PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN SOUTHERN INDIA: eA ING Eh Ooly Hy. By A. HILLIARD ATTERIDGE. Wipe [Reprinted, by permission, from the Dusuin Review, January, 1887. | PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN SOUTHERN INDIA: TANJORE. i OST of the Protestant missions in India are of recent origin. Very few of them date back farther than the beginning of the present century. Among the oldest, if not the oldest of all, is the mission of Tanjore. Here Protestant missionaries have been at work for more than a hundred years. Here, if anywhere, we might expect to see at the best advantage the results of their labours. Tanjore is a district in Southern India. The city which gives it a name stands on the lower course of the Cauvery, and the district includes the rich delta of that river. Its fertility has won it the title of the garden of Southern India. In the last century Tanjore was one of the States of the Mahratta league, but in 1799, its Rajah Sharabhoji placed his territory under British protection, and practically ceded it to the Company. On the death of his son Sivaji in 1855, the ruling family became extinct, and the annexation of the district was completed. Early j in the 17th century the Rajah of Tanjore had ceded to an enterprising Danish captain the seacoast town of Tranquebar. The place became the centre of the Danish trade with the East, and in 1706 King Frederick IV. of Denmark sent thither Ziegenbalg and Pliitschau, the two first Protestant missionaries who had ever appeared in India. Tranquebar soon became the headquarters of an active Lutheran propaganda. About 1728 some native Catholics at Tanjore apostatized and became Lutherans, chiefly through the influence of a soldier who had been “ con- verted”? by the missionaries during a visit to Tranquebar. After this Tanjore was visited by Pressier, a member of the Danish mission; but it does not appear to have become a _per- manent centre of Lutheranism until Swartz arrived in India. 4, Protestant Missions in Christian Frederick Swartz * was one of the most remarkable of the early Protestant missionaries in India. He was a man of considerable mental power, with a marked talent for languages, and a great influence over the minds of other men. No one who reads his letters can doubt his earnestness and zeal for the diffusion of what he held to be the truths of Christianity. He was born at Sonnenburg, in Prussia, in 1726, and in 1750 he went out to India to take part in the labours of the Lutheran mission, of which he became before long the most active and prominent member. In his missionary Journeys he occasionally visited Tanjore, and in 1769 he was introduced to its ruler, Tuljaji Rajah, on whom be made such a favourable impression that their acquaintance soon ripened into friendship. After this his visits to Tanjore became more frequent, until in 1778 he established himself permanently there. By this time there was a British resident at the Court, and an English garrison at his command, so that Tuljaji was practically a tributary prince. Swartz was protected and assisted by the Rajah in various ways, and he showed his gratitude by being helpful to him when the occasion offered. Thus in 1782 he made him a loan of about £400.¢ Five years later when Tuljaji was on his death-bed he adopted as his son a young prince of his house, named Sharabhoji, appointing his brother, Amir Singh, regent during his minority, and Swartz his tutor. Before he died, Tuljaji handed to the missionary “a written document, sealed by himself and his chief ministers, in which he made an appropriation for ever of a village, of the yearly income of about five hundred pagodas (£200), for the school, and more especially for the orphans.’{ This was not the only grant Swartz received for his mission from the autho- rities at Tanjore. Later on we find him accepting a monthly grant in ald of the Protestant poor of an adjacent mission. There is no doubt that he accepted these grants in a most disinter- ested spirit, and used them with prudent care that they should not degenerate into bribes for proselytes; but in the hands of less worthy, or less prudent successors, the funds of the Tanjore mission have proved, as we shall see, a fatal possession. Swartz died in 1798; it says much for him that he was all his life opposed to the marriage of missionaries. He held that men who came to do such work should be wholly devoted to it, and should have no other interests in the world, and be practised what he preached. Self-interest of any kind had no part in his character. He had unbounded influence with the successive * The name is now often written Schwartz, but the missionary himself used to write it Swartz. + Pearson: “ Memoirs of Swartz,” i. 145. t Lbid. u. 146. Southern India—Tanjore. 5 rulers of Tanjore, and with the East India Company’s repre- sentatives in Southern India, and there is no doubt that he used it only for the advantage of the people among whom he laboured. Swartz worked at Tanjore in connection with the English Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, to which he had transferred himself from the Danish mission some time after his arrival in India.