARY LABOR IN INDIA. 
 
 able as that of Judson or Martyn, and others, as evidently raised up by God 
 for special exigencies as Paul or Luther. I would feel safe in describing them 
 as a body of Christian men in piety and ability fully up to the average stand. 
 ard of our home ministry, and, indeed, only distinguishable from their brethren 
 by the one simple fact, that their minds have been directed by the Spirit of 
 God to the peculiar consideration of their individual duty to the Heathen 
 world. They are, in a word, but representatives as a class of the spirit and 
 temper of the Church, in the average at home. 
 
 I would give the above proposition all possible emphasis, as deeply affect- 
 ing the question of responsibility, we are now discussing. For hardly more 
 surely does the law in nature act, by which two connected columns of water 
 of whatever dimensions find the same exact level, than that the piety 
 and activity of missionaries as a body will be upon a precise line with the 
 piety and activity of the general body they represent. A Moravian Church 
 makes Moravian missionaries, and the “icy mountains of Greenland” and 
 “the burning sands of Africa” alike witness the triumphs of their unquench- 
 able zeal and childlike faith. But given on the other hand, a Church, in 
 whose heart there is no pervading missionary fire, and which is kept partially 
 awake to the solemn interests of a world’s salvation, only by the constant 
 spurring of rebuke and appeal at the lips of a few ardent friends of the cause 
 far in the advance; or, a Church with the outward semblance of activity but 
 whose whole system of missions is a cold, mechanical routine, sustained by 
 pressure of conscience in view of irksome but perilous and unavoidable obli- 
 gation, and you will find on the foreign field however remote a perfect reflection 
 of each in the life and character of its laborers as a class. It will not do then 
 to suppose that the distant members will do their work with vigor and suc- 
 cess, while the vital circulation is weak and dull in the heart and lungs of the 
 main trunk; and the recurring figure brings us to a point in which the line of 
 our remark naturally terminates as it began—the point 1 am trying to make 
 in your minds-—that the Home Church must share with her Missionaries the 
 glorious but awful responsibility of the work. In a word: that not to the 
 missionary alone, but more largely even to you, as a Christian public, be- 
 longs this direct question of the Redemption of India, to your warm hearts, 
 and warm prayers, and earnest labors, speaking sympathetically through the 
 hearts and prayers and labors of your fellow-servants upon the ground. And 
 how intimate and electrical that sympathy, let a single recent fact demonstrate. 
 But a year or two since, the distant Synod of Lodiana begged of Evangelical 
 Christendom a single week of prayer; the humble petition found grace in the 
 eyes of the Bride of Christ; the Church got upon her knees and lifted up her 
 hands for India. Let the missionary records of conversions since that glorious 
 week show with what inspiring results! Oh, if the Church would but take to 
 her very heart of hearts this simple principle of the mystical connection of 
 any spiritual body with each and every part; if every week were, as it should. 
 
RESULTS OF MISSIONARY LABOR IN INDIA. 5 
 
 be, such a week of prayer; if she were faithful to her knee-work—-how soon 
 that. wilderness of sin would blossom as the rose. 
 
 Il. The second great accomplishment is found in the fact, that there is at 
 this moment in India a church of Christ, consisting of probably not less than 
 one hundred thousand members. Of course this is the aggregate of the profess- 
 ing Christians connected with all the Evangelical denominations. Not all the 
 diamonds of her Golconda, set in all the gold of Ophir, can give India such a 
 value tothe Christian eye as the simple fact, that she bears here and there 
 upon her dark bosom, these precious jewels for the crown of Jesus; upon 
 the brow of that mountain of superstition, which has cast its shadows, 
 long as ages and black as despair, over the perishing myriads—here is a faint 
 but brightening rainbow of promise. The logic of the believing heart leaps 
 at once to the glorious consequence ; if God has brought one hundred thou- 
 sand heathens from darkness to the marvellous light; is it not the pledge of 
 his power and willingness to bring all India’s one hundred and sixty million ? 
 
