VVI . 
 
 The Open Door 
 
 in 
 
 Southern Asia 
 
 
 By Bishop JAMES M. THOBURN 
 
 
 The Missionary Society of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church 
 Rindge Literature Department 
 150 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 Columbia University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/opendoorinsoutheOOthob 
 
The Open Door in Southern Asia 
 
 Southern Asia, when we use the term geo- 
 graphically, includes all that part of Asia south 
 of the Himalaya Mountains. It also includes all 
 those countries north of the Equator that border 
 upon the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, 
 and we might include the China Sea. It includes 
 about one half of Arabia. In popular usage it 
 includes southern Persia; but we do not add to 
 it any of that part of Asia that borders upon the 
 Pacific Ocean. When we use the term according 
 to our usage in the Missionary Society we. take in 
 nearly all of the territory which I have desig- 
 nated. We once had a Methodist society with a 
 local preacher in Arabia, at the port of Aden. 
 As Aden, with all the coasts of the Persian Gulf 
 up to its head, is now recognized as under the 
 Indian government, that is included in our terri- 
 tory. All of India proper is in our field, including 
 what we used to call in our geographies Belu- 
 chistan, nearly all of which is practically part of 
 the British Indian empire. It includes Burma, 
 it includes Siam, it includes the Malay Peninsula, 
 all the great Malaysian Islands, and the Philip- 
 pines. 
 
 In this great territory we have an immense 
 population, aggregating something over three 
 hundred and fifty million of people. Next to 
 China it stands first among the great peoples of 
 this world. We have witnessed a very wide ex- 
 tension of our mission field. It commenced at 
 
 3 
 
a very early period in our Methodist history, and 
 has advanced somewhat rapidly since. It now 
 includes what might be called, from the religious 
 point of view, a key position, so far as the rest 
 of Asia is concerned. 
 
 A Mother of Religions 
 
 India has been to an important degree a mother 
 of religions. A missionary people live there. She 
 has borrowed very little from her neighbors, and 
 she has given a great deal to them. The early 
 Brahman leaders were missionaries, and Brah- 
 manism, at least in its early days, was a mis- 
 sionary religion. It has ceased to be such now. 
 The more corrupt bodies that now bear the name 
 of Hinduism were also a missionary people in 
 early days, and the ruins of their temples are 
 found in the Malaysian Islands to-day. Next the 
 Buddhists arose, and India, through her Buddhist 
 missionaries, gave a religion to China and Japan, 
 but never borrowed anything from those countries. 
 Her Buddhist notions have penetrated not only 
 into Persia and western Asia, but also to a re- 
 markable extent, I think, in some parts of the 
 United States. India promises to furnish an im- 
 portant missionary agency in the evangelization 
 of Africa at a future day, for some of our Chris- 
 tians are moving over to Africa now, and we 
 have had a local preacher in the town of Zanzibar 
 for a good many years. 
 
 Some will ask why we have gone afield so far. 
 “You have not,” they will say, “overtaken the 
 country, have you, that you first tried to occupy?” 
 That seems strange, I confess, but it was not ac- 
 cording to human designing. In 1859, when I 
 was going with Dr. Butler, then superintendent 
 
 4 
 
of our Mission, from Calcutta to Lucknow, he 
 explained to me one day that it was a great ad- 
 vantage, for which I should be thankful, that our 
 Mission was conducted among a people who spoke 
 only one language. Our Presbyterian brethren, 
 on the other side of the Ganges, he said, must 
 learn three languages, but our compact field, 
 with its seventeen millions, was inhabited by those 
 who spoke Hindustani exclusively. 
 
