From Baluchistan to the Philippines : four years of Methodist Episcopal mission work in Southern Asia

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FOUR YEARS OF METHODIST
EPISCOPAL MISSION WORK IN
SOUTHERN ASIA

By

BUhop FRANK W. WARNE

THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
Rindge Literature Department
150 nFTH AVENUE. NEW YORK

from

'Balucl^ijstan to ti^e

Bishop FRANK W. WARNE

Address delivered before the General Conference of 1904
Los Angeles, Cal.

INDIA is more a continent than a country, con-
taining about one fifth of the earth’s popu-
lation, governed by the white man, and
most of her people, like ours, belonging to
the Aryan race; therefore we hav^e a special re-
sponsibility and opportunity, and the destiny of
India’s multiplied millions is peculiarly in the hands
of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Their peculiar intellectual power is embodied in
their philosophical religion. Neither at Athens,
Ephesus, nor at Rome did Paul face such a powerful
philosophical religious system as do our mission-
aries in India. Those religious systems were bom
after Hinduism, and have been so long dead that
even their names are ancient history. Buddhism
came and struggled bravely for full fifteen centuries
to reform Hinduism, but was driven out by the
wily Brahman. During eight centuries the Moham-
medans pursued their bloody, iconoclastic, religious
propaganda, yet, notwithstanding all this, over two
hundred millions to-day in India, under Brahman
influence, worship the hideous idols of Hinduism,
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BEGINNING OF INDIA’S ELEVATION

Though all these mighty non-Christian influences
utterly failed to reform and elevate caste-cursed
India, yet, under the combined influence of a Chris-
tian government and Christian missions, there is a
magnificent beginning of India’s elevation and sal-
vation. The government has given India twenty-
six thousand miles of railway, on which all castes
travel together, and tins lifts up the lowest and levels
down the highest caste people. Further, the gov-
ernment has fourteen million acres under irrigation.
In one place a timnel was made one and one fourth
miles in length through a mountain, thus diverting
part of a river from its course, pouring it out upon
tlie plain and irrigating 160,000 acres, from which
400,000 people are fed, and the people gratefully
declare that the white man has done what their gods
cannot do.

The princely American gifts to alle\date the suf-
ferings of the famine-stricken people have favorably
influenced great multitudes. Government and
missions combined have given India various college
centers, and 20,000 students annually attend these
seats of learning. These, with many lower-grade
schools, unite in elevating and Christianizing India.
Nevertheless, India is so many-sided and has such
an enormous population that even with all these
elevating advantages it is estimated that there are
still 60,000,000 people in India so poor that they
seldom, if ever, retire to rest having had a meal that
satisfies. Only eleven per cent of the males of
India and a little more than one half of one per cent
of the females can read. Nine tenths of the 300,-
000,000 people in India live in villages averaging
360 persons to a village. Livingstone received his
call to his great lifework by hearing Moffat, after
returning from Africa, say, “I can see the smoke of a
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thousand villages where the Gospel has not gone.”
I have to report that after a quadrennium of exten-
sive travel in India I can see the smoke not of a
thousand villages, not of a hundred thousand, but of
five hundred thousand villages in which there is not
a Christian. WTio can estimate the opportunity
and the responsibility of the Christian Church in
India? May many Li'vingstones hear the call!

BURMA

Burma is the second country in our Southern Asia
field, and its size and geographical position make it
of very great importance in the chain of our Asiatic
Missions. It borders on India, China, Siam, and
the Malay States, and has a long seacoast. Its pop-
ulation is not so dense as India and China; many
thousands of the emigrating population from both
countries pour into Burma, and their commingling
in social customs, religion, labor, and business
brings the missionary face to face with one of the
most intensely interesting and perplexing social and
religious problems on the face of the earth.

The Burmese are bright and have no caste sj'stem,
as in India; they have the piu-est form of Buddhism;
seventy per cent of their males can read, and Bud-
dhist children flock to good Christian schools. Mis-
sionary success in Burma will mark a great advance
in the Eastern world. Our Mission has outlined an
extensive plan for evangelistic work, multitudes
thoughtfully listen to the Gospel, and we confidently
look, from among the Burmese, for a great movement
toward Christianity. I greatly desire that Burma
should, in a large measure, be on the heart and re-
membered in the prayers and gifts of the whole
Church as one of her great and most hopeful mission
fields.

