George Alfred Lefroy

“ In the highest classes a man will often refuse, as I have been credibly informed by my own Munshi, on religious scruples, to eat food with his brother should there have occurred anything approaching to 'incompatibility of temper' between them. In Mr Winter's position we on entering the work most heartily concurred, believing it to be in every way the highest and wisest line. ”

“ If however they hoped to see him follow their example they were mistaken, for when at last his name was called he stood up, and very quietly and firmly said that while he had no wish to follow the lead of those who had proprio motu separated themselves from the Chamár brotherhood, on the other hand he was before all else a Christian, and Christian he would be, whether this should bring upon him exclusion from the caste or not. You may imagine how happy and deeply thankful we were to hear such open manly words. ”

“ Yet, when all is said and done, I cannot believe but that a real point, a very real point, has been made, and that we have had at any rate unmistakeable—be they in the present individuals permanent or transient—traces of the working of a Spirit not of this world, and the earnest of greater things to come. ”

“ It was at this point that our Mission came upon the scene, and we found ourselves at once face to face with a body of Christians, including indeed among its numbers a fair sprinkling of men of a very different and really Christian type, for the most part Catechists or agents of the Mission in other capacities, but with an overwhelming majority of men drawn from this caste, numbering some eight hundred souls, and giving rise to the gravest problems of future discipline and organisation ”

“ Influenced then by these considerations we determined after much hesitation and deliberation to try the experiment of a modified form of segregation, not taking them away from their trade or out of the city into a wholly distinct village, but settling a few of the more earnestly-disposed amongst them in a little square of houses apart by themselves but at the same time in the midst of the dwellings of their old caste-fellows. ”

“ I enter in a book the names of all children for the disposal of whose hand and fortune no other engagement has already been made, and whose parents express their wish that such should take place by Christian rites, and then, whenever a father intimates to me that he is desirous to conclude a betrothal for his olivebranch, I try to select a partner, fulfilling as far as possible the above conditions. ”

“ Whether it was the general theory or the experience of other Missions which had had most weight with Mr Winter in forming his decision I cannot say, but, from whichever cause—probably from both—he had in the case of these poor Chamár Christians wholly abstained from anything approaching to a segregation policy and had left them entirely among their own people to be a light to them. ”

“ For while we still maintain that in theory, and given sufficiently powerful material for the experiment, this plan is far the best, yet we have been forced to recognise that while even a very weakly flame, a farthing dip—if I may be allowed an expression which has been already used in this connection—may shed around it a light faint indeed, and yet amidst the surrounding blackness of darkness by no means to be despised, on the other hand it runs—especially if exposed to a raging storm—a very considerable risk of being itself entirely quenched. ”

“ Nor may we disguise the operation of the natural law of reaction following, though I am thankful to say far from equalling, action, brought home to us as it is by the certain fact that the best of these men have not wholly clung fast to the position which they, for the time at least, genuinely occupied, but have let themselves be betrayed into actions inconsistent with a stronger faith. ”

“ On these terms two or three men were forthcoming at once, one in especial who had already at a meeting of our little local congregation some time before subscribed to these rules preparatory to being elected chaudri or head-man (a functionary answering somewhat to a very unmistakeable churchwarden) of our district, and in the course of a month or two all the other houses were filled with men, differing a good deal so far as I could judge in the earnestness of their Christianity, but all I hope and believe, urged by at least some stimulus of pure motive. ”

“ Here they would be free to carry on their own trade under precisely the old conditions, and while they would be exempt from the actual intrusion into their midst of idolatry or any other abomination from which they honestly wished to escape, they would at the same time be so situated that their whole life and tone would be known, and if it did indeed rise to a higher standard, very speedily make itself felt on their neighbours. ”

“ The office is perhaps a somewhat peculiar as well as delicate one, and for the relief of any of the weaker brethren who may find in this a singular outlet for monastic energy, and it may be even stumble thereat, I may perhaps explain a little further the circumstances out of which such a state of things have arisen. The problem is in reality a simple one. ”

“ And this is what it seemed to me was happening, and that our poor people, starting from but a very low tone of Christianity themselves, so far from being able to influence, were quite unable to resist the mass of heathenism in the midst of which they lived, and that till they were freed from this contact and brought by some means or other into a purer air, there was but little chance of their attaining any true manhood in Christ. ”

“ That the parents of the other child should be living, or failing this, that there be some other responsible person able and prepared to undertake the expense of the marriage feast, etc.; (b) that the partner selected be, if possible, lighter, at any rate not darker in colour than his own offspring; and (c) that he or she come of a stock not only unconnected by blood with his own, but even without the slighter, and as it would appear to us not wholly undesirable bond of friendship or even casual acquaintanceship. ”

