TRINITY UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY,
&N
LECTUBES
OH
THE TINNEVELLY MISSIONS,
DESCRIPTIVE OF
THE FIELD, THE WORK, AND THE RESULTS.
la;
LECTUBES
TINNEVELLY MISSIONS,
DESCRIPTIVE OF
fe, aito % Insults ;
AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE ON THE PROGRESS OF
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
(REPUBLISHED FROM THE "COLONIAL CHURCH CHRONICLE.
BT THE
REV. E. CALDWELL, LL.D.
HONORARY MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY;
MISSIONARY OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL
AT EDEYENKOODY, TINNEVELLY.
LONDON :
BELL & DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET.
1857.
LONDON :
R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.
LECTUKES ON THE TINNEVELLY MISSIONS.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.
\
PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
THE possessions which have fallen to the lot of the English
nation in India are the most valuable and important that any
people has ever acquired beyond its own natural boundaries.
India comprises nearly a million and a half of square miles, an
area which is equal to the half of Europe, leaving out Russia ;
and, though nearly two-thirds of the soil are uncultivated, so
thickly peopled are the cultivated districts, that the population of
India amounted, in 1851, to 171,859,055 (more probably to
180,000,000 at least,) a population which is twice as great as that
of the corresponding area in Europe, and which constitutes nearly
a quarter of the whole population of the world.
The smallness of the number of the English in India is very
extraordinary, and is a fact which is full of significance. The
whole of the inhabitants of India are either directly under British
rule, or they are inhabitants of " native protected states," in which
all proceedings of importance are controlled by a British " Resi
dent ;" yet the English in India, to whom the government of 180
millions of Hindiis has been committed, do not number 60,000
souls ! The proportion subsisting between the English and the
native population, in some of the older provinces of British India,
is especially extraordinary. For example, in Tinnevelly and
2 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA..
Madura, the two most southern " collectorates," or provinces, in
the Madras Presidency, amongst a population of more than, three
millions, the number of Europeans, including civilians and mili
tary men, Missionaries and merchants, men, women, and children,
is under 300, and the Europeans who are directly engaged in the
work of government, or in that of coercion, in those two provinces
do not number a hundred altogether !
It might almost be regarded as a miracle that so many should
submit to the government of so few ; but, what renders it more
remarkable is, that they have hitherto submitted to it, not reluc
tantly, but peaceably and contentedly. The people of those pro
vinces, as of all the old settled provinces of Southern India, are
more easily governed than the inhabitants of any county in
England. There is only one regiment, and that a regiment of
Sepoys, officered by Englishmen, in the two provinces referred to,
amongst a population greater than that of Scotland ; and the
services of that one regiment have not been required for anything
more serious than routine duty since 1809 !
It has often been said that our rule in India rests upon military
force ; but recent events have proved that it depends far less upon
force than upon opinion. It rests partly on the opinion of the in
vincibility, in the long run, of the English arms and policy; but in a
much greater degree it rests on the opinion which the Hindus, as
distinguished from the Mahometans, every where entertain, that the
English Government, whatever be its faults, is the best government
India has seen for many generations ; not equal, indeed, to the
paternal governments of the mythical golden age, but more than
equal to any government that these prosaic times have heard of.
It is a mistake to suppose that the Hindus feel towards the English
the soreness of a conquered people. Those of them who know
anything 'of the history of their nation prefer to represent matters
thus : " The English never deprived us of any power or privilege
of which they found us in the possession ; they rescued us from
the tyranny of our Mahommedan conquerors ; and in all their
early battles we fought with theia, sMe by side, not against them.
"VVe arc convinced also, that if the English were driven from the-
ENGLAND S DUTY, 3
country, it would be a loss, not a gain, to us Hindus ; for the
Mahommedans would again get the upper hand, and they would
give us a far smaller share in the government of our own country
than we now enjoy, besides treating us and our religion with a
harshness and bigotry of which the English have never shown any
trace." Occasionally, it is true, the Hindus indulge in the popular
English practice of grumbling, and not without reason, for the
pressure of taxation is in some districts extreme, and the adminis
tration of justice is still very defective ; but, in so far as the latter
particular is concerned, it is not the English, but their own country
men, that are blamed, for the fault lies with the subordinate officials,
who are in variably natives; and the remedy which Hindus themselves
would propose, and which I have heard many of them propose, is
not the expulsion of the Europeans, but such an increase in their
number as would enable them to make their influence felt in every
corner of the country. Mainly and ultimately, however, I doubt
not that the rule of the English in India rests neither on force nor
on human opinion, but on the will of the Most High, the Supreme
Ruler of the nations, who has raised up England, and confided
race after race and region after region to her care, that she might
" tell it out amongst the heathen that the Lord is King." 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.
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
B2
4 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
sufficiently felt, even by religious people. An encouraging amount
of interest in the progress of Christianity in India has now at last
been awakened, and a demand for information has been excited :
it is now felt that a great door and effectual has been opened to us
in India, and that the conversion of India to Christ is one of the
greatest works, if not the great work, to which the Church and
nation of England are called. I proceed, therefore, to give some
idea of the present position of the Christian cause in India, espe
cially in the Presidency of Madras.
Those who are acquainted Avith India, or who bear in mind the
numerous and very peculiar difficulties with which Indian missions
have to contend, will not expect me to paint a rose-coloured picture
of missionary progress. Progress undoubtedly has been made, and
year by year the prospects of Christianity become more encourag
ing ; but the encouragements are of such a nature as will best be
appreciated by those whose experience in some work similar to
this has taught them not to " despise the day of small things."
Only one generation has elapsed since our Christian Govern
ment systematically refused permission to Missionaries to labour
in India, and openly patronised heathenism. It administered the
affairs of all the more important pagodas, and compelled its ser
vants to do honour to heathen festivals. I have myself seen idols
that had been erected by its European servants, and wholly at its
expense. 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. Some improvements (especially that
very important one, the severance of the connexion between the
Government and the idolatries of the country,) were effected by a
pr< i ;-sure from without; but the greater number of improvements,
including all that have taken place within the last fifteen years,
IMPROVEMENT OF GOVERNMENT. 5
have originated with the Government itself, which now comprises
a considerable number of right-minded Christian men. The In
dian Government has always professed to observe a strict neu
trality between Christianity and heathenism, and to allow every
religion professed by its subjects "a fair field and no favour;"
but whatever may have been its professions, for a long period
the only neutrality it observed was a one-sided neutrality, which
showed itself in the encouragement of heathenism, and in oppo
sition to the propagation of Christianity. This unfair, unright
eous course has been almost entirely abandoned ; the Government
no longer actively befriends heathenism, it no longer guards against
the progress of Christianity as a source of danger. It still, indeed,
professes to stand in a neutral position, but this neutrality has for
some time been verging (perhaps as rapidly as is compatible with
the circumstances of India) into an enlightened, prudent solicitude
for the peaceful diffusion of the blessings of Christian education
and morals. The burning of widows and female infanticide have
been put down, slavery has been abolished, in connexion with
all Government business and public works, Sunday has been made
a day of rest, converts to Christianity have been protected, by a
special enactment, in the possession of their property and rights,
the re-marriage of widows has been legalized, female education
has been encouraged, a comprehensive scheme of national edu
cation has been set on foot, in connexion with which the Grant-
in-Aid system has been introduced, and Missionary schools are no
longer excluded from the benefit of Government Grants.
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 ; but I hope and
believe that the unparalleled trials through which it has been
called upon to pass will end, not in deterring it from its duty, but
in urging it forward in the course of pimrovement.
6 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
Whilst we are thankful that the Indian Government, as such,
has improved so considerably, we have also much reason to be
thankful for the improvement which has taken place in the lives
of so many members of the Anglo-Indian community. 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 ; and such persons render most important aid to the cause of
Missions, not only by their sympathy and contributions, but still
more by the influence of their example. 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.
Now that teachers of Christianity have free access to every part
of India, the old assertion that the conversion of the Hindus is
impossible has been proved to be a fable. In many instances the
impossibility has been accomplished. It is quite true that in many
extensive districts the work has not yet been begun, and that in no
district have all the results that have been aimed at been accom
plished ; but enough has been accomplished to prove to us that
the work is of God, and to encourage us to go forward in it with
vigour.
We cannot expect in India or anywhere, to " reap where we
have not sown, or to gather where we have not strawed :" desultory
efforts in too wide a sphere cannot be expected to produce the
PROPORTION OF PROGRESS. 7
same results as systematic persevering labours within manageable
limits j but when we find, wherever we look in India, a propor
tion existing between labour and the results of labour, when it is
evident that there is most success where there is most labour, and
least success where there is least labour, 1 think we have every
reason to thank God and take courage.
A comparison of the spiritual condition of the three Indian
Presidencies will illustrate the proportion existing between efforts
and results. In the Presidency of Bombay least has been done :
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has not a single
missionary labourer there, and other missionary Societies have but
a small handful of men; and in that Presidency I am sorry to say
that there are not a thousand native Protestant Christians from
Goa to the Indus. In the Presidency of Bengal the number of
Missionaries is more considerable ; and there, not only are the
Christian converts seventeen or eighteen times more numerous
than in Bombay, but in many parts of that vast Presidency the
Hindu mind has been stirred to its inmost depths by the progress
of Christian education and Christian civilization.