* The establishments of the Danish mission at Tranquebar were, in 1841, handed over to the Leipzig Evangelical Lutheran Mission. In most Indian districts, by an arrangement between the missionary societies, only one of the various forms of Protestantism is presented to the natives. In the Tanjore district this convenient arrangement does not exist. The Danes’ have gone from Tranquebar, but the German Lutherans have taken their place, and pushed their operations to Tanjore itself. There is therefore a standing quarrel in the dis- trict between the representatives of Lutheranism and those of Anglicanism. Both claim “ Father Swartz” as their own. It is not easy to say how many or how few Protestants there were in Tanjore at the death of Swartz. Dean Pearson, his biographer, gives no statistics. Three years later, however, in 1801, Gericke, his successor, reports: + “It is delightful to see the growth of the Tanjore mission, and the southern congreea- tions dependent on it. The inhabitants of whole villages flock to it. What a pity that there are not labourers for such a great and delightful harvest!”? Our business, however, is mainly with the condition of Tanjore at a much more recent date. But before we pass on to these matters, we have a glimpse of the state of the mission some thirty years after the death of its founder. In 1834, Macaulay wrote home from his summer quarters in the Nilgheries { :— By all that I can learn the Catholics are the most respectable por- tion of the native Christians. As to Swartz’s people in the Tanjore, they are a perfect scandal to the religion which they profess. It would have been thought something little short of blasphemy to say this a year ago; but now it is considered impious to say otherwise, for they have got into a violent quarrel with the missionaries and the bishop. The missionaries refused to recognize the distinctions of caste in the administration of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and the bishop supported them in the refusal. I do not pretend to judge whether this was right or wrong. Swartz and Bishop Heber con- ceived that the distinction of caste, however objectionable politically, * In 1826 the S.P.C.K. transferred its missions in the Madras Presi- dency to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Madras Diocesan Committee was formed in connection with the S.P.G. to direct them. + “Memoirs of Swartz,” 11. 441. t “Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay,” ed. 1878, vol. 1. pp. 383, 384, 6 Protestant Missions in was still only a distinction of rank ; and that as in English churches the gentlefolk generally take the sacrament apart from the poor of the parish, so the high-caste natives might be allowed to communicate apart from the pariahs. But whoever was first in the wrong, the Christians of Tanjore took care to be most so. They called in the interposition of Government, and sent up such petitions and memorials as I never saw before or since; made up of lies, invectives, bragging, cant, bad grammar of the most ludicrous kind, and texts of Scripture quoted without the smallest application. JI remember one passage by heart, which is really only a fair specimen of the whole :—“ These mis- sionaries, my lord, loving only filthy lucre, bid us eat Lord supper with pariahs as lives ugly, handling dead men, drinking rack and toddy, sweeping the streets, mean fellows altogether, base persons, contrary to that which St. Paul saith: ‘I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’ e QVAG y could not help saying to one of the missionaries who is here on the hiils, that I thought it a pity to break up the church of Tanjore on account of a matter which Swartz and Heber had not been inclined to regard as essential. ‘‘ Sir,” said the reverend gentleman, ‘‘ the sooner the church of Tanjore is broken up the better. You can form no notion of the worthlessness of the native Christians there.” I could not dis- pute the point with him ; but neither could I help thinking, though I was too polite to say so, that it was hardly worth the while of so many good men to come 15,000 miles over sea and land in order to make proselytes, who, their very instructors being judges, were more children of hell than before. Let us now see if matters have improved much in fifty years in this the oldest Protestant mission in India. The last census (1881) gives the following rehgious statistics for the Tanjore district. Out of a total population of 2,130,383, there are 1,939,421 Hindus, 112,058 Mohammedans, and 78,258 Chris- tians. Of the Christians, no less than 67,292 are returned as Roman Catholics; and of some seventeen hundred Christians the precise denomination is not stated. This leaves some 9,000 non-Catholics who are thus divided among the sects :— ‘“‘Protestants” . . . 5,705 of whom 5,208 are natives* Lutherans’... $2,240 . 25162", * Church of England . 990 i 743 Cy, f Wesleyans’ ©. 7") o-188 a 142085; 44 Presbyterians “'. “2 ?. 94 f DLs ox f Methodists "4° S74 11 a V1 84; m Congregationalists . . 10 + LORS ” Church of Scotland. 1 (a Eurasian) Totals .faquagh sit t59; 258 8,367 * * Natives” are Hindus, to the exclusion of Eurasians, who, however, are a mere handful in Tanjore. Southern India—Tanjore. 