 But some cautious inind may be troubled with the query, “ Why then 
 is foreign assistance necessary ?’’ The membership mentioned seems a large 
 one. Surely that India church can no longer be a helpless infant. Why is it 
 not now left to stand alone? And if it does not, is it not because its strength 
 has not been properly developed by use and self-reliance? Has it not been 
 held up till it has lost the consciousness of power to sustain and diffuse itself; 
 and every year the needless assistance is continued, does not the danger of 
 chronic and permanent helplessness become increased? Such questions on 
 the mere general statement are natural and pertinent. Let me in the briefest 
 manner suggest the satisfactory reply. 
 
 1. India has an immense territory and population, and this number of 
 Christians—large in the aggregate—is in fact so scattered over a vast surface, 
 and amid swarming millions of idolators, as to be almost lost to the eye of 
 the hasty observer. This geographical separation, prevents that concentration 
 of force, which would appear to belong to the sum total generally stated. 
 In its relation to Christianity, India at a balloon view, is like a broad western 
 prairie, with here and there a discernible patch of cultivation. Each particu- 
 lar station is small, weak, and almost wholly dependent upon its own isolated 
 resources. It is in fact an infinitely different thing from such a number of 
 Christians with a community of locality and interests. 
 
 2. There is another perfectly satisfactory explanation of this infant help- 
 lessness of the native church. It is found in the inherent features of Hindu 
 character. These little isolated churches are composed chiefly of adudt mem- 
 bers, whose whole previous life has been spent in idolatry or some equally 
 potent and debasing system of error. The versatile American mind can 
 with difficulty realise the iron rigidity of the Hindu in his ancestral habits 
 and customs. Howat one blow upon conversion to Christ, his whole previous 
 spiritual being has been suddenly shivered to fragments. Christianity has to 
 
6 RESULTS OF MISSIONARY LABOR IN’ INDIA. 
 
 build up a new man, in a sense far more extensive than with us,—a new man 
 from the very foundations, to enable him to stand boldly alone—and surely 
 too many of us are, with all our advantages, “babes” in Christ, to expect 
 Christianity in such circumstances, to effect such an absolute regeneration and 
 recreation, as at once to elevate the base slave of life-long superstition to the 
 full stature of a man in Christ Jesus! But if we would really know what it 
 is for an adult heathen to become a Christian, and how to make charitable al- 
 lowances for his moral infancy, study the Epistles of Paul to the churches of 
 Corinth, Ephesus and other centres of Paganism of his day. You will find 
 that for years, such churches were only upheld by the most unceasing apos- 
 tolic supervision. It was plainly the Divine plan, to nurse them, by His faith- 
 ful servants, into a gradual self-sustaining and aggressive strength and vigor. 
 
 3. Finally, caste, more than all else, makes the native membership, in the 
 existing circumstances of society in India dependent upon foreign help—de- 
 pendent in a degree beyond that of any class of Christians, reclaimed by mis- 
 sionary effort in other foreign fields. In receiving Christ, the Hindu becomes 
 in the eyes of his people a filthy outcast, and alike deprived of work and chari- 
 ty, aside from the employment and support procured by the mission, his only 
 possible fate is crime or starvation. 
 
 In a word, my friends, it has to the missionary mind en-masse, the force of 
 a demonstration, that God has committed this little flock in India to the bosom 
 of the Home Church, as he gives a helpless babe to the bosom of its mother to 
 be warmed and nourished into life! Woe be to her, if she play the unnatural 
 parent to her sacred charge! Woe be to her, if she turn it out in the dark 
 cold night of Heathenism to wail and to die! The spirit of Missions is her 
 very heart’s blood, and if it cease to run warmly and lovingly in her veins to- 
 ward her own spiritual children, the curse of weakness must fasten upon her 
 like a ghastly consumption! Let her dare under any pretext or pressure, to 
 shut the door against that piteous cry from India, and what can she expect but 
 to find her time of weakness and helplessness, and the door of God’s favor 
 shut against her ? 
 