It is in the Presidency of Madras, however, that there has been
the largest amount of missionary effort. Missionaries have been
labouring in several parts of that Presidency for a considerable
period ; their number bears some proportion to the work which
they are endeavouring to accomplish, and is such as to render it
possible for them to work in combination. What progress, then,
has been made in that Presidency ? Not all the progress, indeed,
which we wish for and hope to see, but still an amount of progress
which is very encouraging. In the Presidency of Madras there
are at least 80,000 native converts from heathenism, in connexion
with the different Protestant Missionary Societies at work in
various parts of the field, and of that number about 58,000 are
connected with the Missions of the Church of England. Doubt
less, many of the native Christian converts are not what we should
wish them to be ; and much, very much, remains to be done
before Christianity is diffused throughout the Presidency ; but it
would be most ungrateful, as well as unreasonable, to ignore the
8 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
fact that much has been done already, and that we have received
encouragement to attempt, and to expect to accomplish much
more.
Indian Missions may be divided into two classes : viz. the
educational, or those which endeavour to reach the higher classes
by means of superior English schools ; and the popular, if I may
use the expression, or those which endeavour to reach the com
munity at large (though practically, in most instances, they reach
the lower classes alone) by means of vernacular preaching and
vernacular education. The great English schools, or colleges,
established in Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay, by the Scotch
Presbyterians, stand at the head of the former class ; at the head
of the latter, which includes almost all other missionary efforts,
we may safely place the Missions of the Church of England in
Tinnevelly.
It cannot be doubted that the endeavour to diffuse Christianity
amongst the higher classes of the Hindus is one of very great
importance, for the institution of caste gives the higher classes
greater influence in India than in any other country ; but from
Swartz's time till very recently, nothing was done for them by any
missionary Society. They could not be reached, at all events they
were not reached, by any of the agencies formerly at work ; and
up to the present time it is only by means of an English educa
tion of so high an order as to be an attraction to them, that those
classes have, in any degree, been brought within the range of
Christian influences. This plan originated with Dr. Duff and the
Scotch Presbyterians ; and in the great schools which have been
established by them, and more recently by some other Missionary
Societies in some of the principal Indian cities, not only the science
and literature of the western nations, but also the truths of the
Christian religion, are daily taught by men of the highest ability
to thousands of the most intelligent of the Hindu youth. This
educational system had only just been introduced into Madras
when I arrived, in 1838, and had not yet borne fruit ; but about
a hundred persons belonging to the higher ranks of Hindu society
have now been brought by it into the Christian fold. It is true
EDUCATIONAL MISSIONS. 9
that this number is very small, compared with that of the converts
connected with the other system of Missions ; but it is to be
borne in mind that they belong to a very influential class, a class
in which no other system of means has borne any fruit whatever ;
and that, as the converts of this class have had to fight their way
to Christ through many persecutions, many of them have risen to
a peculiarly high standard of Christian excellence and devoted-
ness. It is a very interesting circumstance, that through the
influence and example of this class of converts, Christianity has
begun to spread amongst persons belonging to the same social
rank who have never been at any missionary school at all, or who
have been educated at Government schools from which Christian
teaching is carefully excluded ; and it would appear that in
Calcutta this new cfass of converts is now more numerous than
the former. It is also chiefly owing to the influence of English
education that so many social reforms are now making progress
amongst the higher classes of the Hindus.
This educational department of missionary effort is far from
being the only one which claims our sympathy, as some of its
advocates appeared at one period to suppose ; but it is certainly
one of very great importance ; and I may be permitted to say
that it does not seem very creditable, either to the English people
or to the Church of England, that the Scotch Presbyterians have
been allowed almost to monopolize the Christian education of the
higher classes of the Hindus. The Church of England is, un
doubtedly, doing a great work in the rural districts ; and in
Benares, Masulipatam, Palamcottah, and a few other places, the
Church Missionary Society has established English schools for the
higher classes ; but it is much to be wished that the English
Church put forth more of her strength in the cities the seats of
government and commerce, and contribute, what she has not
yet done, her full share of effort towards the Christianization of
the high-caste Hindus. The inequality at present existing is to
be rectified, not by other bodies of Christians doing less, but by
the Church of England doing more.
The Socidi/for the Propagation of the Gospel was a" few years
B3
10 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
ago, led by such considerations to establish a Mission for the higher
classes in Delhi a Mission which has for the present been quenched
in blood, but which, I trust, will ere long be revived. More re
cently still the Society resolved, at the representation of the pre
sent excellent Principal of Bishop's College, Calcutta, to make
that institution useful, not only for the training up for the
ministry of those who are already Christians, but for the still more
necessary work of converting educated heathens to Christianity.
In the Presidency of Madras it has not yet done anything in this
direction, though it has three institutions for the training up of
catechists, schoolmasters, and native ministers ; but T trust it will
not be much longer the only great Missionary Society in that Pre
sidency which leaves to their fate the higher classes of the heathen
youth. The Vepery Mission Grammar Scfrool, an institution
established by this Society for the education of the Indo-British
youth, did much for the improvement of that class, at a time when
no other Society did anything. That school has fulfilled its
mission, and has now ceased to exist ; but I hope that something
will be established in its room, more directly tending to the diffu
sion of Christianity amongst the heathen. A few years ago I
would have pleaded for the establishment in the same buildings
of a thoroughly good English school, for the benefit of the Hindu
youth, to be taught, not by ordinary schoolmasters, but by
thoroughly qualified, devoted English Missionaries ; but at present
what appears to be more urgently required, what appears,
indeed, to be the great want of all the Presidential cities at
present, is an organized system of means for bringing Christian
influences to bear upon the minds of those Hindus who have
received a superior English education already, either in Missionary
or in Government schools, but who still continue heathens. This
class of persons may be numbered by thousands ; and every mem-
fcer of the class can be reached through the medium of the
English tongue. Here is a promising door of usefulness standing
open, an extensive and rich field of labour lying vacant : which
Society will have the honour of first entering in 1
The other class of Missions, the popular or parochial, as distin-
PAROCHIAL 31ISSIOKS. 11
guished from the purely educational, expend much money and
effort on education, especially on the education of the children
of the poorer classes in the vernacular languages ; but they may
properly be regarded as acting on a different system, inasmuch
as they labour for the benefit, not of the young only, but of the
people at large ; and the schools which they establish are con
nected with, and subordinated to, Christian congregations. With
the exception of a few hundred at most, the entire body of native
Christians may be claimed as the fruit of this system, which has
been much more productive than the other of present, visible
results.
In the city of Madras itself, there are about 2,600 converts of
this class in connexion with the various Protestant Missions ; but
when we leave the Presidency and travel southwards, we shall find
a much greater number in almost every province.
In the rich and populous province of Tanjore, in connexion
with the Missions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
which were founded by the venerable Swartz, there is a native
Christian community, comprising about 5,000 souls ; and about
half that number are connected with the revived Lutheran
(Leipsic) Mission of Tranquebar. In those old Missions, Christian
life and missionary zeal had sunk to a low point, in consequence
of the retention of caste distinctions ; but within the last fifteen
years the Gospel Propagation Society's Mission in Tanjore has
been greatly purified and invigorated. The parochial system has
been introduced, and the native congregations brought under
efficient superintendence ; education has made rapid progress ;
one of the best training seminaries in the country has been
brought into operation : caste, the source of so many mischiefs,
has been repressed ; and though, in consequence of these refor
mations, especially in consequence of the systematic discourage
ment of caste, the numbers of the Christian community have been
diminished, the gain to the Christian cause has been more than
equivalent.
Further south, in the adjacent province of Madura, a province
peculiarly rich in historical associations, the American Board of
12 PROGRESS OP CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
Missions, a Presbyterian and Congregationalist Society, has occu
pied the field in great force. I remember the commencement
of that Mission, and happened some years after to travel through
the province. At that time not a single convert had been
made. On returning to this country three years ago, on my way
from Tinnevelly to Madras, I again passed through the district
occupied by the American Mission, and found that the number of
native converts had increased in the intervening period from nil
to between 4,000 and .5,000. The interesting and hopeful move
ment which is going forward in that province appears to have
originated in the influence of Tinnevelly Christianity. This was
admitted by the American Missionaries themselves, and two of
their number were deputed a few years ago to visit Tinnevelly,
and go from station to station, for the purpose of making them
selves acquainted with the details of our Missionary system. In
the same province there are several old congregations connected
with the Gospel Propagation Society, and an interesting offshoot
from that Mission has recently been established amongst the
Poliars of the Pulney Hills, a poor, long- oppressed, simple-
minded race, to whom the reception of the Gospel has been as life
from the dead.
On the western side of the Ghauts, the great mountain-range
of Southern India, Christianity is also making progress. The
Missionaries of the Basle Missionary Society have been labouring
for the last twenty years in the provinces of Malabar and Canara,
on the Malabar coast, and when I last heard of their progress,
their converts from heathenism amounted to 2,000. Further
south, on the same coast, there are the interesting Missions of the
Church Missionary Society in the native states of Travancore and
Cochin. I have not been long enough in India to remember the
commencement of those Missions, but I have twice visited their
principal stations, and on the occasion of my second visit, after an
interval of nine years, I found both the number of Missionaries
and the number of the native Christians under their care nearly
doubled. It was particularly gratifying to find that the new
converts who had been gathered in were not like the first converts,
PROGRESSION IN THE SOUTII. 13
proselytes from the Syrian Church an old and interesting,
though corrupted, Christian communion, but were direct acces
sions from heathenism, especially from classes of heathens that
had never before been reached. Amongst those newly-reached
classes are the "Hill-kings," a race of rude, aboriginal moun
taineers, living mostly in trees, and rarely before seen by any
European eye. The Church Missionary Society's Missions in
those districts comprise nearly 6,000 converts, who have to con
tend with greater difficulties than any other native Christians in
southern India, in consequence of the heathenism of the Malayala
people being the most intense and fanatical with which I am
acquainted, and the government of the country being heathen.