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MALAYSIA

Malaysia includes a peninsula and an “ island
continent” with a present population, excluding the
Philippines, about equal to that of the United States.
The coming importance of this held is suggested by
the fact that Java, one of the smaller islands, has
now a population of 37,000,000 ; the other islands
have an equally good soil and climate, and when
they are as densely populated they will support
over 400,000,000. Overpopulated India and China
are finding here a place to which to overflow. Borneo
alone is larger than Ohio and all the States east of it.
When in its chief city I was shown about by an
Indian with whom I conversed in Hindustani, and
went with the rajah to his garden in the evening,
listened to a Manila band, and saw so many well-to-
do Chinamen I almost felt that I was in an improved
China. The Kapuas River, in Borneo, is a mile wide
and navigable by ocean steamers for over 300 miles.
For more than 200 miles the banks of this river
present the appearance of an almost continuous vil-
lage without a Protestant mi.ssionary,but the Moham-
medans are crowding in their missionaries.

Prom Ceylon. India. Burma, Siam, China, Japan,
the Celebes, the Philippines, and all the surrounding
islands students come to our great Anglo-Chinese
self-supporting school in Singapore, until the stu-
dents represent forty languiiges, and already some
are returning home as Christians to these various
countries carrying the Bible and Christianity with
them. We have urgent calls to enter Bangkok,
in Siam, the Celebes, and others of these very needy
islands. If we could send six new missionaries at
once.it would give us but one missionary for 8,000,000
people. I trust our Malaysia Conference may have
in the very near future a much larger place in the
thoughts, plans, prayers, and gifts of the Church.

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THE PHILIPPINES

The exceedingly encouraging facts about our
Mission in the Philippines are well and widely known.
The independent Filipino Catholic Church move-
ment is reported to have led from two to three mil-
lions of people out of Rome. It is a joy to report
that we have now 8,076 members and probationers
in the Philippine Islands. Through the Evangelical
Union, which divides the territory among the Mis-
sions, our Mission was given equal privileges in
Manila. To the north, the very choicest part of the
island of Luzon was allotted to us, and still larger
sections have since been recognized by the union as
our territory.

The Presbyterians and Baptists have their mis-
sions in Manila, southward in Luzon, and on the other
islands. It has generally been conceded that the
division of territory gave abundance of field and
special advantages to all Missions. Recently the
Peniel Mission asked us to take them and their
work in the island of Mindanao, and this opens up to
us the largest southern island. We believe by far
the greatest missionary opportunity in immediate
results ever opened to our Church is in our posses-
sion in the Philippine Islands. Our hope and our
prayer is that the funds for churches and additional
missionaries may soon reach the field, and that
Methodism may fully measure up to its obligations
in the evangelization of the Filipino people.

ADVANCES DURING THE QUADRENNIUM
The increase of our Christian community has been
34.893 — that is, a sustained increase of 8,723 each
year, or a total of thirt3'-one per cent during thequad-
rennium. We had at the end of November, 1903,
a Christian community of 146,547, and know of
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special increases since then which make our present
Southern Asia Christian community over 150,000.
The Epworth League membership increased 6,094,
giving a total of 17,973. Our Sunday school schol-
ars increased 31,681, making agrand total of 123,737.
We have 108 missionaries and 82 missionaries’
wives, and 153 missionaries of the Woman’s Foreign
Missionary Society, who are just as consecrated,
loyal, successful, and amenable to the authority of
the Church as the men, and in the midst of the India
zenana system and other peculiar customs their
cooperation is preeminently important. We owe
our success in Southern Asia, with God’s blessing, to
this united force of missionaries and to the preva-
lence of love, harmony, consecrated common sense,
and the infilling of the Holy Spirit as an equip-
ment for service. We devoutly thank God for this
noble body of consecrated missionaries.

