Robert Caldwell

“ Though I have represented the progress of Missions in India as, on the whole, encouraging, I trust it will be remembered that what has been done is literally as nothing compared with what remains to be done. If we would fulfil the purposes which Divine Providence appears to have had in view in giving us our Indian empire, we must put forth efforts of a very different order from what we have hitherto done, and especially so now, that we have been roused from our apathy by one of the most terrible visitations with which any nation was ever chastised and warned. ”

“ A poor low-caste man may be as careless as he likes about his religious duties ; but one who occupies a respectable position in society cannot choose but show himself ceremonious, just as an English gentleman cannot choose but live in a style appropriate to his rank. Hence, to propose to a Hindu of respectability to abandon all the usages of his sect and caste, and embrace a foreign religion, sounds in his ear like asking him to abandon the pro prieties of life and become a Pariar. ”

“ In the Hindu's eyes, the nation occupies but a small place, the dynasty a still smaller one ; the institutions which he regards as all-important are his caste and his village, and it is in these that all his feelings of patriotism centre. That love of home, that attachment to the same spot, that disinclination to emigrate, that certainty we feel respecting every Hindu who has left home, that, sooner or later, he will return and spend his earnings in his native place, are to be attributed, in great part, if not altogether, to the influence of the village system of India. ”

“ But why were you taught the theory of obligation? Not surely for the gratification of your curiosity merely, but that you might be enabled to realise the loftiness of the position occupied in the economy of human nature by Duty and the fitness of following where Duty calls. Man's highest duty to man— his highest moral obligation—is the duty of beneficence—the duty of doing good to others. The obligation not to do evil belongs to a lower stage of morals than the obligation to do good. ”

“ It cannot be supposed that Divine Providence has placed England in so high a position, and brought about such extraordinary results, for no other purpose than our national aggrandizement : it was surely for the benefit of India that He permitted us to become the rulers of India, it was in order that we might impart to India the benefit of our just laws, our rational liberty, and our progressive civilization, and especially that we might impart to it the know ledge of the religion of Christ that religion which alone can make any nation good, happy, or permanently great. ”

“ Whilst I endeavoured, in journeying from village to village, to preach the Gospel to every creature, it was also my endeavour to plant in every village the nucleus of a Christian congregation. As the Gospel is a revelation from God, so the Church is an institution of God, and neither should the Church be substituted for the Gospel, nor should it be supposed that the Gospel ignores the Church. ”

“ It should be an anxious question with every educated Native how he can best exemplify the benefits of the education he has received. The first answer that rises to the mind is that he should endeavour to do to others what has been done to himself by labouring for the promotion of education all around. The lamp of knowledge which has been placed in his hands should be held aloft for the enlightenment of others. ”

“ Thus, it is necessary for an European in India to have an airy house to live in, to have the means of locomotion without exposure to the sun, and also to sit on chairs, not cross-legged on the floor, and to eat with knives and forks, not with the fingers. It is necessary for an Englishman, except for some brief emergency, to have with him wherever he resides the principal appliances of civilized life, and all those appliances, of whatever sort they are, are more ex pensive in India than in England ; so that the estimate I have given is inapplicable to Europeans. ”

“ Notwithstanding these peculiarities, the children have the means of acquiring as solid and useful an education as the majority of children be longing to the same class of society in more highly favoured countries. I have always endeavoured, not merely to teach the mechanical art of reading, but to teach the children to think, to supply them with right principles of action, and teach them to act from right motives to pour the light of truth into their minds to win them to Christ to train them up for usefulness on earth, and for happiness in heaven ”

“ A crisis now appears in the history of our Missions in India, and surely the appearance of such a crisis should stimulate the friends of Missions, and all who are desirous of the enlightenment and improvement of India, to help us with all their might. The Church Missionary Society has every year of late been devoting more and more of its funds and energies to India ; and now that I am about to return to the scene of my own labours, I am truly thankful to carry with me the hope and belief that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has also commenced to move forward. ”

“ It may safely be said that one-fourth of the rural population in this part of India belongs to classes for whose improvement nothing has ever yet been done, except by Europeans. One set of rulers after another has arisen and fallen, but the condition of the labouring classes has remained unchanged. They themselves did not care for education. Even the wish to become wiser or happier than they were at length died out. And if by any chance any of them did entertain a wish to rise they were precluded from rising by the prejudices of the upper classes. ”