7 The Church of England does not appear to great advantage in this list, but probably some of the 5,705 who are returned simply as “ Protestants” belong to the S.P.G. mission. Of the Catholics, 65,745 are natives, against 8,367 native Protestants We now compare these last figures with the results of the pre- ceding census :— TANJORE District. NATIVE CuHrIsTIANS. Catholics, Protestants. Lov GUN e nae tae ee COL aL LBS Pek] VOCs aT ail ap hie wore BEF Increase. . . . . 10,861 nae Decrease ; ee% 2,011 From these figures it would appear that not only is the Catholic Church in possession of the field in Tanjore, and making steady progress, but that, despite the various agencies employed for so long a period, the Protestants are a small body, much divided amongst themselves, and that during the last ten years they have decreased by one-fifth of their whole number. These ten years include the period of the famous Tinnevelly “ harvest,” but Tanjore was not a famine district, and there was no “harvest” to be reaped there. If we turn to the Reports of the S.P.G., we find some explanation of this decay of the once boasted mission of Swartz at Tanjore. The Reports we refer to are not those which are read at May meetings, and dis- tributed here in England, but the Reports of the Madras Diocesan Committee of the Society, and especially the facts communicated to the committee by the Rev. W. H. Blake, of Tanjore. It is only of very recent years that we have these outspoken accounts of a state of things which is of by no means recent origin. This is often the way with these mission reports. Things are put in the most hopeful light until the collapse comes, and has to be explained. In the Report for 1877-78 the Rev. A. Manuel writes from Tanjore :*— On perusing the returns of the year, I find that the number of the congregation is less than what it was in the preceding years, and this I believe is attributable to the fact that the names of such persons as are employed in other places, and those of their families (all belonging to Tanjore), were also included in the returns prepared for those years. The present returns show only the actual number of the con- gregation now residing in the town. As to the state of the congrega- tion I can say that the members are in general earnest in their religious * Report of the Madras Diocesan Committee, 1877-78, pp. 94, 95. 8 Protestant Missions im duties and many of them show by their lives that they have the essence of Christianity and that spiritual religion grows tin them. ... - Besides the congregation at Tanjore, there are others in twenty-three villages, but the number of members in each is small. We have italicised one passage, as we shall soon hear a very different story from Mr. Blake. Mr. Manuel’s Report represents just the hopeful cowlewr-de-vrose view which is usually kept up (not necessarily in bad faith) till the very last moment. The first part of his Report shows that the same men may appear twice in the mission statistics—first, in their place of origin, and, secondly, in their place of residence. In thesame report the Rev. M. Gnanakam writes from Negapatam (in the Tanjore district), to complain of the difficulties caused by Lutheran emissaries from Tranquebar. “ Our people,” he says, “ are often tempted to join them by their boarding schools and paying system.” We shall presently see that the S.P.G. has itself “a paying system” of long standing in this very district of Tanjore. Three years later we have the first admissions of failure. The Rev. W. H. Kay reports in the returns for 1880-8] a falling-off in some of the village congregations attached to Tanjore. This he attributes to an insufficient supply of pastors—a single native clergyman (Mr. Manuel) having to do the work that was formerly assigned to three missionaries and three native pastors. In the same year the Rev. M. Gnanakam again reports troubles caused by the Lutherans of Tranquebar, and repeats his complaints of the evil done by their “ paying system.” The Report for the following year (1881-82) is signed by the Rev. W. H. Blake, “ priest-in-charge” of Tanjore. Mr. Blake is evidently a man who looks facts in the face boldly.. His Report admits at once that there has been failure rather than success, and the details he gives throw a curious light on the system employed in drawing up mission statistics :—* The Tanjore Mission for the last few years has been gradually and steadily becoming weaker and weaker. It has, I hope and trust, this year reached its lowest ebb. Only five years ago there were tour Kuropean clergy, five native clergy and one European layman, in these districts where at present there is one Huropean missionary and one native clergyman. .... Under these circumstances, and considering there has also been a large reduction in the number of catechists and schoolmasters employed, owing to the difficulty of procuring competent and suitable men for the work, it is not wonderful that very little progress has been made in the district, and the work remained almost stationary. And considering that we are surrounded by active vigilant Lutherans, ever seeking what S.P.G. sheep they can * Madras Diocesan Committee’s Report, 1881-82, pp. 95, &e. Southern India—Tuanjore. 