We also have 150 native members of Annual
Conferences, each of whom before becoming a full
Conference member passed at least twelve exami-
nations and was under special observation during
the same number of years. These brethren, as would
be expected, have very largely caught the spirit of
our missionaries, and we have noble Indian brethren
in our India Methodism who compare very favor-
•ably with many of our home ministers. We have,
in addition, including our teachers and all other
grades, 4,320 workers. In summarizing, the
Central Conference Statistical Secretary selected
thirty-one leading facts of mission work and gave
the increases and decreases of the quadrennium. In
all these figures there are only four decreases,
namely, a decrease in the number of missionaries’
wives and paid workers, and educational institu-
tions (though of the last there are still 1,245), but
the notable decrease is that of 63,095 rupees in our

property debt, while our property increased in value
1,385,054 rupees. We could have had many thou-
sand more baptisms, but we have not had mission-
aries and workers sufficient to teach and develop
them, and we have not considered it wise or safe to
baptize faster than we could instruct our converts.
Had there been sufficient workers to reasonably
prepare and care for the converts, we could have re-
ported another hundred thousand Christians. Our
presiding elder, the Rev. P. M. Buck, of Meerut,
as a missionary of the board, is alone with 23,000
Christians, but, being a true Methodist and loyal to
her peculiar means of grace, he has in his district 600
class leaders. It is a pleasure to report that India
Methodism has her class meetings.

SOME ENCOURAGING FACTS
Northwest India Conference was organized only
eleven years ago, and it reported at the last session
a Christian community of 64,319, or almost 20,000
more than any other of our missionary Conferences
in any part of the world. When the Indian census
was tak6n in 1901, after a decade, the English
nation was astonished to learn that while the whole
population of India had increased only seven and a
half per cent, the Christian population had increased
thirty per cent; but in the United Provinces, where
our great North India and Northwest India Con-
ferences are, the government census shows that the
Christian population has increased three hundred
per cent.

EPWORTH LEAGUE

At the last session of our Northwest India Con-
ference 160 Epworth League charters were given
out to as many chapters. Pre\ious to this time
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there were 58 chapters that had received charters,
thus making a total of 218 Epworth League chapters
and 8,380 members in that eleven-year-old Confer-
ence. One of these Leagues holds 40 evangelistic
meetings a week, and has 400 members, and 65 of
its members are looking forward to the ministry.

SUNDAY SCHOOLS

Let me give you a comparative statement that
will throw some light on our place as a Mission in
India. We have an “India Sunday School Union,”
and the Sunday schools of about forty Missions are
affiliated, and the children are counted as members
in the union. The secretary of the union addressed
our Bengal Conference in Calcutta at its last ses-
sion, and said: “There are 300,000 Sunday school
children in the union, and it ought to be encouraging
to you American Methodists to be told that 100,000,
or one third of the entire number, belong to your
Mission.” We have now 123.737 Sunday school
attendants. In familiarity with the Scriptures we
believe many of our Indian youth compare very
favorably with the average of the American young
people in our Sunday schools.

CONVERSIONS

In our Gujarat District, Bombay Conference, we
have had one of the most remarkable advances from
among non-Christians known in any Mission any-
where. In the Fiji Islands 30,000 converts were re-
ported after twenty years, which has been the most
wonderful record of missionary success known, but
in Gujarat we have had 23,000 converts in less than
ten years, and, if we could put in a reasonable in-
crease of workers, before twenty years have passed
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present indications lead us to hope we shall be far
beyond 100,000, and 2,000,000 out of 11,000,000
Gujarati people appear to be as accessible as those
who have become Christians. We confidently ex-
pect that by the time the 2,000,000 have become
Christians the entire 11,000,000 will be accessible.
God is moving among the nations, and his kingdom
is coming on earth. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Our work is not only developing numerically, but
we endeavor to have a fully equipped Church in all
departments. We have in our schools of all grades,
from the primary and kindergarten to the colleges,
35,438 pupils. Our Educational Committee at our
Central Conference, after carefully reviewing our
educational work, reported that “besides many day
schools in the various Conferences, we have in
Southern Asia the following institutional schools.”
By institutional schools the}' mean institutions
where there are boarders, and usually day scholars
also. There are very few of these schools that have
less than one hundred pupils, and they grade up to
seven hundred. We have no less than 112 such
institutions, and in twenty-six of these which have
industrial work there are 3,986 pupils. When I
recall the small number of missionaries and our
unfavorable climate, I cannot but marvel that so
much is being accomplished.

