Robert Caldwell

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To return, however, to the motives by which persons have been induced to abandon heathenism. I repeat that it is undeniable that the temporal and social advantage of the Christian religion have made a deep impression on the minds of many ; and it is obvious that such advantages will appear to persons who are still in heathenism, and who have been accustomed to act on worldly principles alone in a more attractive light, and to carry greater weight, than any purely spiritual benefits. ”

“ The structure of the Hindu mind is very different. The Hindus are much less ex citable, and less apt to get nervous than we are ; so that if a Hindu only understands a thing, he is not liable to be put out by being asked to explain it. I fear few English congregations will ever bear to be publicly catechized ; and yet, on looking round upon an English congregation, I have often seen and felt deficiencies which nothing but catechization could supply, and have longed to ascertain, in our Indian method, before passing on to a new subject, whether what was said previously was understood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even in those cases where only a portion of a village becomes Christian, and that not the most influential portion, it forms itself, not only in ecclesias tical and educational matters, but even in the greater number of social matters, into a new municipality, and generally manages to maintain its independence. The heads of a congregation, being also the heads of the community, have much more power and a much wider scope of influence than English churchwardens, and where they happen to be really good, prudent men, are immea surably more useful to the Minister. ”

“ In one instance a respectable farmer, who had long been kept back by his wife, determined to become a Christian without her : accordingly one day he came to church ; but his Christianity lasted one day only, for " his wife cried all night," as the native teacher of the village told me, and the poor man came to church no more. Even after people have become Christians, and promised to submit to our pastoral care, we have often found that no progress could be made in moral reforms, and little progress of any kind, if the women were not heartily on our side. ”

“ What is more extraordinary still, is, that though the arts of civilized life have made much progress in India, I never met with, and never heard of, a heathen woman in India who could sew. Excellent sewing is done in India ; muslins and silks are beauti fully embroidered ; but everything of that sort is done by men. Men are the dressmakers and milliners, men are the washerwomen, men milk the cows ; in short, nearly all the work that is done by women in this country is done by men in India. ”

“ All the schools established in the district of Edeyenkoody, with the exception of a superior girls' school, of which I shall mention some particulars presently, are vernacular day-schools. There is much demand for an English education in the great towns of India, and since the Government grant-in-aid system was introduced, the demand has begun to spread even in the rural districts ; but, up to the time I left, a solid education in the vernacular language was all that seemed to be required by the people of my own district, and all that I endeavoured to provide for. ”

“ It should, therefore, be remembered that, in the great majority of cases, the choice lies not between lay Catechists and an or dained Ministry, but between lay Catechists and no ministry at all. The people who have become Christians are poor, generally un able to read, residing in small scattered villages and hamlets, and exposed to much petty persecution from their heathen neighbours. They were brought up in idolatry or demonolatry, deeply imbued with heathen notions and habits, profoundly ignorant of the most rudimental facts in history and morals, and but recently converted to Christianity. ”

“ In the warfare which each Missionary is appointed to carry on, he is now provided with a basis of operations a centre from which Christian influences may radiate. His labours, cares, and responsibilities, being defined by territorial boundaries, he is not so liable, as he otherwise would be, to become disheartened by the vastness of his work, and perplexed by the multiplicity of his cares. ”

“ The trained intelligence, and organized coherence and strength of the Christian community, cannot but produce in their minds, at least in the minds of the observant and reflecting, a favourable impression. ”

“ The education we give in our village schools, though in the vernacular language, is tolerably substantial : it comprises read ing, writing, mental arithmetic, catechisms of Scripture history and doctrine, a little geography, and a little High-Tamil poetry ; and if the children could only remain long enough in school to receive all the advantages which we are prepared to give them, we should not have much room left for regret.
Many things connected with the interior economy of our schools are of so primitive a character, that a stranger might be led to bestow upon us more pity than we require. ”