9 ensnare and devour, ready to take advantage of our weakness, and themselves seemingly rich in mission agents and money, it is a matter of congratulation to be able to report that, although there has been no increase, there has been no decrease, at least, in that way. There has no doubt been some falling-off in numbers when we compare the statistics given in the annual returns, statistics In some cases cannot well be compared unless you know they have been drawn up by the same person and on the same lines. I remember learning something about this, when for the first time making out the returns for Combaconam* six years ago, when I found, to my surprise, that there were five congregations in the town of Combaconam itself, although there were not more than eight or ten families, and they all attended one church. On asking for an expla- nation, I was told that as they lived in different parts of the town, which was considered to be made up of five villages (or parishes, or wards, as it were), they really lived in five separate villages, and those who lived in one village properly were one village or congregation ; so in Combaconam itself there were five congregations reckoned, where I only considered there was one. In the same way, every separate or straggling family in the district, not forming part of a larger body of Christians, was, and 1s, called a separate village or congregation ; and as many of our Christian families are scattered about in this way, the sixty-one congregations entered in the Tanjore returns for this year and the last would dwindle down considerably if these were left out of the reckoning. I thought it better to leave it this year as it was last year, asno material change has taken place, but do not consider ita satisfactory mode of reckoning. In the same way I used to be surprised at the numbers given in the church register of the attendance at the services until I found that ‘‘souls” was taken in its literal sense, and that an attendance of twenty souls meant very often one man, two women, three or four infants in arms, and some fourteen or fifteen small children, who chiefly came to play, and ran in and out, but were useful to make up the average attendance for the year. He goes on to say that in the Tanjore district all that remains is “ the ruins of a splendid mission,” and speaks of former mission stations at Amiappen, Vellum, and Vediarpuram, “ where now not a Christian is to be found.” Probably Mr. Blake means “not a Protestant,” for there are Catholics to be found throughout the whole district. These mission reports, however, hardly conde- scend to take any notice of Catholics as such. The chief losses, he tells us, took place some twenty-five or thirty years ago, when many, on account of questions of caste, or disputes about discipline deserted to the Lutherans. Here we are reminded of what Lord Macaulay wrote home in 1835. There were other losses of the same kind at a more recent date. All these explana- * Combaconam belongs to the Tanjore mission. 10 Protestant Missions in tions, however, must fall short of the real facts. If Tanjore has lost only by defections to Lutheranism, there ought to be no decrease in the total number of Protestantsin the district. Nay, there should be an increase, the result of the ordinary increase of population. But what we find in the census returns is a decrease of from 10,000 to 8,000 in ten years. This means simply that more than 2,000 souls must have either become Catholics or gone back to Paganism. A little further on in this important Report, much light is thrown on the real source of the weakness of the once famous Tanjore mission. Its founder Swartz was a Lutheran, employed by an Anglican society at a time when it was much easier to find money than missionaries at home in England. Swartz never preached the doctrines of the Church of England, and when later on Anglican missionaries appeared in the district, they found the Lutherans too strongly in possession to be easily driven from it. Nay the old Lutheran leaven was at work in their own congre- gations. Thus the mission of Tanjore is divided against itself. But Swartz left another fatal lezacy. The grants made to him by the Rajah Tuljaji and his successor have become the basis of “a paying system” in the S.P.G. mission, quite as real and quite as mischievous as the paying system of the Lutherans, which the 8.P.G. Reports so often denounce. Let us hear Mr. Blake on this matter. We are still quoting from his Report for 188]1-2.* An unpleasant estrangement between the missionary and the con- gregation has unfortunately been caused this year by a contention aoout the right to the land outside the Church compound on which they live: this they have chosen to regard as an attempt on the part of the missionary to deprive them of their just rights, and to obtain some authority over them. As we and our predecessors here under- stand the matter, the land was given to Father Schwartz [sic] for the use of the native Christians of his congregation who came and, with his permission, settled on the land, which became quite a small and complete parish; and therefore the missionary of the place, as the representative of Father Schwartz, is the trustee of this land, and should, and has, more or less, exercised some control over the disposal of the land. We want them therefore to pay a nominal rent in acknowledgment of this right, to prevent any uncertainty in future. They, however, maintain that it was given by the Rajah by a wave of the hand, to the Christians themselves on their asking him for some Jand on his way to Rameswaram, and that the missionary has no control over it; and they resist any interference on his part. The leading spirits in the-matter are the members of the Lutheran congre- * UP, O75 Qe: Southern India—Tanjore. 