 Work in Twenty-eight Languages 
 
 To-day we have missionary work among people 
 speaking twenty-eight different tongues in south- 
 ern Asia. The Methodist Episcopal Church has 
 missionary work conducted in fourteen different 
 languages within the United States. In India 
 we exactly double that number, and we are not 
 done with it, for I shall probably live to see the 
 day when our twenty-eight languages will be fifty, 
 as the work expands. “Why did you let the work 
 expand? You confess that you cannot overtake 
 it.” We could not help its expansion. God has 
 a hand in all these matters. But there is one 
 thing I cannot make the people at home under- 
 stand, which is, that much of this expansion was 
 against our protest. In 1882 there came a bishop 
 from the home land, and a senior missionary 
 secretary, Bishop Foster, and Dr. Reid, and I re- 
 member how in the city of Calcutta they be- 
 labored us in the South India Conference, which 
 then included nearly the whole of India, because 
 we would not agree to a plan which would ex- 
 tend our responsibility as missionary workers 
 over the entire empire. I stood up there one day 
 and was strangely moved; I spoke with tears. 
 I said, “If we assume the responsibility you are 
 
 5 
 
urging upon us, it will involve an annual expen- 
 diture of about three hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars.” They received that statement with ex- 
 pressions of incredulity. I knew pretty well what 
 I meant. Now see what has happened. We are 
 occupying a field to-day which, according to the 
 ordinary appropriations of any modern missionary 
 society, would require just about three hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars a year. And we have 
 never had the half of it — hardly, indeed, the tenth 
 of it — for that field. But there is the responsi- 
 bility. But it was not according to our plan. 
 Those good men did not believe that it would 
 ever reach such a sum, but there is One who 
 guides in all these matters, and we follow where 
 God leads. He gives us, I think, still sometimes 
 a glimpse of a star from heaven that we can follow 
 to the exact point where it shines down, not upon 
 the Babe of Bethlehem, but upon the work which 
 that now glorified One directs from his eternal 
 throne. We are guided still by the Spirit and the 
 providence of God. 
 
 Providential Calls 
 
 How? It comes from the work itself. Take 
 one illustration. On the Upper Ganges we worked 
 on the eastern side of the river for some years. 
 Every now and then some man would be converted 
 who had a relative on the other side of the river, 
 and the relative would come over and learn some- 
 thing about the new teaching, and then ask that 
 some one would go there. Pretty soon we had a 
 call from the other side of the river that seemed 
 to be providential. I remember one tour that 
 Bishop Parker and I made on that side of the 
 river, taking with us three volunteer preachers 
 
 6 
 
to do pioneer work. We just dropped them at a 
 railroad station and said, “You meet us eight 
 days hence at Muzaffarnagar ; meet us then and 
 tell us what you may have found.” We came to 
 these men, and they said, “We have found people 
 who have Christian relatives on the other side of 
 the river, all through the country. We have 
 preached the word and have baptized a few con- 
 verts.” I sent to the nearest magistrate and 
 asked for a copy of the last Indian census. I 
 turned it over and found that between the Upper 
 Ganges and the Upper Indus Rivers there were 
 living one million one hundred thousand of these 
 people, and their religious ideas came nearer to 
 the standard of Christianity than those of any 
 other people we had ever found. They believed in 
 future rewards and punishments, and, of course, 
 in a future existence; in the separation of the 
 good from the bad, and in one Supreme Being. 
 What are we to do in such a case? There was 
 only one thing we could do. We planted our 
 banner, and largely from the initial movement 
 begun at that time the Northwest India Confer- 
 ence has grown up and has become a powerful 
 body. Then we had gone preaching to the Euro- 
 peans all through southern India. Step by step 
 we have to follow on. 
 
 How God Leads 
 
 God leads very strangely. I remember once 
 when I landed at Bombay — it was when I first 
 went out as a missionary bishop — there was a 
 strange impression — that is all I can call it — that 
 God had a work for us to do up there in Gujarat, 
 about three hundred miles north of Bombay. There 
 are some ten million people there who speak the 
 