Further south still, in the Tamil portion of the Travancore
country, are the Missions of the London Missionary Society, the
most important and successful Missions of that Society in India,
and which in the list of Indian rural Missions rank next to
those of the Church of England in Tinnevelly. In connexion
with those Missions there are upwards of 18.000 converts to
Christianity, nearly all of whom speak the same language as our
own converts in Tinnevelly, belong to the same castes and classes,
and may be regarded as the same people ; and though in point of
numbers they are considerably behind our Tinnevelly Christians,
yet in education, public spirit, missionary zeal, and liberality in
contributions to charitable objects, they have made, in proportion
to their numbers, at least equal progress.
I now come, last of all, to Tinnevelly, the province in which it
was my own privilege to labour during the greater part of my
Indian life. Tinnevelly is the most southern province on the
Coromandel coast) lying immediately to the south of Madura, and
though a peculiarly hot, sandy, and unattractive region, it claims
to be regarded by the Christian with pecxiliar interest ; for there
the eye and heart wearied elsewhere with proofs of the power
and prevalence of heathenism are gladdened by the sight of the
largest, the most thriving, and the most progressive Christian
community in India. The only Missions anywhere in the East
which are said to be equally or more progressive, are those of the
14 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
American Baptists amongst the Karens in Burmah ; but as I am
not personally acquainted with those Missions, I am unable to
say whether this representation is correct. In the subsequent
Lectures I hope to describe more fully the Missions in Tinnevelly;
it will suffice at present to say, that in that province alone, through
the united instrumentality of the Church Missionary Society and
the Society for tlie Propagation of the Gospel, 20 missionary dis
tricts have been formed, and 43,000 persons men, women, and
children rescued from heathenism and brought under Christian
instruction ; and that now, amongst other signs of approaching
maturity, considerable progress is being made by the native
Church towards the support of its own institutions without
foreign aid. It is true that much remains to be done before our
Christian community in Tinnevelly is in all respects worthy of
the Christian name, and that there, as elsewhere, Christian pro
fession and public spirit are not always accompanied by personal
piety ; but it is necessary, and very consolatory, to bear in mind
that in what has already been accomplished there is much reason
for thankfulness, and that the degree in which old things have
already passed away is an encouragement to us to hope that in
due time all things will become new.
In one of my subsequent lectures I will endeavour to give a
fair estimate of Hindu Christianity, and to prove that, whatever
be its defects, it includes a large amount of real sincerity;
but I may here remark, that the liberality with which the
religious members of the Anglo-Indian community contribute
to missionary purposes is a pleasing testimony to the reality
of the work which is going forward. Though the English in
India do not number more than 60,000 souls, the great majority
of whom are private soldiers, the average amount contributed in
India for the promotion of missionary objects has been estimated
at about 40,OOOZ. per annum. The list of contributors will be
found to include the names of many judges and magistrates, heads
of departments and governors, men of high official standing and
of long Indian experience, who testify, not only by their contri
butions, but oftentimes by their counsel and co-operation, their
MISSIONARY HARMONY. 15
estimate of the importance of the work. There is something in
structive also in the proportionate amount of their subscriptions.
If the eye runs down a list of Anglo-Indian contributors to any
missionary or charitable object, more donations of 100 rupees
(10Z.) will be discovered than of sovereigns in this country.
It is an interesting feature of real missionary work everywhere,
and certainly not less so in India than in other parts of the
world, that it is carried on with so small an admixture of party-
spirit. In Tinnevelly, for example, we may confidently say,
" Behold how good and joyful it is for brethren to dwell together
in unity." Generally, the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel and the Church Missionary Society have chosen different
and distant spheres of labour, the former labouring chiefly in the
Colonies, the latter exclusively amongst the heathen; but in
India the spiritual care of our own countrymen being provided
for by the East India Company's Ecclesiastical Establishment,
aided by the efforts of Additional Clergy Societies, the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel is set free to labour, like the younger
Society, amongst the heathen alone; and in Tinnevelly, the Mis
sionaries of both Societies labour not only in adjacent districts of
the same province, but in one and the same department of work.
Under these circumstances some antagonism or jealousy might
possibly have been apprehended ; but so far from anything of the
kind having appeared, I only wish that all Christ's ministers in
this country were labouring in their Master's cause with anything
like equal harmony and brotherly cordiality. Two Bishops of
Madras, the Bishop of Calcutta, and the Bishop of Victoria,
observed, and recorded their gratification in observing, the good
feeling which existed, and the last public expression of that
feeling which took place before I left Tinnevelly was one which
was peculiarly interesting to myself. The Missionaries and a few
European catechists of both Societies met in my house for prayer
and conference, and for the transaction of business connected with
various societies which are supported in common; and on that
occasion I had the pleasure of receiving twenty-eight guests, of
whom nineteen belonged to the Church Missionary Society, and
16 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
nine to the Society for the Propagation of tlie Gospel. Seven of
the guests were native clergymen. Whatever differences exist, or
are supposed to exist, between the two Societies, they relate, not to
actual missionary work, but to preliminaries ; and when once those
preliminaries are settled, when Missionaries of either society have
actually been appointed to a station, and their work is commenced,
no appreciable difference remains. All labour alike under epis
copal superintendence, with the same purpose in view, in the same
spirit, and in substantial conformity to the same principles of
action. The only strife which I ever observed between the two
Societies was of a friendly, Christian sort, which conduced greatly
to the advantage of both. C. M. S., with her larger body of
Missionaries, and her boundless finances, would always endeavour
to outstrip S. P. G. ; and poor S. P. G., though sadly crippled
by poverty and even by debt, would always endeavour not to be
outstripped.
It is not only, however, with respect to the mutual relations
of the two great Societies of the Church of England that party-
spirit has been successfully repressed in India ; it has been re
pressed within much wider limits.
In this old Christian country, the church of Christ, the com
munity of baptized believers, which ought to be in all things an
example to new Christian communities in distant lands, is rent
into hostile sects and parties, each of which is accustomed to look
only on " its own things," and too often thinks it serves God by
ignoring God's gifts to its neighbours. The missionary spirit,
which is the spirit of Christ and of love, has done much to
mitigate both the spirit of divisiveness and the spirit of exclu-
siveness; but, partly from the resistance which relentless theories
offer to charity, and partly from ignorance, few even of the friends
of Missions in England seem to have much relish for looking upon
" the things of others." In India, and throughout the Mission-
field, the missionary spirit has freer scope, and has generally
brought about a more satisfactory state of things. The religious
divisions which originated in England, and which are fed from
England, have not, it is true, been healed in India; but the
F1UE!X 7 DLY KON-INTERFEHENCE. 17
feelings out of which those divisions arose have been repressed,
and care has been taken that they should have as few opportu
nities as possible of breaking out into action. The various
Missionary Societies, on sending out Missionaries to India, have
generally selected, as the sphere of their labours, some extensive
district some province or kingdom in which the name of
Christ was entirely, or almost entirely, unknown; and in such
unoccupied regions they have located their Missionaries, in the
hope that they would not be tempted to interfere with tba Mis
sionaries of any other Society, and that they would be exemps
from the danger of being themselves interfered with. This is the
rule which has generally been acted upon in Southern India ; and
hence, in most Provinces, Christianity exhibits but one phase.
In Malabar and Canara, the only Mission is that of the Lutherans ;
in the Cochin and Malayalam-speaking portion of Travancore,
that of the Church Missionary Society; in the Tamil portion of
Travancore, that of the London Missionary Society ; in Tinne-
velly, those of the two Church of England Societies; in the
greater part of Madura, that of the American Board of Missions.
This is undoubtedly the general rule, and although there are
exceptions, the only exception of any importance is that of the
Leipsic Society. That Society has intruded into almost every part
of the field of labour occupied by the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in the province of Tanjore, and received with open
arms all who have seceded from our congregations on the ground
of our discouragement of caste. Were it not for this lamentable
exception, it might have been said that the antagonism of rival
sects and parties is unknown in the Indian Mission-field, and
that though the religious divisions of Europe exist, they have
been deprived of their sting. After all, this is an exceptional
case, and the general rule is that which I have mentioned.
The Missionaries of the various Societies cannot, it is true,
amalgamate ; even cooperation, in the proper sense of the term, is
impracticable. But if there is no amalgamation and no coope
ration, at any rate, with the solitary exception referred to, there
is no antagonism, because there is no proselytism. The rule by
10 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
which all consent to be bound is that of friendly non-interference;
and hence when Missionaries of different communions or of
different Societies meet, they meet, not as opponents, but as
friends and brethren. Even if it should so happen that they are
not endowed with any extra largeness of heart, where Christians
of any sort are so few and far between, and where Christianity is
wrestling for its very existence with a dominant and hateful
heathenism, they feel that they cannot afford to "ignore" one
another. In the presence of Nan a Sahib, the difference between an
English churchman and an English dissenter shrinks into a
microscopic point. So anxious are most Missionaries to avoid
the possibility of collision, that where the Missionaries of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and those of the American
Board of Missions found themselves working in the same neigh
bourhood, in the confines of Madura and Tinnevelly, where it was
impossible to fix a boundary-line, tho Missionaries of the former
Society proposed, and the Missionaries of both Societies agreed,
that neither Society should be at liberty to establish a school or
congregation within a mile of any place where the other Society
already had either. Such rules and such feelings have their
counterpart in every other portion of the Mission-field. I need
not remind the readers of the publications of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel, how entirely they are in agreement
with the sentiments and practice of the South-African Bishops,
and the Bishop of New Zealand.