THE PRESS

The printing press, an indispensable and mighty
arm of missionary power, we are using to the utmost
limit of our ability. Our Missionary Society has
never been able to grant much toward this depart-
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ment of work; nevertheless, we have six publishing
houses and are publishing in practically all the lan-
guages in which we are working. Not having mis-
sionary grants for publication, we are compelled to
do secular printing, in order to use the profits in
printing Christian literature for the infant Church.
We publisli many 'million pages annually. I know
of no way in which men of wealth could better
advance the kingdom than in helping us give Chris-
tian literature to the many people of this great
mission field.

EXPANSION OF OUR WORK

Although we have been unable to make a further
advance in the direction of Central Asia, we still
maintain our outpost at Quetta, while two heroic
ladies hold an outpost on the Kumaon border of
Tibet, from which for a term of years past frequent
visits have been made into the forbidden land, while
workers are getting ready to enter as soon as per-
manent occupation is possible. At the other end of
our Mission, in Malaysia, our borders are being ex-
tended, and one of the great events of the quad-
rennium is the founding of a Mission in Borneo,
where we have already five church buildings and 500
Christians. The e.xpansion in the Philippines has
been remarkable, and in our old fields we have filled
out much work which was before only in outline.
Six new districts have been formed in India, which
include the great provinces of Punjab and Rajpu-
tana, and great advances on the Godavery District,
which reaches into the region of the Oriya language.

OUR CHRISTIANS

What kind of Chri.stians have you in India? We
have all kinds — good, bad, and indifferent. I
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might ask you the question, What kind have you in
America? I suppose you would have to give about
the same answer. If our Indian Christians are
judged by what they give up, I think many are far
ahead of the Christians at home. If judged by
what they proportionately give, many of them
would shame any Christians I have ever knowm.
Who at home goes without food to give? If giving
is to be judged not so much by what is given as by
what is left, they are very great givers.

In many of our villages there is a prayer meeting
every night. It takes the place of family worship
where the people in the homes cannot read. I was
a short time ago at a meeting where there were 400
Christians present, and I asked those who lived in
villages where there was a prayer meeting every
night to raise their hands, and almost all in the
house raised their hands. One of our missionaries
told me of a collection where there were some poor
widows, and she knew that not one of them had
more than one anna (two cents) in the world, but
they each gave two pice (or one cent) at the mis-
sionary collection, or half of all they had in the
world. The missionary said, “ My eyes filled with
tears of shame,” and so might the eyes of a large
part of the whole Church.

THE OUTLOOK

Remarkable as has been the growth of our work
during the past quadrennium, that alone does not
measure the full depth of our reasons for gratitude.
The future opens before us with brighter promise
than ever before. In the beginning of our work in
India we had to search diligently to find the indi-
vidual inquirer, but now we are sought for by those
whom we have not called.

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In considering the outlook for the future no one
thing demands more careful consideration than the
mass movement of the lower castes toward Chris-
tianity. The leaven of the Gospel has so permeated
the mass of the population that all over the land
there are indications of dissatisfaction with old re-
ligions and social customs, and of a desire on the
part of large bodies of people in masses to accept
Christianity. That these movements are influ-
enced by motives of many kinds, not all of the
highest, and that evils of greater or less magnitude
may accompany them, is a matter beyond doubt.
But the fact remains that these movements give
the Church of Christ an opportunity to preach the
Gospel to millions who before were inaccessible.
Freed from restraint and avowedly seeking alliance
with a new religion, they are more than accessible
— they are a field ripe unto the harvest.