“ A fair estimate may be formed of the civilization of a people from the treatment which their women receive. Amongst savages the women do all the hard work, and the men, when they are not fighting or hunting, are smoking, drinking, or sleeping; on the other hand, amongst the christianized, civilized nations of Europe, the highest social honours are conceded to women. The position of women in India, like the position of India in the scale of civilization, lies midway between those extreme points. ”

“ The whole community has to be moulded into a new shape ; not only has much to be learnt, but much also has to be unlearnt. The people must be taught new habits, manners, associations, ideas, feelings the whole framework of society must be modelled anew, and in this process of re modelling, many disappointments occur many a vessel is " marred upon the wheel," and must be thrown aside as " unfit for the master's use," and it is well if the bulk of the community does not draw back to its former position. ”

“ Now, in large towns, the personal influence of the foreign Missionary is as nothing compared with the force of public opinion and the influence of the heads of caste. Even in Europe, there is no solitariness so intense as that of the stranger in a large city ; it is still more intense in India, where every approach to intimacy is fenced round by caste restrictions. The strength of caste is in proportion to the density of the population, and the influence of European Missionaries is in inverse pro portion to the strength of caste. ”

“ In some quarters heathens are exhorted, simply and abstractly, to repent of their sins and believe the Gospel, without being urged to join themselves at once to the Church of Christ. The Missionary will allow them to attend his congregation, as hearers ; but he does not urge them to attend, and he is reluctant to receive them under his pastoral care, even as catechumens, until their motives are thoroughly scrutinized, and he is assured that the elements of the Christian character are already developed. He is afraid of compromising the credit of his cause by "receiving sinners." ”

“ Some who have been taught the way they should go, have not departed from it when they grew up ; the second generation of native Christians is, on the whole, superior to the first ; and the whole of our school children the promising and the unpromising alike have derived this advantage, at least, from the education they have received, that they have become more intelligent hearers of the Word of God, and more capable of receiving religious impressions, than they would otherwise have been. ”

“ Though it was not my privilege to gather into the Christian fold all for whose conversion I longed and laboured, I have reason to be thankful that I was not called, as some more earnest, more faithful labourers have been, in other parts of the field of the world, to labour in vain, and " spend my strength for nought, and in vain." ”

“ Worse than all this is the circumstance that Hindu women are unable to read, and are not allowed to learn. The dancing girls connected with the greater temples, a small and very dis reputable class, are taught to read, and within the last few years, through the influence of European Christianity, female education has become more or less fashionable in such places as Calcutta and Madras ; but with these exceptions, if exceptions they are, the heathen women of India are totally uneducated. ”

“ When the Missionary begins to make an impression in the neighbourhood, and Christianity has effected an entrance into village after village, the assistance of native teachers becomes still more necessary than before; for in most parts of Tinnevelly, Christianity finds the entire mass of the people unable to read and without a school, and much work requires to be done which the Missionary cannot himself overtake, and that at one and the same time, in many different and distant villages. ”

“ When I divide the dis course into heads, or mention any particulars which I wish to impress upon the attention, or endeavour to clear up a difficulty, or enforce a truth by some familiar local illustration, I ascertain for myself, by questioning each class of people in succession, whether they understand, and are likely to carry home, the lessons they have been taught. ”

“ After setting all the classes to work, my wife and I go from class to class, guiding the teachers or examining the pupils, as circumstances may require, or sit down with one of the classes of readers, explaining to them the word of God more perfectly. It is wonderful to see how patiently and good-humouredly the older people submit to be taught by their juvenile teachers. ”

“ The husband, it is true, is not forgetful of his wife's comfort ; if they can afford it, a conveyance is pro vided for the female portion of the party, and the men are content to walk. Still, they generally take care to preserve their dignity by walking on in front, and the conveyance must keep behind. In the Telugu language, the language of fourteen millions of people in southern India, the relative position of the women is illustrated by the pronouns of the third person. ”