 7 
 
same language. I said to the brethren then, “We 
 should have some work up there.” But one year 
 after another went past, and we never opened the 
 work, until at last, when I returned from this 
 country — I thinlc it was in 1895 or 1896 — I found 
 a telegram waiting, asking me to go up to Gujarat, 
 to a certain place named, because there was a very 
 important movement there that required atten- 
 tion. I replied by telegram that I would come 
 next night. I went up and spent the day under 
 a banyan tree. They had a number of inquirers, 
 and we explained to them the whole day long what 
 Christianity meant. In the course of the afternoon 
 I baptized forty- three persons. We went to a 
 village and bought some dried raisins, and we made 
 some raisin wine as best we could, and, with some 
 cakes baked on the ashes for bread, I administered 
 the Lord’s Supper for the first time to those new 
 converts. I tried to teach them to conduct fam- 
 ily prayer. I think, if I remember correctly, that 
 it was only perhaps some two or three years after 
 that Bishop Foss and Doctor Goucher, under the 
 same tree, collected an immense assembly of Chris- 
 tian people, and baptized with their own hands 
 two hundred and twenty-five persons. A visit- 
 ing bishop now would meet under the same ban- 
 yan tree a thousand converts presented for bap- 
 tism. So it goes. 
 
 We go so far afield because the field is so 
 wide, the people are so many, the harvest is so 
 great. The tokens of God’s presence are unmistak- 
 able. The still small voice in one hundred thou- 
 sand hearts prompts us to believe that God is 
 speaking to us to go forward. There is no such 
 thing as going back in the true missionary field. 
 There is no turning of the back upon any foe. Our 
 face is to the front, and we must maintain that 
 
 8 
 
attitude until all the millions of earth are con- 
 verted to God. There is no going back. 
 
 A Beckoning Hand 
 
 But still some will say that we need not have 
 gone to these distant fields, they are so far away. 
 But there is the beckoning hand of God. I would 
 ask, Is it of men or is it of God? It must be 
 one of the two : If it is of God we must obey, and 
 if it is of God we must believe in his guiding 
 hand. We read the story of the old pillar of fire 
 and pillar of cloud, followed by the people of God 
 across the wilderness. Some men tell us nowadays 
 that that story is not to be taken literally. Others 
 accept it as absolutely literal. I will tell you 
 how it is with me: however it may have been in 
 the days of Moses, it is real now. We are to fol- 
 low God now, and I am a great deal more con- 
 cerned with the practical theology of this new 
 century than I am with those who are not per- 
 fectly certain about events that happened in former 
 days. I know what that story means to me. Some 
 one will ask, “Do you ever see a pillar of fire? 
 Do you ever hear a voice that you cannot under- 
 stand? Are these miraculous tokens ever given 
 to us?” No, I can’t say that I have seen them, or 
 that I covet them. I will even say that I do not 
 wish for them for I think it would weaken my 
 faith, and would make me careless, if I could only 
 trust to outward tokens that every man could 
 see and no man could misunderstand. But there is 
 the still small voice, that something which makes 
 Methodist people say “I feel,” which enables one 
 to feel the providential movings of God, that once 
 stole into my own heart, when for the first time, 
 away down about the Straits of Malacca, I began 
 
 9 
 
to feel a strange, inexplicable interest in the 
 Philippine Islands. I thought — perhaps it was the 
 remnants of my Irish nature — that because they 
 told me that I could go into any of that vast group 
 except the Philippine Islands, where the Span- 
 iards would not let us go, that I must go. I not 
 only felt a desire to go where they told me I 
 could not, but there sprang up in my heart a 
 strange impression that sometime I would go. At 
 my next visit they told me about a man who had 
 gone there to sell Bibles and Testaments, and 
 that the Spaniards had him in prison within two 
 days. Again I wished to go, and I talked with 
 this man, and by this time I began to have a 
 feeling that I was going. The story is too long, 
 but I have been there; that part has been con- 
 firmed. Now, as it has been with me, in this ease, 
 I think there is no manner of doubt that we have 
 been led on step by step elsewhere. We have seen 
 this work expanding, until now, on the western 
 borders, almost up to the borders of Persia, in 
 sight of the city of Kandahar, the way is open. 
 The Indian government has gone up there and es- 
 tablished a military station, and just above it they 
 have pierced the mountain with a tunnel, and at 
 the mouth of the tunnel they have rails enough to 
 construct a railway to the city of Kandahar. And 
 when we go up there we can go through that tun- 
 nel, and from the other side we can look out over 
 Central Asia, and see the distant city of Kandahar. 
 Away up at that mountain outpost is a Methodist 
 Church, and one of the last letters I had from 
 Bishop Warne tells me of his visit there, and of 
 the membership and of the outlook. 
 