Even in the greater cities of India, where the excellent rule
referred to cannot be acted upon, and where the Missionaries of
various Societies carry on their work in somewhat of a promis
cuous manner, it would be an error to suppose that the conversion
of the Hindus to Christ is hindered by the spectacle of a divided,
quarrelsome Christianity. Divisions do, it is true, exist, and it is
a pity that they do ; but at any rate it is a consolation that they
are not apparent to the Hindu".
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
HINDU OPINION RESPECTING DIVERSITIES. 19
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 ; that they all offer to
the same God, through the same Mediator, the " reasonable
service" of prayers and praises in the vernacular language; when
they find also that they are all alike, or as nearly alike as indi
vidual peculiarities will permit, in purity and elevation of cha
racter ; that they live on terms of friendly intercourse with one
another, repudiate mutual proselytism, and evidently rejoice in
one another's successes, they cannot but regard them as teachers
of one and the same religion, bearing the united testimony of
many independent witnesses to the truths which they teach in
common. It is also to be borne in mind that Brahmanism is
peculiarly tolerant of diversities. The Hindus are accustomed to
regard truth, not as one-sided, but as many-sided, and their most
popular philosophy represents this as a necessary result of Divine
knowledge coming in con tact with the multiplied varieties of human
ignorance. It will be considered by some persons a more legiti
mate ground of consolation that heathens cannot become acquainted
with any matter on which a really serious difference exists amongst
Christians until after they have made up their minds to become
Christians themselves. The only doctrines which are, or can be,
preached to heathens are those on which all Protestant Christians
are agreed, and questions respecting the nature and authority of the
ministry and the government of the Church necessarily lie over
till heathens have been converted and admitted into the Church.
I cannot admit that there is any dereliction of principle in
volved in the system of mutual forbearance which I have now
described. We exemplify our own principles in our own sphere,
and teach our own converts our own views: \re merely refrain
from unwarranted intermeddling with the labours of others. There
is no disposition on the part of the Missionaries of the Church
of England to give up or to undervalue the order and the cohe-
20 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
rence, the strength and the beauty of the organization which has
descended to us from primitive times ; and in this race of systems,
v/herever ours should rank, it certainly does not rank hindmost.
Everywhere, it is true, more depends upon the man than upon
his system. A good, devoted man with a defective system will
do more good than a feeble-minded, unearnest man with the best
system in the world : but I will say, and I say it without any
disparagement of the results which Christians of other commu
nions have effected, that where the system of the Church of
England is administered by men who are worthy of it, where it
is enabled to free itself from the complications and trammels
which, like parasitic plants, have twined themselves round it in
the course of ages, but which are no part of itself, where it
freely' adapts itself to the circumstances of the place, and incor
porates into itself all the good it finds there, it is one which
cannot easily be matched; and every one who has visited our
Missions in Tinnevelly, where this course has generally been
followed, will admit, I think, that the condition of those Missions
goes far to prove this point.
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.
I cannot forbear adding, that whilst some other communions are
doing more than could reasonably have been expected, and whilst
the Missionary Societies of the Church of England have shown
their capacity for doing well whatever they are enabled to do,
there are multitudes of persons, calling themselves members of
the Church of England, who either render those Societies no help
whatever in their great work, or mock them with help of the
most niggardly kind. If higher and more worthy motives should
PROPORTION OF MISSIONARIES. 21
fail to kindle in the minds of such persons some missionary zeal,
I would bring before them, if I could reach their ear, a few facts
which might perhaps " provoke them to jealousy."
In 1852, when an analysis of the missionary statistics of India
was made, it appeared that the two Societies of the Church of
England employed in India and Ceylon 138 Missionaries, or, if we
add European Catechists, as was done in the enumeration of the
Missionaries of the non-Episcopal Societies, the number may be
raised to 160. Now, one of the facts which I should wish
" easy-going" churchmen to become acquainted with is, that at
the same period the Missionaries of the non-Episcopal societies
numbered 30G. Surely the proportion between those numbers is
not what it ought to be. In so far as results are concerned, the
scale undoubtedly turns more in our favour; for whilst our
Missionaries were but 34 per cent, of the entire number, the
native converts connected with our Missions amounted to 57 per
cent. But though we may hope that God's blessing will continue
to rest upon our labours, it is unsatisfactory to find that our
labours fall so far short of those of others ; and it may be added,
that in the end Providence is generally found to favour most
those who labour most. There is an important truth at the
bottom of Bonaparte's irreverent saying, " Providence sides with
heavy battalions."
Another fact, which some persons will be still less prepared to
hear, is, that the Americans and the Germans are doing far more
for India, proportionately to their interest in it, than is being
done by English churchmen. India has been expressly com
mitted, by Divine Providence, to the care of England, and
England derives from India immense temporal advantages.
America has received no special call to evangelize India ; yet the
two non-Episcopal Missionary Societies of the United States main
tain in India and Ceylon no less than 67 Missionaries. When we
compare this number with the 100 Missionaries maintained by the
Church Missionary Society, and the 60 maintained by the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel, I think it must be admitted
that the comparison, in so far as it is an indication of zeal and
22 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
enterprise, is not very much in our favour. Is it not well
fitted to " provoke us to jealousy," that the Presbyterians and
Congregationalists of the United States should feel themselves
obliged to send Missionaries to the British possessions in India, to
teach Christianity to the subjects of the British crown ?
The zeal of the Germans for the evangelization of India puts
us to still greater shame. It is considered as a matter of course
that the Germans should know more about the antiquities of
India, as of every other country, than we do ; but if so " prac
tical " a people as we are should be left behind by the Germans
in so practical a work as the propagation of the Gospel in our
own territories, it would justly be considered, not as a matter of
course, but as a national disgrace.
What, then, are the facts 1 The small and poor Basle Mis
sionary Society employs 27 Missionaries in India ; the smaller
and poorer Leipsic and Berlin-Gossner Societies, 34 ; and 38
Germans are employed by English Societies, most of them by the
Church Missionary Society. Thus, in all 99 Germans are labour
ing as Missionaries in India ; and though nearly half of that
number are supported by English funds, yet surely to give men,
for such a cause, especially such men as many of them are, is a
greater proof of interest in it than to give money. Leaving out
of account whence their support is derived, leaving also out of
account their present ecclesiastical connexion, and looking only at
the country where they were born and bred, and where they
received their first missionary impulse, I find that there is a
larger number of Germans labouring as Missionaries in the British
possessions in India than of English-born members of the Church
of England. Can any member of the Church of England can
any Englishman feel satisfied with this state of things ?
It is a token for good that the funds of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel, as those of her sister, the Church Mis
sionary Society, are steadily increasing. Our income for the last
year (1856) exceeded that of the previous year by 3,000?., and
the previous year's income exceeded that of the one before by
15,0001. It is now possible, therefore, for the Society to do :nore
IMPROVEMENT IN FUNDS. 23
for India. I arn aware that our ever-increasing colonies have the
first claim upon its assistance ; but, notwithstanding that admis
sion, I greatly regret that the number of its Missionaries and the
amount of its expenditure in India have hitherto borne so very
small a proportion to the work which is to be accomplished. Few
of our friends are aware how far we have been left behind in the
race by other Societies. In 1856, leaving out of account sums
raised and expended in India, the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel expended on Indian Missions 19,000?., of which
2,800?. were absorbed by Bishop's College, Calcutta. This is
no doubt, a considerable sum, and it betokens the existence of a
considerable degree of interest in the welfare of India ; but it
shrinks into less imposing dimensions when compared with the
amounts expended by other Societies. Leaving out, as before,
sums raised in India, the Church Missionary Society expended
during the same period on Indian Missions 44,000?., the London
Missionary Society 20,500?., and even the American Board of
Missions one of the two American Societies labouring in India
17,000?. May I not reasonably wish that the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel the oldest of all our Societies stood
higher in the scale ? The Society would be delighted to have it
in its power to expend more ; but it can expend only what it
receives. If its friends would open their hearts and hands, and
promote its cause with a more affectionate zeal, and if the
number of its friends should be increased, we should undoubtedly
be enabled to move forward ; but if otherwise, in answer to the
cry of India, " Come over, and help us," the Society will be
obliged to send out, not Missionaries, but regrets.
I am happy to say that this fear has been dispelled, and that
the aid I hoped for has been granted. Within a month after I
gave expression in the Colonial Church Chronicle to these regrets
and hopes, the Financial Committee of the /Society for the Pro
pagation of the Gospel reported upon a plan for the expenditure
of the Society's increased income, and an additional grant of
3,000?. a year, for three years, was voted for the extension of
Indian Missions. Thus whilst Providence is so loudly calling upon
24 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
us to go forward, whilst new openings for usefulness are daily pre
senting themselves to us, we shall no longer be under the necessity
of abandoning our outposts and narrowing the circle of our use
fulness, as we had latterly been obliged to do in India, but will
be enabled, I trust, to follow whither Providence leads.
I am truly thankful to record this improvement in the Society's
position, and I trust that it is not only in itself a considerable
step in advance, but a sign and pledge of progressive improve
ment. All that has been accomplished as yet may be described
as only a promising beginning. More has been done in Tinne-
velly than in any other province in India, and yet very much
remains to be done before all Tinnevelly is Christianized. 43,000
souls have been brought under Christian instruction in that one
province, but more than 1,200,000 souls remain in darkness
still ! It is frequently our duty still, in the ordinary course of our
labours in Tinnevelly, within the limits even of our Missionary
parishes, to pass through village after village, teeming with a
busy population, in which all classes of society " old men and
maidens, young men and children," vie with each other, not in
praising and serving God, but in praising and serving devils.