11 gation who are living on the land, and who are afraid that they will suffer and be liable to be turned off, if it is settled that the S.P.G. missionary has any control over the land. They made an attempt to claim the land for their congregation only on the ground that their missionary was the representative and successor of Father Schwartz in this place, forgetting that though Father Schwartz was a German and Lutheran he was the missionary of an English Society in Tanjore, which Society has always had a succession of mission- aries here from his time, whereas the Lutherans here are a schismatic body only dating back from the year 1849. That attempt therefore was easily settled. It was fortunate for the S8.P.G. that their success in this dispute did not depend on the logic of their representative, Mr. Blake. The Lutherans might well have asked if schism con- sisted in being employed by some society other than the S.P.G. Certain it is that Lutheranism was preached in the Tanjore district a hundred years before Anglicanism ; that Swartz, of whom Mr. Blake claims to be the successor, preached no other doctrine than that now preached by his fellow-countrymen and co-religicnists, the Lutherans, who now oppose Mr. Blake; and that it is Anglicanism and not Lutheranism that is new to the district, Mr. Blake’s Ritualism being the newest phase of all. The S.P.G. missionary now apparently holds Lutheranism to be an evil thing, and laments that 8.P.G. sheep are carried off by Lutheran wolves. It is not so long since “ Lutheran wolves” were receiving the S.P.G. pay, and this not merely as watch-dogs, but as “ pastors ” of the fold in Tanjore. Unluckily for the mission the dispute about the lands near the church compound is not the only money difficulty with which it has had to deal. For years there has been another dispute about the lands at Shadayangal, where the tenants of the mission were in a state of chronic arrears with their rent. In 1881-82, out of seventeen tenants, five appear to have been successfully evicted, and proceedings against two more were nearly completed. Mr. Blake also got possession of nine house sites in the village, _but there were still heavy arrears to be collected, and prospect of much tiresome litigation. If it is difficult to persuade a Tanjore Christian even to pay his rent to the mission, no wonder that it is rot easy to get much from him in the way of voluntary contributions. Mr. Blake, after reporting that something has been done by his flock ip support of their churches, adds that “as the Christians of ‘Tanjore have been brought up on the principle that it is the duty of tne mission to support them, and supply them at least with a catechist’s place when in want, to get them to do much in the, way of self-support will be a work of time.” 12 Protestant Missions i12 Mr. Blake again supplies the Report for 1882-88, and gives further details on many of the points touched upon in the pre- ceding years. We hear more of the land disputes, and of the mercenary character of the native converts. He attributes the ‘weak and erippled state of the mission” partly to “ the in- sufficient supply of missionaries,” and partly to “ the system in which the people have been brought up.” his last is evidently the chief source of weakness, In Tanjore the early missionaries had much influence with the Rajahs, and were able to get much help for their people, and for the work; and consequently they did not require anything from the people themselves. The people have therefore always considered it the duty of the mission to help them, and do everything for them, and that it is their duty to receive. Even in Tanjore itself the answer to any requests for subscriptions for any church work has always been “why should they give when there are Swartz’s funds?” They seemed to have an idea that these were inexhaustible, sufficient to cover all possible expenses for ever, and to board and educate their children free, support their poor and widows, pay for all expenses connected with the church and its services, and afford salaries for an unlimited supply of native clergy, catechists, and schoolmasters.