 10 
 
The Malay Peninsula 
 
 Then you turn and go away down again until 
 you have crossed the Indian empire, and go about 
 two thousand miles from Calcutta until you come 
 to the equatorial city of Singapore. We were led 
 there, I think, in a providential way. Once we 
 had taken our station at Singapore we began to 
 work back up the peninsula. On the map the 
 Malay Peninsula, which you attach very little im- 
 portance to, looks like a little narrow strip of 
 land. It is about the size of New York and Penn- 
 sylvania together. It is not densely populated. 
 It is a rich country — ^the tin of the world nearly 
 all comes from there. The Chinese immigrants are 
 coming in very rapidly. We have occupied three 
 or four stations on that peninsula — ^the great city 
 of Penang and the amazing city of Singapore. The 
 people who come to Singapore are from all those 
 islands ; from Borneo, which is larger than France ; 
 from New Guinea, as large as the Austrian empire, 
 and Java, equal to about the area of Cuba — ^from 
 all that vast region people are coming to the cen- 
 tral point. As a matter of course you may ex- 
 pect that some of them will be converted. We 
 had a young man converted and baptized in Singa- 
 pore, a graduate, first of Ohio Wesleyan Univer- 
 sity, and then of Yale, who is now conducting an 
 independent school in the city of Batavia at his 
 own expense. He sent me a hundred dollars about 
 a year ago from that point. That is what you 
 might call spontaneous work. 
 
 The Island of Borneo 
 
 Then there is the great island of Borneo. It 
 has a sparse population. Has it ever occurred to 
 
 11 
 
you, the reason why? It is because of a peculiar 
 custom which they have throughout all that re- 
 gion, the people being called head-hunters. A man 
 is said not to be in a position to ask any maiden 
 to become his bride until he has killed somebody 
 and polished his skull and attached it as an or- 
 nament to the ridgepole of his house. They have 
 a belief that when they have done this all the vir- 
 tues of the murdered man will become the posses- 
 sion of the man who kills him. If the murdered 
 man is brave this man will have his courage; and 
 if he is strong this man will have his strength. 
 We sent a missionary there some few years ago, 
 and he remained ten months — I mean Dr. Luering, 
 the wonderful linguist we have there, one of the 
 most marvelous German missionaries in the world. 
 This man had been there ten months, when a death 
 occurred in our upper mission, and we had to 
 recall him. He went down to the village to say 
 that the steamer which brought him the letter 
 would go out in the morning, and he must return 
 at once, and he had come to say good-bye. The 
 headman of the village begged him not to go, but 
 he said that the going was imperative. They urged 
 and he finally said, “If you will give me a satis- 
 factory assurance that you will be Christians, I 
 will come back or send some one to take my place.” 
 The headman said, “0, I will be a Christian.” 
 “Yes,” replied the missionary, “you have told me 
 that a good many times, but you don’t keep your 
 word. Give me a pledge.” “What pledge do you 
 want?” Looking up to the ridgepole of the house, 
 where there were ninety skulls, every one of them 
 belonging to some one killed by this man, “Give 
 me,” said the missionary, “one of those skulls, 
 and I will give you my promise that we will come 
 back sometime.” The man sprang to his feet and 
 
 12 
 
laid liis hand upon his creese, for it is a glaring 
 insult to ask a man for one of those precious 
 skulls. Dr. Luering looked him quietly in the 
 face. “You said you were going to be a Chris- 
 tian, and Christians never kill. Now, if you are 
 sincere, you won’t do it.” The man put up his 
 knife, and said, “Take one.” Grasping one of 
 those knives. Dr. Luering climbed up and cut the 
 string and brought away with him a skull of one 
 of these murdered inhabitants of Borneo. Shortly 
 afterward he was called to Germany, and he took 
 the skull with him. The skull of that unfortunate- 
 man is traveling about through the cities of Ger- 
 many to the present day, for Dr. Luering could 
 never get it back again. 
 