Much remains to be done atao before every Indian province, or
even every province in the Madras Presidency, becomes a Tiune-
velly ; for, with the exception of the three or four most southern
provinces, Southern India has witnessed no greater Missionary
progress than the Presidencies of Bengal and Bombay. Even in
Southern India I could mention twelve or thirteen Zillahs or
provinces, each with an average population of nearly a million of
souls, in all which there is not a single Missionary of the Church
of England. In most of those provinces there are one or two
Missionaries of other societies ; but in the Hyderabad country,
which is connected with Madras in ecclesiastical matters, though
politically connected with Bengal, and in which there is a popu
lation of ten millions, the great majority of them Telugu people
and heathens, there is not a single European Missionary connected
with any Protestant communion. There is an excellent native
Missionary labouring there, a Missionary of the Society for the
MISSIONARY C1USIS. 25
Propagation of the Gospel ; but lie can scarcely be regarded as a
Missionary to the people of the country. Being himself a Tamil
man, he was sent on a special mission to the Tamil people who
have settled as domestic servants to the Europeans, and as camp
followers in the principal military cantonment; yet the appoint
ment of that solitary native Missionary is all that has been done
for the propagation of Christianity in the territories of the Nizam.
To hope to dispel the darkness of ten millions of heathens and
Mahometans by an isolated effort like that, is surely little better
than if we should hope to illuminate London by means of a single
candle stuck upon the top of St. Paul's !
I trust, however, that more will soon be done for India in
general, and more also for Tinnevelly, to which my own mind
naturally reverts when I think of the future. Supposing the
congregations already gathered in in Tinnevelly, able to stand
alone without foreign aid, which I hope they will, ere long, be
able to do, it will then become only more clearly our duty and
a delightful duty it will be to lengthen our cords, and strengthen
our stakes, and endeavour to gather in more and more of the
surrounding heathenism. Hinduism, which wears a calm and
tolerant face when it fears no danger, has recently shown, by its
combination with Mahometan fanaticism, and its ebullitions of
persecuting rage, that it feels the grasp, and fears the power
and progress of its Divine foe. 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. The additional grant
which the Society has recently been enabled to make for the
extension of Indian Missions, provides us with funds sufficient
for a considerable advance in each of the Presidencies ; and now
c
26 PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.
all that we want is an adequate supply of men of the proper
sort. " The harvest truly is great, and the labourers are few ; "
and without the help of additional labourers, men of piety, de-
votedness, and energy, the harvest cannot be gathered in. " Say
not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest. Lift
up your eyes, and look on the fields ; for they are white already
unto harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth
fruit unto life eternal." The real work of Missions, the work of
winning souls to Christ, is a spiritual work, and can only be done
by spiritual men. Living men alone are competent to place
" living stones " in the wall of the spiritual temple. But such
men are not to be purchased by money ; no organization, however
perfect no ordination, however valid, can confer life. If we wish
Christian men, animated by the living, loving Spirit of Christ, to
be raised up and sent forth to do Christ's work in India, such men
must be sought for in Christ's Spirit, and in accordance with
Christ's commands, by earnest prayers to Himself; for surely He
is more deeply interested than we can be in the extension and
prosperity of his own work.
" Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that He would
thrust forth labourers into his harvest."
PHYSICAL FEATURES.
LECTURES
ON
THE TINNEVELLY MISSIONS,
DESCRIPTIVE OF THE FIELD, THE WORK, AND THE EESULTS.
LECTURE I.
THE FIELD.
Tinnevelly* is one of those " Collectorates," " Zillahs," or pro
vinces, each comprising about a tenth of the area of England, into
which British India is divided, and is the most southerly province
on the eastern side of India, or, as it is termed, the Coromandel
Coast. Cape Comorin, the southern extremity of the Indian
peninsula, is included in the native state of Travancore, on the
Malabar or Western Coast ; but Tinnevelly may be regarded as
commencing at Cape Comorin, for it commences only about three
miles to the east of the Cape. It contains an area of 5,482 square
miles, and a population of 1,269,216 souls; consequently, the
population amounts to 233 in the square mile, which is exactly
* I once visited a certain town in England for the purpose of attending
a Missionary Meeting, and on my arrival at the clergyman's house, was
accosted thus: " Oh, Mr. C., you have arrived just in time to settle a
dispute between my wife and me. We have been disputing as to where
Tinnevelly is : my wife maintains it is in India, and I maintain it is in
South-Africa ; now, which of us is right?" On another occasion I was
actually advertised in a large town as " a Missionary from Tinnevelly,
Southern- Africa." I have learned from such mistakes that many highly
respectable persons are not very deep in Oriental geography, and that in
descriptions of India and Indian Missions one can scarcely enter too minutely
into details.
C2
28 TDfNEVELLY MISSIONS THE FIELD.
equal to the average population of the midland counties in
England. Tinnevelly is separated from Travancore by the great
mountain chain of the Ghauts, which form its western boundary,
and on the east it is bounded by the Gulf of Manaar, by which it
is separated from Ceylon. Its greatest length to the north-east is
about 120 miles, and its greatest breadth from east to west about
75 miles.
The southern extremity of the province being only 8 5' north
of the equator, the heat is necessarily very great. During the
whole period of my residence in Tinnevelly, I never noticed the
thermometer lower than 70, and rarely so low as that. When it
sinks to 75 we call it cold weather, and put on additional
clothing. Though our so-called cold weather is warmer than the
average of summer heat in England, it is a comfort that during
the hot season the thermometer is not proportionately high. I
have not known it higher in my own house at any period of the
year than 91, and it is rarely more than a few degrees higher
even in the hottest localities. This would be reckoned a very
moderate degree of summer heat in Northern India, where, though
it sometimes sinks in the cold weather to the freezing-point, it
rises in the hot season to 110 or even 120 in the shade. In
Tinnevelly such violent extremes of temperature are unknown,
the annual range being rarely more than 20 ; but owing to the
entire absence of cold weather, properly so called, the aggregate of
heat throughout the year is much greater than in Northern India.
We have not the alternatives of being roasted one part of the
year and frozen the other, but gently simmer over a slow fire the
whole year round. On the other hand, the heat of Tinnevelly is
:not a moist, enervating heat, like that of the Malabar Coast and
Oeylon, but a dry, healthy heat ; and there are few provinces in
India which agree so well, on the whole, with the European con
stitution. As there is no province in India where Missionaries
are more numerous, so there is none where they enjoy better
health or are able to remain longer in their spheres of duty.
Though the dryness of the air may be conducive to the health of
the inhabitants, it is far from being conducive to the fertility of
PHYSICAL PEATUJIES. 29
the soil. The drought is so excessive, that much of the land lies
uncultivated. On the southern coast, where my own residence
was, the average annual fall of rain was only 22 inches, which is
less than the average fall in England j and three -fourths of the
entire quantity fell during a single month, November. Only 35
inches of rain were registered during the three years that elapsed
before I left ! This excessive drought is owing to the influence
of the Ghauts, the great mountain range, or rather mountain-
plateau, by which Southern India is divided into two portions,
the Coromandel and Malabar coasts. The steep sides of this
plateau form a continuous chain of mountains from near Cape
Comorin for about 200 miles northwards, and the breadth of the
plateau gradually increases from a single rock at the Cape to
about 80 miles at " the Coimbatoor gap." The average height
of the ridge is about 3,000 feet, but there are peaks which rise
to double that height. This elevated range acts as an effectual
barrier to the rains of the South- West monsoon, which is the
great monsoon, or periodical rainy season, of India, and to which
the greater part of India owes its fertility. On the Malabar
Coast, the western side of the Ghauts, there is a great abundance
of rain : consequently, we have there perpetual verdure, and per
petual fertility and beauty ; for in the tropics, wherever we have
rain, we have all the elements of vegetable wealth. But on the
eastern side of the Ghauts, on the Coromandel Coast, including
the whole of the Carnatic, the supply of rain from the South-West
monsoon is almost entirely intercepted by the Ghauts : the North-
Eastern monsoon, which is the special monsoon of the Coromandel
Coast, compensates but partially for the absence of the South-
Western ; and the evil reaches its maximum in Tinnevelly, which
is not only shut out from the South- West monsoon, but is robbed,
by the vicinity of Ceylon, of half its due share of the North-Eastern.
Ceylon does not lie wholly to the south of India, as is sometimes
supposed ; its northern extremity is nearly two degrees to the
north of Cape Comorin, and hence the whole length of Tinnevelly
is overlapped by it. Though so little rain falls in Tinnevelly, and
though the greater part of the province suffers severely in conse-
30 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE FIELD.
quence, there are regions which are as fertile and beautiful as the
eye could desire. Besides smaller rivers, there is one of considerable
magnitude, and of great celebrity and sacredness, the Tamravarni,
or " copper-coloured " river, which irrigates and fertilizes the ex
tensive tract of country through which it flows ; and as this river
rises in the Ghauts, it is filled by the rains of both monsoons, so
that two crops of rice every year are produced all along its banks.
.Similar advantages are enjoyed by the rich and beautiful districts
in the vicinity of the mountains ; and hence, though Tinnevelly
does not participate directly in the rains of the South- Western
monsoon, yet in the neighbourhood of the rivers and mountains it
participates indirectly, yet largely, in the fertilizing influences of
those rains. In consequence of this, in the amount of revenue
derived from " wet cultivation," that is, rice, &c., Tinnevelly ranks
next to Tanjore amongst South-Indian provinces.