In upper India, in addition to the sweeper caste,
from which we have already received 100,000 con-
verts, the great Chamar ca^e, numbering millions
of adherents, seems on the verge of such a mass
movement; in Gujarat the weaver caste, number-
ing 2,000,000 souls, is pleading for teachers and
preachers to prepare them for baptism; in Central
India 500,000 Satnamis, a monotheistic class, by
their favorable attitude invite conquest. In the
Kanarese country, in Rajputana, in the great
Punjab, and in other sections of the land these
movements are already begun or seem imminent.
This is Christianity’s opportunity; if accepted it
means an amazing development of the kingdom of
God on earth and the transformation of a land
such as has nev'er before been witnessed. Shall
Methodism fail in this hour of opportunity in its
mission to give the Gospel to the depressed millions
of India?

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OUR NEEDS

Our greatest need is for more missionaries. Our
founders and leaders are dropping very rapidly out
of our ranks, and there are not sufficient men in
training for their places to close up the ranks. There
are too few missionaries even to care sufficiently for
our Christians. We have few more missionaries in
India proper now, where we have 150,000 Christians,
than when we had only 10,000. Think of a mis-
sionary alone to develop 23,000 Christians. How,
then, are we to enter the great open doors on every
hand? Are we to let these multitudes perish with-
out the Bread of life? I hear the Master say, “Give
ye them to eat.” Let us bring what we have to
Christ, as the disciples did, and he will bless, and
these hungry souls shall be fed and saved.

We need and could use to great advantage fifty
new missionaries. MTiere are they to come from?
When at North Indiana Conference, Bishop McCabe,
famous for money-raising, presiding, I told the
story of our needs in the city of Agra, where we had a
church and parsonage built by the people, but had
been unable to put a missionary for five years. I
found a man and his wife willing to go, and Bishop
McCabe gave me the privilege of about three min-
utes before the Conference to state the case. I
asked for his salary, only S950. Bishop McCabe
opened with a subscription of SlOO, and soon they
raised the salary; the money continued to pour in,
and they said, “What shall we do?” I answered,
“ Raise the transit,” and the money continued to
pour in until it passed $1,500, salary and transit.
This help from that great Conference will send a
thrill of joy throughout our whole India Mission.
Many people in moderate circumstances have been
answering Bishop Thoburn’s call for support of
native pastors at $30 and upward, and the response
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has saved the situation up to this hour. But we
must have advances. The richer individuals,
churches, districts, and Conferences must support
missionaries. If only fifty such from our whole
Church who cannot go in their own person would go
in the person of one who can, our Church would
move out and lead the world as a missionary force.
The nations will be evangelized when Clmist’s spirit
of self-sacrifice and giving shall possess the Church.

Our ministry is ready to go. On my return I
made a call for three men for whom I had salaries
and received forty applications for the places.
Good men turned pale with disappointment when
I had to say, “The places are filled; I have no
money; I cannot send you.”

A CONTINUOUS REVIVAL

It is a great joy to report that throughout the
quadrennium we have been in almost continuous
revival, so much so that I have been reminded of
Peter’s defense for preaching to the Gentiles, “And
as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell upon them,
as upon us at the beginning.” This blessing of ex-
pectation included also the final and complete
victory in saving the nations. What are the signs?
God has marvelously been preparing the way for
India’s evangelization. At the beginning of
modem missions all India was closed and opposed
to Christianit}’, but now multiplied millions are
accessible. Then Christian nations were opposed to
missions. It is not remembered by many that the
first British mis.sionaries to India had to fly to the
Danish government for protection. Now Great
Britain not only protects, but welcomes and co-
operates with missionaries from all Christian lands,
and the waves of grace are coming to India with
missionaries from many shores.

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One is often asked, “Do you believe that the
mighty non-Christian nations will ever be evan-
gelized?” Here is an answer: The Son of God has
begun to build his Church among the Christless
nations. Shall onlooking angels, men, and devils
in derision say, “Christ, the Son of God, began to
build his Church among the nations, but was not
able to finish ?” Nay, verily. But time rolls apace,
when, like Thomas, with all doubts gone, all tribes
and nations on the face of the earth shall look into
his glorious face and say, “ My Lord and my God!”

“ The restless millions wait
The light whose dawning
Maketh all things new.

Christ also waits.

But men are late.

Have we done what we could?

Havel? Have you?”

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