“ We may arrive at a safe conclusion respecting the reality and sincerity, on the whole, of the Christianity of Tinnevelly, from the liberality with which the native converts contribute to religious and charitable purposes. This is everywhere a tolerably fair criterion, if not of piety towards God, at least of love to man and religious zeal. People will not give their money for the ex tension of a system in which they do not believe, or in which they take no interest. ”

“ It is true that even the lower classes offer a little passing reverence to the ordinary deities of the country, especially to Subrahmanya, a son of Siva, who has from a very ancient period been the favourite deity of Tinnevelly; but the only worship which they form into a system, the only system which can be styled their religion, the only religion, which has any real hold of their minds, is demonolatry. ”

“ It is true that many members of that community are far, very far, from being what they ought to be, but at the same time it will be difficult to discover anywhere more Christian piety, in proportion to the numbers of the community, than amongst the English in India. In every district, in every station, with which I am acquainted, there has been a succession of men who have distin guished themselves, not only by their gentlemanly honour and by the purity of their lives, but by their Christian benevolence and zeal ”

“ It does not much matter in what department of things, or in what direction, people first begin to carry their convictions of duty into practice, provided they actually do begin somewhere. Duty is like the circumference of a great circle of a sphere, such as that which girds the earth, passing through both poles. ”

“ In estimating the sincerity of the real Hindu Christian, we should compare him, therefore, not with the nominally Christian English man, still less with the real English Christian, the highest style of man, but with the nominally Christian Hindu, or with the subtle, cringing, apathetic, conscienceless heathen himself, the inheritor of the concentrated poison of a hundred generations of heathenism. ”

“ It is wholly owing to the Christian religion. It is Christianity which has taught the husband to love his wife, "as Christ also loved the Church," and to give her honour as " the weaker vessel." It is to Christianity that the Christian wife is indebted for her social position ; and therefore all who value that position should be thankful to God for their Christianity, and anxious to diffuse its purifying influences throughout the earth. ”

“ The tiger's step becomes softer and its coat sleeker, but it remains as much of a tiger as ever. Human nature when left to itself is bad enough, but it becomes still worse when the devil, in the shape of a bad religion, gets the management of it, and when God's gifts are placed at the devil's disposal.
I may here remark, that it is the peculiar policy of the Brahmans to render all the religious systems of India subservient to their purpose by making friends of them all. ”

“ As might naturally be expected in so unprincipled an age, the immoral lives of most of the English then resident in India was a scandal to the Christian name, insomuch that it became a proverbial expression that they had left their consciences at the Cape of Good Hope. We have reason to be thankful that a very different state of things now prevails. The character of the English in India has wonderfully improved, especially within the last thirty years, and the Indian Government itself has parti cipated in the improvement. ”

“ On the whole, therefore, I conclude, from my own experience as well as from the experience of my Missionary brethren in Tinnevelly, that real piety towards God does exist amongst our people, and is the same in kind, if not in degree, with what we observe in more highly-favoured communities. We cannot expect Hindu piety to be identical in all respects with English piety, but we may expect, and we actually find, that Hindti piety is as sincere and real, after its own fashion, as English, and as much superior to the merely nominal religion by which it is sur rounded. ”

“ The promotion of education in various ways and amongst various classes of people, in the town or district in which he is employed, in addition to the ordinary work of his own school, will be quite in accordance with a good educationist's conception of his duties. Without ceasing to teach he can encourage others to teach. He can also with special propriety urge the uneducated classes to show themselves desirous of learning. A still larger proportion of educated Natives will doubtless be employed, as hitherto, so in future, in the public service. ”

“ If the Hindus were usually or easily influenced by arguments addressed to the intellect, the large towns, abounding with an intelligent population, would afford the most promising openings for missionary labour ; but there are scarcely any people in the world so indifferent to truth in the abstract, so destitute of loyalty to conscience, so habituated to let their convictions and actions go in different directions, as the Hindus ; whilst there are scarcely any who yield more readily to the wish of superiors, the influence of friends, or the example of those whom they are accustomed to follow. ”

“ Both systems acknowledge in vague terms the existence of a Supreme God ; but they agree in the notion that, if He does exist, He is too good to do people harm, and it is therefore unnecessary to offer Him any kind of worship. The objects of worship in both systems are neither gods nor heroes, but demons, which are supposed to have got the actual administration of the affairs of the world into their hands ; and those demons are so numerous and cunning, so capricious and malicious and powerful, that it is necessary to worship them very sedulously to keep them from doing people mischief. ”