Notwithstanding the advantages enjoyed by particular portions
of the province, nine-tenths of the entire area are parched and
arid through excessive drought, and there are districts as sandy,
burnt up, and dreary as any in the deserts of Africa. I have
stood on a mountain peak about twenty miles from Cape Comorin,
from which both Travancore and Tinnevelly are visible at once,
and have been exceedingly struck with the difference ; Travan
core beautifully green, and diversified with hill and dale, wood,
lake, and river ; Tinnevelly an immense fiery-red plain, with
signs of cultivation few and far between. On closer acquaintance,
-the reality is found to be better than the appearance ; for the
" regur," or blistered "black cotton soil" of the northern dis
tricts is well adapted to the growth of cotton, about 60,000 bales
of which are annually shipped at Tutocorin for England and
China, besides what is retained for use in Tinnevelly itself, and
.the adjacent provinces : the red sands also of the South-Eastern
districts are admirably suited to the growth of the palmyra palm.
In those districts in which the majority of our Mission Churches
are planted, the chief dependence of the people is upon the
palmyra, which is to them what rice is in Bengal, or wheat in
England the staff of life. During the brief and scanty rains of
THE PAIMYRA. 31
the North-Eastern monsoon, a crop of pulse and of inferior sorts of
grain is raised from the better kinds of soil ; and where water is
available for irrigation, the plantain, or banana, is largely and
successfully cultivated. Along the lower slopes of the " t6ries," or
red sand hills, which form so peculiar a feature of the South-
Eastern palmyra districts, the water lies near the surface, and is
available for plantain gardens ; and hence each of those slopes is
beautified by a belt of the richest, brightest green, which presents
a grateful contrast to the uncultivated, naked, fiery-red ridges of
the "t6ries." The staple produce, however, of the sandy districts
is the palmyra. If one were to judge from abstract probabilities,
he might expect to find those districts uninhabited ; but Divine
Providence is there as well as here, and it has pleased Providence
to ordain that the palmyra palm should flourish more luxuriantly
in those sands than in any other part of the East, and should
feed an abundant population with its saccharine sap. The sandy
districts in the South-East teem with human life, and it is remark
able that it is amongst the inhabitants of those districts that
Christianity has made greatest progress. Hitherto, from a variety
of causes, Christianity and the palmyra have appeared to flourish
together. Where the palmyra abounds, there Christian congrega
tions and schools abound also ; and where the palmyra disappears,
there the signs of Christian progress are rarely seen.
As the majority of the people who have been converted from
heathenism in Tinnevelly, and who form the bulk of our Christian
congregations, are cultivators of the palmyra, and as most of my
own sphere of labour was included in the palmyra forest, I shall
here give my readers a description of that remarkable tree.
The palmyra is one of the least elegant of the family of palms,
but is, perhaps, the most useful member of the family. It grows
to the height of from GO to 90 feet, almost as straight, though not
as smooth, as the mast of a ship. Like other palms, it is totally
destitute of branches, but is surmounted by an erect plume of
fan-shaped leaves, each of which is so large that it may almost be
regarded as a branch. Each leaf is shaped like a fan, not pinnated
like that of the coco-nut palm, whence it has received its botanical
32 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE FIELD.
name of Borassus flaldliformis, or " fan-shaped Borassus."* The
leaves are stiffer and much less graceful than the long, drooping
leaves of the coco-nut, but of all leaves they are the most ser
viceable to man. They are not only used for thatching the houses
of the middle and lower classes, but are also used for making mats,
baskets, and vessels of almost every description ; and a single leaf
folded in a particular manner serves as a bucket for drawing water
with. But the leaf of the palmyra is put to a still more remark
able use : slips of the young leaf form the ordinary stationery of the
Hindus in every part of Southern India. Thus in India the " leaf "
on which people write is literally a leaf. Each ray, or vein, of the
fan-shaped leaf comprises two long slips, and each of those slips
will suffice as writing material for an ordinary letter : a collection
of leaves strung together constitutes a book. The leaf requires no
smoothing or pressing, or any other process of preparation. Just
as it comes from the tree it may be used for writing upon ; and
as nearly a hundred such slips are supplied by a single leaf, and
as a cart-load of leaves may be had for a few shillings, the Hindus
are provided with the cheapest species of stationery in the world.
It is written upon with an iron pen, or graver, an instrument with
a sharp steel point, with which the penman rapidly graves or
scratches the characters ; and though the " olei," or palmyra leaf,
is not as durable as parchment, or even as paper, yet I have seen
documents written on it which were at least 200 years old.
The palmyra is the only palm-tree of which the wood is of any
value, and the rafters and laths made of the palmyra are regarded
as the best of their kind ; but the high estimate in which the
palmyra is held is chiefly owing to the value of its products as
articles of food. The young root is edible, and so is the ripe fruit :
neither, however, is of much value ; the unripe fruit is greatly
preferable, inasmuch as it contains the purest, most wholesome,
and most refreshing vegetable jelly in existence.
" Borassus," the generic name of the palmyra, is one of the names
which the Greeks gave to the membrane that envelopes the fruit of the
Date palm. In after times it came to be used as the botanical name of that
family of palms to which the palmyra belongs. ,
TBODUCTS OF THE PALMYEA. 33
These articles sink into insignificance when compared with the
saccharine sap or juice of the tree, which is by far its most valuable
product. The "patha-mr," or unfermented sap, without any
cooking or preparation, is very nourishing : during the period
when it flows most abundantly, the poorer classes get visibly
sleeker and more comfortable, and you might almost see your face
in the skin of the children. Just as it comes from the tree, the
sap forms the breakfast of the Shanars and lower castes, who drink
it in a cup formed for the occasion of a palmyra leaf. The supply
of sap is greatly in excess of what is required for daily use, and
most of it is boiled into a hard, black mass, called by the English
"jaggery " a kind of coarse sugar-cake, which forms the mid-day
meal of the same classes. Their evening meal, the principal meal
of all Hindus, which is generally of rice, with some curried addita-
ments, is procured by the sale of the superfluous "jaggery." The
greater part of what is made is sold, and it always commands a
ready sale. Some of it is sent to be refined into white sugar for the
European market ; and by varying the process a little, the people
themselves make a very good sugar-candy. It is the unfermented
juice of the palmyra which is used as food : when allowed to
ferment, which it will do before mid-day if left to itself, it is
changed into a sweet, intoxicating drink, called " kal," or " toddy."
This is the liquid which is generally used in India as yeast for
leavening bread, but it is also used by the Pariars and other low-
caste Hindus, especially in the vicinity of large towns, for the
purpose of intoxication. The Shunars, the cultivators of the tree
in the southern provinces, are rarely known to make use of it
for this purpose : as a caste, they are strictly temperate, in which
respect they differ from all other low-caste tribes, and claim to be
ranked with the higher castes. One may travel for miles through
the thickest part of the palmyra forest, without meeting with a
single tree that is licensed to be used for "toddy." Between
Edeyenkoody and Sawyerpuram, a distance of thirty-two miles,
which I have very frequently traversed,, and which is thickly
planted with palmyras throughout, I have only noticed the
existence of one " licensed" tree.
c3
34 TIN^EVELLY MISSIONS THE HELD.
The amount of nourishment which is supplied by the palmyra,
without even the trouble of cooking, might be supposed to operate
as a premium upon indolence ; but, in reality, we find no premium
upon indolence in Tinnevelly, or anywhere else in God's world
a hard-working world, in which it has been made necessary for
every class of people to eat their bread by the sweat of their brow.
The Shanars are as industrious a people as any in India ; and if
this were not their character, the provision made for their wants
would be unavailable, for though their breakfast is ready cooked
for them, it is at the top of the palmyra, and the palmyra is a tall,
slim tree, without a single branch ; hence it is necessary for every
man to climb for his breakfast before he gets it, and the labour of
climbing the palmyra in so hot a climate is one of the hardest and
most exhausting species of labour anywhere to be seen.
The sap of the tree cannot be obtained, as from the maple, by
tapping the trunk ; it flows only from the spadix, or flower-stalk,
at the top of the tree. From amongst the fan-shaped leaves,
which form the plumed head of the palmyra, there shoot forth in
the season several bunches of flower-stalks ; each flower-stalk
branches out into several, and each of those flowering branches,
when bruised or sliced, yields drop by drop about a pint a day of
sweet juice. A little earthen vessel is attached to each " spadix,"
or flower-branch, to receive the sap as it drops ; and it is the
business of such of the Shanars as are palmyra-climbers to cjimb
the tree morning and evening, for the purpose of trimming the
"palei," or spadix, and emptying into a sort of pail made of pal
myra leaf, which they carry up with them, all the sap that they
find collected since their last ascent. The pail is then conveyed
to a little boiling-house in the neighbourhood, where the women
boil the juice into "jaggery." In the northern part of the
Carnatic, the palmyra-climbers make use of a sort of movable
girdle, to help them in climbing the tree ; but in Tinnevelly
and Travancore, in which palmyra-climbing is much more
common, the Shanars make no use of any such artificial assistance.