“ On the other hand eight families had definitely stood out and broken that bond which had weighted so heavily all their previous attempts at a Christian life and stood forward, nominally at any rate, Christians and Christians only. And besides these there was another body, numbering some eight or nine heads of families, in a more or less intermediate position, not at present breaking loose from their old caste, but on the other hand pledged to do so rather than abandon their newer faith ”

“ To voluntarily relinquish this would of course cost any man an effort, but even in the case of the others who held a merely subordinate position of full membership in the caste it must have seemed a somewhat formidable proposal to convene a meeting of all the older and most respected members of their community, to whom they had always been accustomed to defer, and whose collective opinion was final in all internal disputes affecting members of the caste, and then standing up before them renounce publicly all further allegiance or connection. ”

“ This I may remark in passing was possible partly because of the imperfect Christianity of too many of these converts, partly from the fact that they do not mass together in one large home in the way I have above referred to as common among the higher and wealthier classes, but live for the most part each in a most diminutive house of his own, but still more because of the lowness of their caste which cannot afford to indulge in the distinctions and prejudices in which the higher Hindoo so mightily delights. ”

“ Nevertheless, I believe that though in one or two cases under exceptionally wise and careful direction such villages have thriven, yet in many cases the dangers of which I have spoken have made themselves felt, and most strongly by those who have most to do with them, and have the greatest opportunity of seeing how they affect character. ”

“ In the first place it was a question who should call upon the Christians to stand forward, and as more than one member of considerable standing and personal or family influence among the Chamárs was included in the number, it was a function from which most shrank. At first they tried to throw the odium of the active step on us by suggesting that we should now ascertain the real position of our converts by producing the register and reading out the names one by one, giving each the opportunity of declaring himself in the face of all a true man. ”

“ And, with the exception of these few men who were proposing of their own free will to occupy this position, there were but few of whom we seemed at present to have ground for hope that they could sustain such a test, while there was of course always the hope that by letting things go on quietly in their accustomed course without hurrying on the moment of final decision, others might gradually advance to the point from which it would be easier for them to go on than draw back. ”

“ For while the educational work moves on in its accustomed channel from day to day and without for the most part giving rise to many questions of general interest or burning problems, the case is exactly the reverse with this more directly pastoral work in which, as I have already said, most weighty questions are of constant recurrence. ”

“ Mackenzie, and gave as the principle which had underlain and formed that simple and noble life, the rule always 'to do what was natural under the circumstances,' and certainly if this may be accepted as a true guide for conduct, I cannot think that we should have been acting in accordance with it, or indeed otherwise than most unnaturally under the circumstances in which we found ourselves placed, if we had refused to take a share in the work which was being carried on amongst the Delhi Chamárs. ”

“ Under these circumstances you will, I think, feel that it can have cost no slight effort to take the decided line this young fellow did, or rather that nothing short of the very real and present power of the Holy Spirit would have enabled him to quit himself so truly as a man. ”

“ Among the men who had taken their place from the first as Christians there was a young fellow on whose line of conduct that of many others depended. He is a very well-to-do and active man, much respected by all. Christians and Chamárs alike, a Chaudri already in his own right, and with the prospect of a second chaudriship in reversion from his father. ”

“ I say some portion of our time advisedly, for on this point too there seems to exist some misunderstanding, and many seem to think that we have for better or worse thrown ourselves almost wholly into this work and made it our special sphere. ”

“ Standing up they one after the other expressed their appreciation of the comfort which they had enjoyed and the consideration they had met with in their old connection, but regretted that they had now reached a point in their new life as Christians which made it impossible for them to continue on the old terms of fellowship, and they therefore wished to say that for the future, while they were, and always would be, glad to reckon many individuals as personal friends, they would have nothing to do with the Chamár Brotherhood, as such ”

“ Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. In point of fact we each devote two evenings in the week, one Sunday and one week-day, to visiting and preaching in these little district congregations, and, so far as actual working time is concerned. that is all [1] : while the majority of us at present out here teach from two to four hours daily in the School and College, not to mention the time given to Language, Private Study, Catechists' and Readers' Classes, Bazar preaching, College Club meetings and the like. ”

“ Each division constitutes an amply sufficient tribunal for any ordinary disputes which its members may bring before it, though in cases of very exceptional magnitude the three occasionally coalesce and form one supreme court. ”

“ Several reasons seemed to point to Daryaganj, a district of the city, as the name imports on the river bank, as a suitable spot for this which we felt to be a most weighty experiment, involving as it did in great measure the abandonment of a theory to which we had hitherto held tenaciously. ”

“ Nothing is done in a hurry in this country, and the present proceeding was no exception to the rule. Suffice it however that by about 1.30 or perhaps a little later the ball was really opened. The first move was on the part of our Catechist who gave a short resume of the events which had led to the present meeting, and thanked them for having all responded to the summons, and then called on our Chaudri and the other men to do their part. ”