George Haws Feltus

“ Men kept constantly at pumps; had to lighten the ship by throwing over some one thousand sacks of rice, one-tenth the cargo, and undergird the ship with a large sail—‘thrumming’ they call it. Spoke a ship which promised to keep company and to come and help if at night a certain lantern signal was hoisted. Lost sight of her however. Were indeed in great peril. But a gracious Providence brought them in safety.”
A visit of three months away from the tropics gave renewed vigour and again Mrs. House returned to Bangkok with buoyant hopes of a measure of comfort for her work. ”

“ But, Doctor, we cannot make them repent. It is only those whom God pleases to choose.
“They tell me that when the king hears that I have become a disciple of Jesus I shall be whipped. I tell them, if he kills me I care not. If the Lord gives me to die, I must die as the Lord willeth. But while I live, I must bring forth fruits to offer Him.”
Nai Kawn was never formally enrolled in the Church. He had found the acme of joy and of liberty in the Gospel before he knew of the church as an organisation. ”

“ Every religion studied philosophically presents insuperable difficulties; a religion may be rightly judged only by its practical adaptation to life and its effects on the human heart. Had he attempted to study Christianity in a practical manner as he did the science of the West his conclusions would doubtless have been different. One evening the prince called at the home of Mr. Caswell just as the weekly prayer meeting was assembling and, upon invitation, remained to the meeting. ”

“ And it may be that the privilege will be given you of working more for the women of the land. But there are great difficulties in the way of this and there will be great trials and disappointments awaiting you. I fear your distance from Siam lends ‘enchantment to the view,’ and makes you forget what the people are—heathen in heart and custom of life. ”

“ But in even initiating the movement she did far more than she realised at the time, for she was investing in the enterprise an accumulation of experience and a wealth of influence among the women of Bangkok such as no one else possessed, and which gave the institution a capital from which it began to draw immediate returns. Such a school could not have been organised by a new leader, however skilled in educational matters, without long years of cultivation of personal relations with the mothers and girls. ”

“ But there is absolutely no place in all Bangkok where they can attend church unless they divide up by sexes and travel several miles in a boat to Sumray and Wang Lang. This some of them do, but their parents and friends do not. Every year our schools are sending out more of these young people, but we are not following them up, and they are left to drift.... For this great work a man and a church are needed at once. No other need in Siam is more urgent. The man should be able to speak the Siamese like a native. He should be conversant with the intricacies of Siamese customs and etiquette ”

“ Between medicine and the ministry he hesitated, but only to weigh in his mind which of the two professions would be the one in which he could render the greatest good to his native land. Of the need of medicine there could be no doubt; even a young man could perceive the advantage of modern medical science for a land where ignorance of the body and superstition were the allies to cause suffering, contagion and pestilence. ”

“ When the pestilence had spent its force, King Phra Chao Pravat Thong decided that he would perform an “act of merit” in honour of Buddha for the cessation of the epidemic. Since the religion of Buddha requires great veneration for the life of animals [83] one of the surest means to merit is to grant freedom to animals that are in captivity. Accordingly a levy was made upon every citizen to bring to the palace ground a stated number of animals or birds during a fixed period, and upon a given day these were all to be liberated at the king’s command. ”

“ In Siam was organised the first Protestant church of Chinese Christians. In Siam the first zenana mission work was undertaken. Siam is the last independent state in which Buddhism is the established religion.
Yet Siam is little known to Western people. She is neither belligerent nor turbulent, therefore offers no military spectacle. She has no foreign ambitions, therefore arouses no diplomatic concern. Her trade is largely with China, therefore she makes no impress upon the commercial mind of the west. She lies off the beaten path of world traffic, therefore tourists seldom visit the land. ”

“ The prince, the son of the king of Cambodia, was living in a grand palace provided by the king of Siam; and Dr. House was led to suspect that he was [99] held as hostage for the good behaviour of his father, over whom Siam claimed suzerainty. The prince urged the doctor to go to Cambodia, assuring him that he would be welcomed with open arms by the king; and that the people did not approve of the worship of images, for the Cambodians held that “God made man, and man cannot make God.” The information gained from the prince prompted Dr. House and Mr. Mattoon to plan a trip into that country. ”