“ It is well known that many of the tribes of Northern Europe were converted to Christianity by the sword, or by other methods not more creditable to any party concerned in the conversion, and that the Christianity thus introduced was deeply tinged with the superstitions and errors of the times ; yet in a few centuries the Christian leaven wrought so mightily as to purify itself from the impurities and corruptions which had originally been combined with it, and to form in the northern nations a manliness and truthfulness of Christian character, previously unknown in the world. ”

“ The Indian Government moves forward slowly, but it keeps constantly moving it takes no step backwards and hence, notwithstanding its characteristic caution, perhaps there is no government in the world which has made greater progress, within the time specified, in moral and social reforms. Undoubtedly much remains for the Government to do before it can be admitted that it is doing its duty to God and to India ”

“ I do not regard any portion of God's creatures as hopelessly degraded, but in a country where every moral principle has been contaminated and warped by a hundred generations of heathenism, where the very atmosphere seems to be tainted with impurity and deceit, there is certainly more hope of the young, whose minds are still tender and impressible, than of those who have grown old in sin, and who have been converted from the evil of their ways late in life. ”

“ A missionary station is not depicted in colours taken from daily life, but is fancied to be a sort of Garden of Eden a chosen spot of consecrated ground in which there is no ignorance, no super stition, no strife, no immorality I had almost said, no human nature. ”

“ Our duty, as a Christian Church and nation, to promote the religious welfare of India has generally been admitted ; but until our slumbers were rudely disturbed by the recent Mutiny and the dreadful proofs that were furnished by heathens and Mahome tans that bad religions are worse than none, that duty was not sufficiently recognised in this country, and certainly was not sufficiently felt, even by religious people. ”

“ The feeling of the community is so strongly in its favour, when it has not been prematurely forced upon them, when it is ad ministered in a kindly, considerate spirit, and when their honour as a community or as a caste has not been infringed, that even the most indolent and irregular members of the congregation feel themselves obliged to yield to rules. One of our rules is, that if any person remains away from church or from Sunday- school so long as to attract attention, it is my duty to send for him, that I may have the opportunity of giving him the reproof or warning that he needs. ”

“ The condition of Hindu women generally being such as I have described, every one must at once see the necessity of special and earnest endeavours for the promotion of female education ; and at the same time, when it is borne in mind that the more ignorant any class of people are, they are the more contented with their ignorance, and that in every department of life custom is the supreme rule by which Hindu society is governed, we shall be able to form some estimate of the difficulties with which female education was found to be beset. ”

“ Whilst the Missionary is preaching Christianity to the Hindus, many an English layman is exemplifying to the Hindus what Christianity means : without abandoning " the calling wherein he was called," or violating any principle of official propriety, he is proving to a regiment or to an entire province that the teaching of the Missionaries is true, that Christianity is only another name for a holy and useful life, that it must have come from God, because it makes men godly, and that is an argument which every man can understand and appre ciate, and which no man can gainsay. ”

“ If we look around us, and scrutinize the condition of even the best-managed and most enlightened parishes in England, we shall discover in them a mixture of good and evil; we shall find the best portion of every community the smallest. If we look into the description of the spiritual condition of the primitive Churches given us in the New Testament, we shall discover even in them a very mixed state of things chaff mingled with wheat in the Gospel thrashing- floor, bad fish mingled with good in the Gospel net ”

“ On the other hand, if slavery means social degradation, Hindu women must be regarded as slaves ; for not only are they denied equal rights with the men, but they are regarded as having no claim to any rights or feelings at all.
The Hindu wife is not allowed to eat with her own husband ; her duty is to wait upon her husband whilst he is eating, and to eat what he has left. If they have any children, the boys eat with their father, and, after they have done, the girls eat with their mother. ”

“ In everything which, according to Hindu notions, constitutes a religion, in everything in which Christianity differs from Brahmanism, all Protestant Missionaries appear to the Hindus to be at one. When they see that all Missionaries expound and circulate the same sacred volume, translated into the vernacular; that they all preach salvation through the death of the same Divine Saviour; that they all represent faith as the means of obtaining release from sin, and as the seed of virtue; that they are all free from the suspicion of idolatry ”

“ Generally, the civilization of the Hindus is inferior to our own, but in some particulars it is in advance of ours ; and one of the particulars in which it claims the advantage is the fact that every Hindu village is an organized municipality. The greater number of English towns, and all English villages, are mere collections of houses, without any bond of connexion or corporate life, without rulers, without office bearers, and without any organization for the preservation or advancement of the common interests. ”