 A New “Mayflower” Expedition 
 
 Some one now and then would ask us, “Are you 
 going to establish a mission in Borneo ?” Not long 
 ago we heard a wonderful story. Since the Boxer 
 movement the people of China are allowed to take 
 their wives and daughters with them when they 
 leave the empire. Formerly they were not, and 
 that was a great hindrance to emigration from 
 that empire. Bishop Warne, when on his way to 
 Manila, heard that six or seven hundred people 
 were actually on their way from the Foochow 
 country to plant a colony in Borneo. When he 
 heard this, at the last moment, he canceled the 
 ticket which he had taken on the steamer, jumped 
 on another steamer, and made for a point where 
 he could intercept these men, went with them on 
 the same vessel, landed with them, saw them 
 build their huts, found among them one or two 
 local preachers, got them together, put one man 
 in charge, and thus Methodism was planted in 
 
 13 
 
the great island of Borneo. The next thing I 
 heard of that colony was that they were all dying. 
 It was a sickly place. I was reminded then of 
 what Bishop Warne had written: “I do not know 
 but this ship may be the Mayflower of a future 
 empire. It may be that this first colony shall be 
 the leader of others that are to follow, and we shall 
 build a great Christian empire in the island of 
 Borneo.” I remembered how there was great sick- 
 ness and death among the first settlers from the 
 Mayflower. It has turned out as it did in the 
 other ease; some died, perhaps a hundred or more 
 returned to China, but the colony is flourishing, 
 and we have now a membership there of between 
 seven and eight hundred adult Christians. 
 
 Marvellous Openings 
 
 We have 100,000 people in India asking for bap- 
 tism. I have been assured that this number is 
 not an exaggeration. I wrote for the figures, and 
 my correspondent replied, “We could report a much 
 larger number than this; we could baptize the 
 whole 100,000 within the next twelve months if 
 we had the means to employ native teachers to 
 go among them and teach them just the rudiments 
 of Christian doctrine and Christian life.” My own 
 impression is that we might multiply that number 
 if we had the means, and there is hardly any limit 
 to it at all. I have said publicly, that I trusted 
 that God would spare my life until I should see 
 1,000,000 converts in India along within the bounds 
 of our own work. I believe I shall see it. I believe 
 — and I have used this expression before — that 
 if the Protestant Churches of these United States 
 would unite together, would look that problem 
 in the face, if they would take the lesson to heart 
 
 14 
 
that God is teaching them, within ten years we 
 might have 10,000,000 in India who are worshiping 
 idols to-day either within the pale of the Chris- 
 tian Church or inquiring the way thither. But if 
 my own poor life is spared until I shall see that 
 million gathered within our native churches in 
 India, then I shall thank God, and these poor feet, 
 which shrink and falter now, with unutterable 
 joy shall walk through the gates of day! 
 
 75 cents per loo copies 
 
 Series of 1903 
 
 15 
 
;..i . .r vj >i y 
 
 ■■m:-,'':'; :i , !■ at« ' ■;;/ ' ■'■■;' ' o-f;»4 
 
 'ir, f,r,.t ,;.j 
 
 ji if;;;, ;<;»/ •!(<< it/ 
 
 U'rtt^ '.'-IBTJf [It - 
 
 • ;■ ; • ;•(■•'. f f 
 
 j.ii .'wtj'x tcjr. 1 » liTtf'-i 
 
 ‘ . 1 I,: '/ - ' !'•« Vli dpiO' 'i si- :■ If iffdtt V*’ 
 
 t ■.. i.! :•>!■;■-'% 
 
 ■■i 
 
 ' 'iH' 
 
 ' Jil