* Elsewhere he tells how for the first Sunday or two after his arrival at Combaconam in the Tanjore district, the poor people used to stand up in line after service, with their hands stretched out, like beggars, and they expected more on a Communion Sunday than for an ordinary service. The result of refusing to continue paying in this direct way, appears to have been a num- ber of secessions to Lutheranism. Mr. Blake reports a conversation which he had in a village near Combaconam where all the adherents of the S.P.G. had fallen off in this way. They now said they would like to come back to the old mission and the old church in which they had been baptized and married; but the Lutheran missionaries were very kind to them, like the old S.P.G. missionaries, and did more for them than we did now; and that they were very poor people and wanted much help, but if we would help them like the Lutherans and give them something for coming to church, and some clothes on festivals, they would be very glad at onceto come back. I asked them who helped their heathen and Roman neighbours, who were in the same state as themselves, and somehow managed to give something to their priests rather than receive anything from them : t * M.D.C. Report, 1882-83, p. 27. _{ There is another incidental reference to the Catholics of the Tanjore district in this Report of Mr. Blake. Speaking of the village of Anthanoor he says :—“ I should like to have a native clergyman stationed there. He would also be able to work in the southern part of this district, which is now quite untouched by any mission work, except of course the Romans, who are everywhere ” (p. 28). Southern India—Tanjore. 13 and said that if that were the Lutheran vatham (religion) and they were satisfied, they had better remain where they were at present. From all this it would appear that the Lutherans, who form the largest portion of the Protestant body in Tanjore, pay their adher- ents openly and directly ; it would seem that this was formerly also the practice in the 8.P.G. mission, but that now what help is given is more indirect, the converts looking for some Share in “Father Swartz’s Fund” in the way of employment, occupation of mission lands, andthe support of their children in boarding schools. 7 Mr. Blake has more to tell of the curious system on which mission statistics are drawn up, and we hear once more of “ con- eregations ” made up of a single family or‘even of a single individual, but what we have already quoted on this subject from an earlier Report will suffice for our purpose. From another part of the Report it appears that up to the Midsummer of 1883 the land case—that is, the dispute about the settlement near the Tanjore church compound—was still unsettled. It had been car- ried to the High Court of Madras, and pastors and people were still waiting for a decision. There is much, too, about the actual condition of the Tanjore Protestants which we shall have to notice a little later. We pass onto Mr. Blake’s Report for the year 1883-84—the latest that we have received. The Tanjore land dispute is still going on, and Mr. Blake writes :*— As long as the land case remains unsettled, it is difficult for the work among the congregation to go on satisfactorily and pleasantly. Any- one, missionary, pastor, or catechist, who supports the claims of the mission to the land, is regarded by the congregation as antagonistic to their rights and interests. So, in matters of charity, as in subscribing to the Pastor’s Endowment Fund, it is not to be expected that they will contribute freely and liberally to assist in the work of the mission, when the mission, as they think, is seeking to deprive them of their rights, and their money may be required to defend themselves against the injustice of the mission. This yeara new rule of the S.P.G. came into force, by which native congregations were to subscribe one-half of their pastor's salary, but in consideration of the peculiar circumstances of Tanjore congregations in that district were called upon to provide only one-fifth instead of one-half. But even so Mr. Blake was not very hopeful as to the amount being collected. Of two of his congre- gations he remarks that “these people rather expect that their pastor should spend some two or three rupees on them.”’+ While * Report, 1883-84, p. 17. peb ole 14 Protestant Missions in we are dealing with financial matters, we may notice an ingenious device adopted in Tanjore in order to economize on the cost of catechists. In the words of the Report :—‘“To encourage the catechists in their evangelistic work a small portion of their salary is given them in tracts, and only by persuading people to buy thevr tracts they will be able to realize their full salary.” This plan seems to have been adopted to meet a reduction on the grant for catechists made by the Madras Diocesan Committee. Con- sidering that the catechists had already to pay away a certain portion of their salaries in the form of so-called ‘ voluntary ” contributions to the mission, their present position cannot be a very flourishing one. But the probability is that, badly as these catechists are paid, they receive quite as much as they are worth. In various Reports we are told that, “with one or two exceptions, they are not qualified for evangelistic work, except among the lowest class of the population ”*—that the missionaries are ‘‘ painfully conscious that their agents are not what they should be ”—and the annual examinations of agents and candidates for the post of agent betray an ignorance of the elementary truths of Christianity that is simply astounding. When such are the teachers, what can the disciples be? Here we