They clasp the tree with joined hands, and support their weight
not with the knees (which project from the trcv, and of which
PALMYRA- CLIMBING. 35
they make no use,) but with the soles of the feet, which they
bend inwards like the hands, and keep together by the help of
a little band, so as to enable them to clasp the tree almost as the
hands do, and then they ascend, not by the alternate action of
each hand, but by a series of springs, in which both hands move
together and both feet follow together, not unlike the action used
in swimming. A Shanar will climb a palmyra in this manner
almost as rapidly as a man will walk the same length, and most
of them are accustomed thus to climb fifty trees twice a-day, or
even three times a-day, for eight months in the year. Taking
sixty feet as the average height of a palmyra, and the climbing of
fifty palmyras twice a-day, as the average work of an able-bodied
Shanar, we shall form a clear idea of the amount of his work, if
we suppose him, every day for the greater part of every year, to
climb a perpendicular pole 3,000 feet in height, and then to
descend the same pole the same day, ascending and descending
without any apparatus, and supporting the entire weight of his
body by his strength of limb alone ! Surely no harder work than
this has ever been done in a tropical climate. Though the
palmyra may be said to resemble a mast, or pole, it must not be
supposed to be as smooth. The bark is rough from the scars of
former leaves, and this renders the climbing of the tree less
difficult, and also less dangerous, than it would otherwise have
been. Accidents rarely occur, except in high winds, or when
the tree is slippery through recent rain, and not often even then.
I knew of a man who was sitting upon a leaf-stalk at the top of a
palmyra in a high wind, when the stalk gave way, and he came
down eighty feet to the ground, safely and quietly, sitting on
the leaf, which served the purpose of a natural parachute.
No kind of cultivation involves so little trouble or expense as
that of the palmyra. The nut has merely to be cast into the
sand and loosely covered over, and no further thought or care is
necessary till it becomes a tree and begins to bear. The farmer
is often relieved even of the trouble of planting by the crows,
which leave the nut on the ground after devouring the fruit.
Sometimes, for two or three years, no trace of the young palmyra
36 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE HELD.
appears above ground: it might be supposed to have perished,
but it is busily occupied in working its way downwards in search
of water. After about twenty years of neglect, this wonderful
tree which the Hindus praise as the model of the highest sort
of generosity begins to requite its owner for benefits which it
never received.
It is remarkable that the palmyra yields its sweet juice not
during, or at the close of, the rainy season, when it might be
expected to be full of sap, but during the hottest period of the
year. The sap begins to rise when the sun returns from the
south, and flows most copiously when the sun is righb overhead.
The sun is vertical in Tinnevelly in April, and again in August;
and the intervening period including also March and Sep
tember is what is called the palmyra season. When the heat is
BO great and so continuous that every blade of grass disappears
from the parched soil when the air is filled with clouds of red
sand, hurled along by the land-wind, or South- West monsoon,
which mocks with showers of sand the earth's desire for rain
then it is that the palmyra yields the abundance of its cool,
sweet, refreshing sap, for the supply of the wants of the people.
I have dug down through the sandy soil to see where this copious
supply of sap came from, and have found the long, stringy roots
of the palmyra penetrating right down to a depth of forty feet
beneath the surface. There I found them drinking in perpetual
draughts of water in the secret springs and channels that lie far
beneath the surface of the ground, where the greatest droughts
never reach. Even at that depth, I found that they penetrated
still lower into interstices amongst the rocks, where I could follow
them no longer. Here, then, I found the reason why the palmyra
flourishes so well in the sands of Tinnevelly why it flourishes
best where the soil is loosest and sandiest, and why in the
hottest season of the year it pours forth from its head such a
constant supply of cool, sweet moisture. What a remarkable
illustration is this of the wisdom with which Divine Providence
makes the peculiarities of every part of the world minister, in
some way or another, to the support and advantage of mankind !
INHABITANTS OE THE PROVINCE. 37
Most of the Christian converts in Tinnevelly being Shanar?,
and either owners or climbers of the palmyra, at the commence
ment of the climbing season I was accustomed to assemble our
people in church for a special service, including prayers that
the tree might yield its fruit, and that the climber's " foot might
not slide;" and on such occasions I have sometimes reminded
the people of an appropriate expression in our Tamil version of
the psalms Nitima'n panei-pol serippan, " the righteous shall
flourish like the palmyra," (the Tamil rendering of Ps. xcii. 11,
"the righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree," the palmyra
being adopted as the representative of palms in general) : and
I have then reminded my Shanar hearers, that " the righteous,"
for this reason amongst others, may be said to " flourish like the
palmyra," because he, too, strikes his roots deep beneath the
surface the root of faith shoots deep down into the love of
God, and "the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ;" and hence
the righteous " flourishes like the palmyra " in a dry and thirsty
land flourishes most not in the richest soil, but in the poorest,
in afflictions and persecutions, and is continually bringing forth
fruit for the refreshment of mankind. Thus, in Tinnevelly, as
everywhere else in the world, there are " sermons " in trees and
stones, "and good in everything."
Our attention must now be turned from the country to the
people.
In consequence of Tinnevelly lying at the southern extremity
of the Indian peninsula, there are few provinces in India in which
ancient Hindu usages have been so faithfully preserved. Five
hundred years had elapsed from the time of the arrival of
the Mahometans in India, before the wave of Mahometan
conquest reached and overspread Tinnevelly j and hence the
Mahometans are fewer and less influential here than elsewhere.
The language of the province is Tamil, and the Tamil spoken by
the educated classes in Tinnevelly is singularly pure and classical.
Even amongst the lower classes, notwithstanding their rude pro
nunciation, the language of the ancient poets still lingers. The
Tamravarni, or Palamcottah river, is represented by native
38 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE FIELD.
writers as the southern boundary of the Sen-Tamir nadu, or
" Classical-Tamil country," and the -whole of the province, together
with the southern districts of Travancore, was included in the
ancient Pandiyan empire an empire of which Madura was the
capital city, and which sent two embassies to the Emperor
Augustus.
The inhabitants of Tinnevelly, as of most other provinces in
India, may be divided into the three classes of Brahmans, Sudras,
and lower classes; and, as elsewhere, it is chiefly amongst the
lower classes that Christianity has made progress.
The Brahmans spring from a different origin from the rest of
the Hindus, and claim kindred with ourselves. They are the
lineal representatives of that Sanscrit-speaking race, allied
to the Greeks and Germans, which conquered the Punjab at
least 1500 years before the Christian era, and which rendered
ancient India so illustrious for philosophy, literature, and the
cultivation of the arts. Tinnevelly, like every other part of
India, owes its higher civilization to the Brahmans, who appear
to have formed colonies along the fertile banks of the Tamravarni
six or seven centuries before the Christian era, and gradually
made themselves revered by the aboriginal tribes as their guides,
philosophers, and friends. They founded amongst the Dravidians,
or South-Indians, a succession of civil communities modelled
after the empires of Northern India, and taught the rude chieftains
of the South to imitate the cultivated tastes of the " Solar " and
"Lunar" dynasties. Notwithstanding the value of these services
to society, it is questionable whether they are not outweighed by
the evils which the Brahmans introduced idol worship, a routine
of inane ceremonies, morbid scrupulosity respecting meats and
drinks, an unpractical philosophy, and the division and subdivision
of the people into castes. The Brahmans have become much
more numerous than in the olden time, but much less influ
ential. They still, it is true, rank at the head of native society
as a sacred, priestly aristocracy, which has not degraded itself by
a single intermarriage with the classes beneath it for 2,500 years;
but individually the Brdhmans have now little religious or social
THE BRAHMANS. 39
influence beyond what they possess as respectable landed pro
prietors. The greater number even of the priestly functions,
except in the more important temples, are now performed in
Southern India by Sudras, who form, undoubtedly, the most influ
ential portion of the community; and though they are rarely
more willing than the Brahmans to embrace Christianity, they
seldom evince that, scorn of it, as a foreign or low-caste religion,
which the Brahmans generally evince. So far as I am aware,
only one Tinnevelly Brahman has, as yet, become a Christian.
The un-Brahmanical, or aboriginal Hindus, who are ordinarily
styled " the Tamil people," " the Telugu people," &c., and who
constitute nine-tenths of the population everywhere in Southern
India, belong not to the Aryan or Indo- Germanic, but to the
Turanian or Scythian race that race to which the Mongols, the
Turks, and the Finns belong ; and the vernacular languages of
Southern India, though occupying a distinct position of their own
amongst the various families of human speech, have a greater resem-
Hance to the Finnish tongues than to any other class. The South
Indian aborigines, having received from the Brahmans the elements
of their higher civilization, were divided by their Brahman in
structors into castes, and have become as zealous for caste as the
Brahmans themselves. All the castes into which they were divided
maybe classified into two easily recognized divisions ; viz. the higher
or Sudra group, including the " cultivators," merchants, artificers,
shepherds, &c. ; and the lower castes, beginning with the Shanars,
including the Pariars, and other agricultural slaves, and ending
with the wandering gipsy tribes. I regard the lower castes not
as the descendants of a race of aborigines still older than the
Tamilians, but as the descendants of those Tamilians who
happened to occupy a low position in the social scale, as
servants or slaves, at the period when the Brahmanical caste
system was introduced, and who have been prevented by that
fossilizing system from ever emerging from the position they
then occupied. The Siidra castes of Southern India occupy a
position in society much superior to that of the Sudras in the
North. The castes called by that name in the North belong to
40 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE FIELD.
the lower classes : the Sudras of the South answer closely to our
"middle classes;" they form the staple of population in the
towns and in the richer country districts; manufactures, commerce,
the administration of justice and education, are mainly in their
hands, and it is to them that the people of the lower castes
generally look as their natural heads and guides.