“ A few of this class came at first but soon the school was left to the girls of the common class. The value of an education was not yet as highly valued among the higher classes as among the lowly; for the women of the upper grades not only had no need to read but no need to work; while on the other hand the practical nature of the training given in the school did not meet the requirements of their social position. In later years, however, there was a decided change, and with the growing popularity of education nearly half of the pupils in the school were from the noble families. ”

“ When the ratifications of the American treaty were exchanged, a year later, King Mongkut issued the following memorandum:
“We now have embraced the best opportunity to have made and exchanged the treaty of friendship and commerce with the United States of America, and we shall be very glad to esteem the President of the United States at present and in the future as our respected friend, and esteem the United States as united in close friendship, as we know that the government of the [137] United States must ever act with justice, and is not often embroiled in difficulties with other nations. ”

“ Thus there is neither missionary nor church in Bangkok for the bulk of the population, for the intelligent, well-to-do classes who are becoming eagerly interested in foreign ideas, and for the thousands of bright young men who flock to the metropolis in Siam, as they do in England and America. In that main part of the city there are scores of young men and women who were educated at our boarding schools. ”

“ Before truth could penetrate such an armour of ignorance, it was necessary that nature be stripped of these false ascriptions in order that there might be a common ground upon which to consider the arguments for the Christian faith. ”

“ It brought forth universal testimonies of esteem for the man; friends seemed to vie with each other in veneration of his memory. Almost spontaneously there arose the suggestion to erect as a memorial to him a building that would provide facilities for the social work among young men which he had inaugurated. Committees both in Siam and in the United States met with cordial response to the proposal. The Crown Prince esteemed it a pleasure to make the first contribution for Siam towards the proposed building, while members of the government gladly participated in the fund. ”

“ House was a member of the committee that planned for the consolidation of the several women’s societies into the Woman’s Presbyterian Foreign Missionary Society of New York Synod, and became the first president of the consolidated organisation. As a motto for the united society she proposed the ideal “Every Woman in Every Church Working for Jesus”—a motto that reads quite fresh to date. To Mrs. House is due the credit of originating the series of “Questions and Answers in Mission Fields,” beginning with a catechism on the work in Siam for children’s mission bands. ”

“ And do not hold a religion that you have not good evidence is true and then frighten men’s fears and [186] flatter their hopes thereby. Do not be frightened and astonished at diverse fictitious events and hold to and follow them. When you shall have obtained a refuge, a religious faith that is good and beautiful and suitable, hold to it with great joy and follow its teachings, and it will be a cause of prosperity to each one of you.... ”

“ House belongs the credit for certain important steps which marked the development and contributed to the permanent establishment of female education in Siam.
In the early attempts at educating girls in the homes of the missionaries the aim in view was the conversion of the girls, to which the education in reading was incidental. Without minimising the value of education as an agency for religion Mrs. House viewed education as an object greatly to be desired in itself with manifold advantages issuing from it, but especially having an influence upon the whole social status of womankind. ”

“ You know it is the Siamese custom to burn their dead, but so fearfully did deaths multiply that a shorter mode of disposal was resorted to, and multitudes of corpses were thrown without ceremony, as you would throw the carcass of a dog into the river. ”

“ The Baptist mission for some years had printed an annual almanac filled with Christian truth and containing, besides other items of civil information, a list of officials of the government and of the watts. In 1848, for the first time, Chao Fah Yai took exception to the religious character of the almanac in which his name appeared as head priest of his watt. He wrote to the editor of the almanac, expressing a “wish to have added to the description of myself in the English almanac ‘and hates the Bible most of all’; we will not embrace Christianity, because we think it a foolish religion. ”

“ Along with indifference there was a more concrete obstacle to progress in education of girls—the economic factor. Time spent in class was time lost from labour in the house or in the field; and this was a serious matter. While Mrs. House had demonstrated the economic value of domestic training for girls by the saving in expense for the boys’ school through their sewing, it remained for Mrs. S. G. McFarland, at Petchaburi, in 1865, to apply this fact in such a manner as to draw women into her classes. She offered prospective pupils employment at a wage equal to that they could earn elsewhere. ”