have something very like the blind lead- ing the blind. We have seen what a flattering report the native pastor, Mr. Manuel, gave of the Tanjore Protestants in 1878, but our candid friend, Mr. Blake, writing in 1883, is more clear- sighted and more outspoken. Here is what he has to say of a considerable portion of his flock :+— It may easily be understood that when Christians are so scattered and mixed up with the heathen, always being in a minority in a village, and sometimes obliged to look for wives among their heathen relatives, and where they are at the same time so poor and ignorant, belonging (with the exception of the Canendogudy and Aneycadu people and some of the Tanjore congregation) to the lowest class, and where the mission agents, the catechists, and schoolmasters, as a rule, are so inferior in intellectual attainments, as is shown by the results of the annual examinations, as well as in spiritual qualifica- tions, as shown by the results of their work—that not much can be expected in the way of spiritual life in these district congregations. I am afraid that many, especially those who live by themselves umongst the heathen, are merely nominal Christians, and are more influenced by their heathen neighbours and surroundings than able to influence others for good. * 1883-4, p. 14. + 1882-3, p. 29. t In the same Report we hear something not quite to the credit of the still more famous Tinnevelly mission—viz., “I should mention that in several places [in Tanjore district] the catechists have come accidentally Southern India—Tunjore. 15 One of the worst features of the Protestant community in this district, and one which gives the missionaries not a little trouble, is what Mr. Blake describes as “lax views and practice with regard to marriage.” There are many cases of husbands and wives separated and living with others, while the rest of the congregation countenance the scandal, and seem to see no very great harm in the arrangement. There is also a tendency to keep up or revive pagan marriage customs, and to marry girls under age. Another point is the readiness of native Christians to marry within the forbidden degrees. This last failing is a source of peculiar anxiety to the chief pastor of Tanjore. In this matter [he writes] former missionaries do not appear to have been very strict. What has been done by a missionary the people consider can be, and ought to be, done by a missionary if they wish it, especially as it is still done by Lutherans on one side, and by Romans on the other. It is difficult to get them to understand that, as members of the Church, and connected with the English Com- munion, they are placed in a disadvantageous position: that the Church of England, unlike the Lutherans, accepts the laws of the Catholic Church, but does not, like the Romans, accept a dispensing power in such matters, In one village in those districts, where we have a large congregation, and where is also a large Lutheran con- gregation of schismatics, the Lutheran pastor is married to his deceased wife’s sister, who left and has been divorced from her own husband, It must indeed be difficult for Mr. Blake to make his flock understand this curious theory of their “ disadvantageous posi- tion” in reference to the impediment of consanguinity. But ‘facts like the last quoted show to what a scandalous extent the -Christian law of marriage is disregarded in the Tanjore mission. ‘It is quite evident from Mr. Blake’s reports that he is making a very determined stand against this disgraceful state of things, and he believes that there is already some improvement. ‘The great difficulty, however, is that the Lutherans permit a strange Jaxity in this respect, and a remonstrance on the subject from the Anglican missionary may end in a whole family going off to the Lutheran pastor. A further difficulty arises from mixed marriages, not merely marriages with the Lutheran “schismatics,” but marriages with pagans, It seems that the Tanjore missionaries formerly encouraged this kind of marriage in the case of their young men, recommending them to take a pagan wife and convert her. Indeed it must often be by no means easy to avoid such upon Tinnevelly Christians who have come up to those parts for work or commerce, and settled amongst the heathen, and seem to be living as bs ats a 70 ? heathen. I presume that such were not very good Christians at home. 16 Protestant Missions in marriages, where the converts-are a small and scattered flock ; but to tolerate what is unavoidable is a very different thing from encouraging a practice as a, means of evangelisation. Mr. Blake holds that these pagan marriages could and should be avoided, and he sees in them the source of many of the calamities of the mission. Here indeed [he says]* is the explanation of a good deal that is unsatisfactory in the Christianity of Tanjore Christians. They have never come out from among their heathen connections ; rather have strengthened and kept these up by this custom, recommended, I am told, by the old missionaries, to “ convert” a girl, of course one of their own relatives, and marry her. This, of course, means a heathen mother-in-law, and a heathen mother-in-law means more or less of heathen