 Now, in the face of these two great results, a widening knowledge of saving 
 truth on the part of an hundred and sixty millions, and an actual church of 
 about one hundred thousand members: results an enfinite reward for all past 
 toil and sacrifice. How sadly then falls upon the ear of every true friend of 
 the cause, the ominous word, with which the air is echoing—Retrenchment! 
 
 I have time only for a parting appeal, with this word haunting me like a 
 foreboding shadow of evil ! 
 
 Give, my friends, a moment’s special thought to the simple fact, that we 
 have thus raised the banner of Jesus in the remotest borders of that wide em- 
 pire of Satan! Is it not still a glorious pledge of our purposes and our hopes? 
 _The flag of our Union now floats from the capital of Tennessee; what is the 
 significance of that thrilling fact? Does it not imply the formal investment 
 
RESULTS OF MISSIONARY LABOR IN INDIA. 7 
 
 of that state, and express more powerfully than words, the intention of Govern- 
 ment to hold with resolute grasp every inch of her rightful soil, and would not 
 the whole nation, in its heroic devotion to our Union, strain every nerve to 
 breaking—suffer all possible privation, sooner than see the stars and stripes 
 go back one hand’s-breadth from the spot, wrested from traitorous hands, by 
 the sweat and blood of our sons and brothers? Do we whisper “ retrench- 
 ment” when such is the stake at issue? Brethren in Christ, do not your souls 
 leap to the application? In this struggle of such infinite moment, such a 
 teeming domain of immortal life as India to be held or lost for the Master— 
 when the banner of His cross has even now been advanced by the brave hand 
 of Isadore Loewenthal to the passes of the Hymalaya, looking out into the 
 limitless plateau of Asia, and ‘his beckoning hand cries “ go in and possess the 
 land” would it not be a burning, everlasting blush of shame upon the blood- 
 bought bride of Christ, to let it go down in neglect and dishonor ; her cheek 
 withered,her hand palsied by that word, like an infernal spell, “‘ Retrenchment ”? 
 O, Church of Jesus, shrink thus back in the hour of peril, in selfish weakness, 
 and the eye that fell upon the coward Peter, will look upon you with a rebuke 
 so unutterably reproachful, as to send you in sackcloth and ashes to some 
 lonely and silent spot of repentance, like him to “ weep bitterly”! Even now 
 the very whisper of “retrenchment” is the first warning cock-crowing! May 
 it never come to that terrible denial of the crucified ! 
 
 A parting word. Perhaps my own missionary life, has unduly excited my 
 fancy, but at least it shadows a fearful reality ! Sometimes | seem to stand, 
 since my return, on the shore of a dark, tumultuous sea, and out of the thick 
 gloom comes ever an awful, unbroken, melancholy roar, like the roar of 
 troubled waters and raging winds on a stormy night; it is a sound old as 
 earth itself, and growing deeper and louder every passing age; and my soul 
 mournfully echoes the solemn interpretation of the Divine Book. This is the 
 roar of the sea of human life, vexed with the tempests of God’s righteous 
 wrath—“ the groan and travail of creation until now.” Sometimes I shut my 
 eyes to see as in a vision of the night, myriads of dusky arms stretched out 
 imploringly from a dim mysterious shore, and to hear confused cries of mortal 
 agony ; and again, when I translate the vision into sober truth in the light of 
 God’s Word, lo! these are the imploring outstretched hands, and these the 
 agonized desolate cries of human souls, sinking, sinking, into the depths of the 
 eternal fire. 
 
 What need of fancies? The naked, terrible fact, staring us in the face is, 
 that an hundred and sixty millions in that land of darkness, perish with every 
 passing generation! Comer, Lorp Jesus: come QuicKLy ! 
 
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