Life in India/Missions in Calcutta
Missions in Calcutta.
Sad as is the darkness which broods over Bengal and its metropolis, it is not an unbroken darkness. The different English and Scotch societies have missionaries stationed in or near Calcutta, who are labouring for the spread of the gospel among the people. Although the success, as to the number of converts, has not been so great as in Tinnevelly, there were in Bengal, in the year 1852, some thirteen thousand native Christians, of whom six thousand are in the vicinity of Calcutta.
Serampore, on the Ganges, fifteen miles above Calcutta, is famous as the residence of the first missionary labourers in Bengal. Here the venerated Carey, and his associates Ward and Marshman, planted themselves under the protection of the Danish flag, preaching, teaching, translating, printing, and proving that there was no danger to the State in the conversion of Hindus to Christianity. They have been followed by others, and the truth is now widely made known in this great city. The same state of things which was alluded to as existing in Madras, and leading young men to be very anxious to study the English language, exists here also, and to a greater degree. English is the language of the court and of commerce; and every young man who would make any figure in society must understand English. So great is the passion for this study, that English they will get at any hazard. Hence, almost all of the missions have opened schools in which, through the medium of the English language, lads and young men are instructed in the truths of Christianity as well as in secular learning, with the avowed object of leading them to acknowledge Christ before men.
At Bhowanipur, in the school of the London Missionary Society, are six hundred youths, studying with great interest the Bible and the evidences of Christianity. In Cornwallis Square is the school of the Scotch Kirk Mission, with twelve hundred pupils; and in the school of the Free Church Mission are thirteen hundred boys and young men. These, be it understood, are the children of heathen parents, and many of them from the highest and most influential families of Calcutta.
Dr. Duff, the distinguished advocate of the educational system of missions, commenced his labours in 1830 with a class of five scholars, which, in three days, increased to one hundred and twenty, and, in a few days more, to two hundred and fifty. As his work grew, he was reinforced from Scotland; and at the time of the disruption of the Scottish Church, had some eight hundred pupils in a large and commodious edifice on Cornwallis Square. At the disruption, all the missionaries left the Established Church or Kirk, to throw in their lot with the Free Church of Scotland. They relinquished their buildings and their pupils to the Kirk, and going into the heart of the Hindu town, hired the house of a native gentleman, and began anew. What has been the result? The old school is larger than it was; and at the end of ten years the new school has one thousand three hundred and eighty boys, lads, and young men on its roll. Thus, even dissension and division are made to advance the cause of Christ.
My visit to this school was deeply interesting to me; and certainly no Christian man could look without interest upon such a scene. Guided by one of the missionaries connected with the institution, after passing for a long distance through the narrow and populous streets, with their swarming huts and bazaars, we passed through the gate of a courtyard leading to a large, square, two-storied building. Entering, you find it to be an oriental dwelling upon a grand scale, consisting of four galleries, each fronting upon a large, square paved court, once the residence of a Calcutta babu, now a mission schoolhouse. The exercises of the day were opened with prayer by the missionary, who stood in the middle of a long hall so that he might be heard by the young men who were arranged in rows on both sides of the speaker. After prayers, the janitor struck his bell, and the classes formed.
We first visited the youngest class. It was assembled in the open room, facing the court which has been before described as the room appropriated to idolatrous worship. Here I found two hundred and fifty-five bright little fellows composing the twenty-first class! This is the nursery from which the other classes are supplied. From it, I was taken to the next highest—that is, the twentieth class—and thence to the nineteenth, and the eighteenth, and so on to the first class, asking a few questions to see the progress made from grade to grade. Here you will suppose it ends; but no! this is the school department, and above these there are five classes higher still in the collegiate department, embracing a hundred and thirty young men, some of whom have been for ten or twelve years under instruction. Of the pupils, at least one-fifth are Brahmins, and many of them from the most influential and even the most bigoted families in Calcutta. Intelligence, deep interest in their studies, and admiration of their teachers, show unmistakably in their faces. Here, as at Bhowanipur, I was struck with the fact that the heathenish marks were removed from almost every forehead, (if not from every one,)—a thing which would in Madras be held a sign of renunciation of Hinduism; and, in place of the shaved head, with the sacred coodamy or queue, there universal, here the lads, almost without exception, wore their hair all over the head, in the European manner. They also, for the most part, wore shoes; and if transported to Madras, would be taken for a company of professed Christians. These are but straws showing which way the stream flows, revealing to the observer familiar with Hindu customs the great change which is working its way through the apparently impenetrable strata of Hindu society. At no very distant day the educated men of Bengal will burst the bonds of superstition, break through the restraints imposed upon them by bigoted priests and pundits, and assert their right to free thought, free speech, and free action. It becomes the church to see to it that, when that day comes, Christianity, not infidelity, takes the place of a hideous but dead heathenism.
Already, through the influence of English science as taught in the government schools, from which religion and the Bible are excluded, and by the instructions given by missionaries in their educational institutions and in public preaching, faith in their old superstitions has ceased in the minds of thousands in Calcutta. Thousands and tens of thousands, in appearance and profession idolaters, have no shred of respect for the religion of their ancestors. Policy alone prevents their throwing off even the appearance of faith in Hinduism. Of these, many have rejected their old belief without receiving Christianity; others have an intellectual conviction of the truth of Christianity, but fear to encounter the trials which attend a profession of faith in Christ; others still, (to the praise of the power of God be it spoken!) have had the courage to face opposition and persecution for the sake of confessing Christ before men.
Of the converts, many have been Brahmins, and others are of high standing in society. They have relinquished home, and submitted to the loss of hereditary possessions; have been reviled, chained, confined, beaten, and threatened with death by poison; have been excommunicated and cut off from all social ties by their former associates; and to all this they have submitted, rather than violate their convictions of truth and duty. Nor do those who cling to the old belief look upon these things without misgivings.
The baptism of six young men who had been students in the institution of the London Missionary Society at Bhowanipur, in the year 1851, led to a prodigious excitement among the Hindus of Calcutta. These converts were Brahmins, and one of them the son of a haldar or proprietor of the great temple at Kali-ghat—a receiver of the offerings of ten days in the year. The cry of "Hinduism in danger" was raised, and great efforts were made to induce the young men to recant. Failing in this, a grand council of Hindus, including a hundred Bhatta-charjyas, scribes learned in the Shasters and law, was assembled to devise means to arrest the progress of Christianity. But the council failed in all things, except in showing to all men that the work of the Lord had so sapped the foundations of Hinduism in Calcutta, that the most bigoted and benighted idolaters tremble lest it fall and leave them as monuments of a past age and a dead religion.
Let it not be supposed, however, that India is upon the eve of receiving Christianity. It is very difficult so to speak of missionary labours as not to convey the impression that almost nothing has been done, or that almost every thing has been done; both impressions are false. It may be truly said that much has been done in some places, but that more—a thousand times more—remains to be done than has been done, or than can be well understood by Christians in England or America. In the single province of Bengal are districts containing seven million five hundred thousand inhabitants, without a missionary; and in other parts of India you may journey through district after district, and province after province, with millions and millions of inhabitants, and find but two or four men, toiling amid the masses of heathenism around them, as if attempting to empty the ocean by buckets-full, or to tunnel the mountains with bodkins. In other places you will find no man at all to shed one ray of light upon the unbroken darkness of false religion. Yet, where labour is put forth, God is blessing it, and will bless it more and more abundantly, until India, in all its vast extent, unites to ascribe blessing and honour and glory and power unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb forever. Even so, come Lord Jesus, come quickly! Amen.