ceremonies introduced into the house in connection with important family events, and a corresponding combination in the religious education of the children. No wonder that under these circumstances there are so many merely nominal Christians to be found in the Tanjore congrega- tions, and that one hears occasionally of a whole village, with the exception of one or two families, relapsing into paganism. To sum up—the Tanjore mission may be said to be that in which Indian Protestantism has been longest on its trial. There, for more than century, the Gospel of the Reformation has been preached. ‘The founder of the mission was a man of exceptional gifts, and singularly high character. He enjoyed the favour both of the native rajahs and the English rulers of the district, and he was able from the very outset to secure valuable grants for the endowment of the native church. What is the result of all this after a single century—not growth, but decay. We have a body of Protestants, divided among several sects, and rapidly diminish- ing in numbers. Many of them avowedly are Christians only from mercenary motives. Their fathers have lived upon the mission funds, and, despite the protests of the present mis- sionaries, they claim the right to do the same, and there is a Tanjore land question in which the rival parties are the pastors and the people. In ten years one native Protestant in every five has disappeared from the rolls of the mission. Of those that are left many have changed from one sect to another, to escape from a more rigid to a more lax moral] discipline. Most of them are very ignorant, the catechists in many instances as ignorant as the people; and there is widespread immorality, a loose theory and practice in regard to marriage, and a pagan element in the family life of many nominally Christian house- holds. It is the ruin of a mission that was once appealed to as * 1883-4, p. 17. Southern India—Tanjore. aby) a standing proof of the missionary power of Protestantism. These are the fruits of the labours of a century. “By their fruits you shall know them.” Does it look as if the blessing of God is on the Protestant missions of Tanjore ? To read the Reports that are published each May in England by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel no one would suspect that this was the state of things in Tanjore. There is usually a word or two about the ordination of a native pastor, or some other satisfactory incident, and that is all. In the last Report published, that for 1885 (issued May 1886) we read :— The Tanjore circle of missions is one the Report of which is turned to by many with great interest, partly because of the connection of Tanjore with the Society’s early missions, and partly because of the energetic and devotional character of the work carried on by the Rev. W. H. Blake and his assistants. Then comes some news about the Tanjore College, and an account of some ordinations. The facts we have given in this article are derived partly from the Census Returns, partly from the Annual Reports of the Madras Diocesan Committee of the S.P.G. These Reports are not very easy to obtain even in India by the general public,* and in England they are very seldom seen. The series of the S.P.G. May Reports for some fifty years is to be found complete in the British Museum. So far as we can ascertain, the Madras Diocesan Reports are represented there by a very imperfect series which ceases abruptly in 1862. A few extracts from Mr. Blake’s Reports might be included with advantage in the little volume that is annually laid before the May meetings. Mr. Blake is clearly an honest, energetic man, who will not send in the usual doubtful statistics, and who will not say peace where there is no peace. The strange thing is that these frank statements have only appeared of recent years, and the evil is of very old standing. We have seen how, as late as 1878, the native pastor Manuel used smooth phrases to keep up appearances in his Report. One wonders how some other Indian missions would look if a plain-spoken man like Mr. Blake were allowed to report on them. Unfortunately, such reports seldom see the light until the evil is becoming notorious, and must be explained rather than concealed. The mission of Tanjore has lived too long on the fame of its founder Swartz. The truth about it has already been spoken in India ; it is time that it should be spoken also in England. * They are not published; and cannot be had from the booksellers. They have a kind of domestic or private circulation. A few copies are sent to England to the head- quarters of the 8.P.G. saaiiugsey ti ad} uh te 5 Be aente . be! TO e bi kya gi oi a TAA : Gf. 4 bien ATM BOG a ft aay ‘to: aoit He et oad “slot TP op sociale: Te ww sods svn & 16 nonban te ode | or Gi iis i ded Bar Bina he -—-: beox om (Gk yall, Pat ay hominy al roid We hey aroqask edt 5 to coltondos: alt te ommended Slt tor geashooee «frat Tore sei: Aral silt yh to: iceman oe * e ~; a ys i? v4 ie J 2 iy os sys pals Ap shesis arojaet it eee rash love satis, yeh ot it ita a yisined od) dsiw. ovoyinT ». oO mAtoeredo: Sieve > Sissy aitey: rey a onptaphaices tik bas. oalsl(t ize. 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