A considerable proportion of the Tinnevelly Sudras in some
districts a large majority of them have sprung from a Telugu
origin, and speak Telugu in their own homes, though they com
municate with their neighbours freely enough in Tamil. They
belong to the Telugu castes of Reddies, Naiks, &c., and are
descendants of those men at arms and adventurers who followed
the fortunes of the Vijaya-nagar generals, by whom the Chola
and Pandiya dynasties were subverted in the fifteenth century,
and who were rewarded for their services by donations of uncul
tivated lands in various districts, especially in the northern part
of Tinnevelly. These Telugu castes rank lower than the corre
sponding Tamil castes in point of social respectability, but in
domestic morals they rank lower still. The married life of the
middle classes of the Tamil people is singularly free from blame ;
but all sorts of irregularities and abominations prevail amongst
the Telugu settlers, and instead of exposing the guilty parties to
disgrace, are sanctioned by the law of the caste. Hence, in
addition to the ordinary difficulties in the way of the reception of
Christianity by persons of caste, the Reddies are deterred from it
(and sometimes, after they hate nominally received it, are
induced to abandon it) by its pure morality. It was from this
cause, amongst others, that the promising movement amongst the
Reddies in the north of Tinnevelly, of which so much was heard
seven or eight years ago, came to nothing.
Though the pure Tamil castes present a favourable contrast to
the Telugu settlers in point of domestic morals, they are con
sidered to be, and probably are, more untruthful and slippery.
They are commonly regarded as the least scrupulous and as the
most adventurous of Hindu races. One can hardly fail to read
n their very look the habit of gaining their purpose by a cir-
THE SUDRAS. 41
cuitous path, and of overcoming opposition not by open resistance,
but by a feigned, temporary compliance.
No Indian people, not even, I think, the Brahmans, have
reached a higher point of civilization than the Tamilian Siidras ;
but their civilization, like that of every Asiatic people, is partial
and unequal. One meets with as many degrees of civilization as
of complexion. Stupendous hewn-stone temples and mean mud-
built habitations, a scrupulous regard for ceremonial purity, and
a shameful disregard of decency and drains, institutions of con
summate policy and follies of which sensible children would be
ashamed, exist everywhere side by side. Indian civilization is
full of inconsistencies and incongruities : it is lacking in expan-
siveness and in progress ; but its most grievous defect consists in
the absence of that scorn of lies and that keen sense of honour
which are inherent in Christian civilization, and which charac
terize the Christian gentleman.
Notwithstanding the high civilization which the high-caste
Hindus, and especially the Tamilians, have reached, and their
fondness for religious speculation and ceremonial, they are deeply
sunk in spiritual ignorance and mental torpor. In no country in
the world does religion enter so largely into the affairs of life and
the usages of society as in India : it pervades the entire frame
work of society, and mixes itself up in every concern, whether
public or private, in which the people are interested ; and yet in
no country has religion exerted so little influence for good. There
are ancient sects and modern sects, austere sects and licentious
sects, high-soaring metaphysical sects and grovelling materialist
sects, sects that worship the gods and sects that worship the
demons, sects that worship the sun and sects that worship the
snake, sects that worship everything and sects that worship
nothing ; but the results of each and all seem exactly iden
tical they leave men where they found them, or make
them worse. They are reckoned by the Brahmans themselves as
equally useful, which means, I presume, that they are equally
useless.
It used to be said by the Duke of Wellington, that " education
42 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE FIELD.
without religion made people clever devils : " recent events in
India prove that this may be said with still greater truth of the
effects of civilization without religion, or, what is still worse, if
possible, civilization with a bad religion. 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. Brahmanism
repudiates exclusiveness ; it incorporates all creeds, assimilates
all, consecrates all. People are permitted to entertain any
opinions they please, and to practise any ceremonies they please,
provided only that the supremacy of the Vedas and of the
Brahmans is acknowledged. When that acknowledgment has
been duly made, the new heterodoxy becomes another new
authoritative orthodoxy, especially revealed by the Supreme
Being himself for the enlightenment and salvation of the parti
cular class of people amongst whom it has become popular. Thus
Brahmanism yields and conquers ; and hence, though the demon-
worship of Tinnevelly is as far as possible repugnant to the
genius of orthodox Hinduism, and was not only independent of
it in origin, but, as I believe, long anterior to it, yet even it has
received a place in the cunningly-devised mosaic of the Brahmans,
and the devils have got themselves regarded as abnormal deve
lopments of the gods.
It is one of the peculiar difficulties that Christianity has to
encounter in dealing with Hindus of the higher and middle castes,
that the religion of the country is so closely intertwined with the
usages of Hindu society. The more punctilious a high-caste
Hindu is in the performance of his religious ceremonies, and in
the maintenance of his caste purity and exclusiveness, the higher
are supposed to be his claims to social respectability. It is not
necessary for him to be a believer in the doctrines of his religien;
DIFFICULTIES ARISING FROM CASTE. 43
but it is absolutely necessary, if he is a man of " good caste" and
in affluent circumstances, that he should carefully practise all its
rites. He cannot keep his place in society, he cannot claim to
be regarded as a gentleman, without affecting to be superstitious.
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. No class of people are so
enslaved to custom and precedent as those who are wealthy and
luxurious without being enlightened.
Another difficulty in the way of the spread of the Gospel
amongst that class is owing to the tyranny of caste. A caste
man may, indeed, become a Christian after a fashion without
giving up his caste, though he cannot become a Christian without
ceasing to be respectable ; but if he should be so thoroughly con
vinced of the truth of Christianity, and so completely disen
thralled by it, as to determine to give up not only his false creed,
but his caste exclusiveness, he must be content to suffer not only
the loss of social status, but the loss of everything which life
holds dear. The government, indeed, will protect his person and
his life; it has recently guaranteed to him also his right to
his paternal inheritance, and so far his condition is better than
that of converts to Christianity under the Roman Emperors ; but
the Government cannot protect him from being abandoned by his
relations, excluded for ever from the society of his equals, and
condemned to life-long reproach and disgrace.
"W hat to require of a caste man on his becoming a Christian,
is a perplexed question involved in many difficulties. If he is
required, as he now generally is, to give up caste at once and
submit to social excommunication, other persons similarly situated
are deterred from following his example, notwithstanding their
conviction of the truth of Christianity, and thus the narrow
44 T1XNEVELLY MISSIONS T1IE HELD.
entrance to the way of life is made narrower : if, on the other
hand, he is received into the Church without giving up caste, in
the expectation that this part of his duty as a Christian will be
fulfilled at some future period, when he has obtained more light
and strength, it is found that the caste usages and unsocial dis
tinctions that have been retained the Canaanites that have been
spared in the land wax stronger, instead of weaker, every year,
and at length begin to pave the way for the re-introduction of
heathenism.
Amongst the Sudra or middle-class portion of the population
of Tinnevelly, Christianity has made, as yet, but little progress.
Of the 43,000 converts who are registered in our church-lists,
not more than a thousand are members of that class, "and the
majority of that thousand belong to the lowest division of it.
The Sudra inhabitants of Tinnevelly have not embraced
Christianity more generally, or shown themselves better disposed
towards it, than persons belonging to similar castes in other
provinces. On the contrary, much greater progress was made
amongst persons of this class in Tanjore by Swartz and his
immediate successors. It is amongst the Sh&na'rs, or palmyra
cultivators, a caste which is almost restricted to Tinnevelly and
South Travancore, that Christianity has made most progress ;
and though the movement has extended to some other castes,
higher and lower in the social scale, almost all the missionary
results for which Tinnevelly is famous have been accomplished
amongst the Shanars. Shana"r Christianity still forms the staple
of the Christianity of Tinnevelly.
In some respects the position of the Shanars in the scale of
castes is peculiar. Their abstinence from spirituous liquors and
from beef, and the circumstance that their widows are not allowed
to marry again, connect them with the Sudra group of castes.
On the other hand, they are]not allowed, as allSudras are, to enter
the temples ; and where old native usages still prevail, they are not
allowed even to enter the courts of justice, but are obliged to offer
their prayers to the gods and their complaints to the magistrates
outside, and their women, like those of the castes still lower, are
SOCIAL POSITION OF THE SHANARS. 45
obliged to go uncovered from the waist upwards. These circum
stances connect them with the group of castes inferior to the
Sudras ; but if they musfc be classed with that group, they are
undoubtedly to be regarded as forming the highest division of it.
A considerable proportion of the Shanars are owners of the land
they cultivate, many are engaged in trade, and some of both those
classes are wealthy, as wealth is estimated amongst peasantry ;
whilst one family, being Zemindars, is entitled to be classed with
the gentry of the province. All of them are, in some shape or
another, engaged in the cultivation of the palmyra, and perhaps
the majority are employed in climbing that tree.
Though the Sh&n&rs rank as a caste with the lower classes, and
though the greater number of them earn their daily bread by their
daily labour, pauperism is almost unknown amongst them. Of the
great majority it may be said, that they are equally removed from
the temptations of poverty and riches, equally removed from the
superficial polish and subtle rationalism of the higher castes, and
from the filthy habits and almost hopeless degradation of the
agricultural slaves. Few of them before their conversion to
Christianity are found to be able to read ; and as they form
almost the entire population in those districts in which they
reside, with little or no opportunity of intercourse with the
better-educated classes, their reception of the Gospel is, in most
instances, the commencement not only of their spiritual life, but
of their intellectual cultivation. Christianity generally finds
their minds undeveloped and their manners almost as rude as
their ideas, but it does not leave them in the condition in which
it finds them. It is the glory of the Gospel that it elevates the
social, mental, and moral condition of every people by whom it is
embraced, and as the Shanars are by no means deficient in prac
tical shrewdness, and are peculiarly willing to be taught, guided,
and modelled by those in whom they confide, when once they are
induced to embrace Christianity with a sincere faith, the progress
they make is peculiarly steady and satisfactory.
In many respects their character is as peculiar as their social
position. They are peculiarly docile and tractable, peculiarly
46 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE FIELD.
fitted to appreciate the advantages of sympathy, guidance, and
protection, and peculiarly accessible to Christian influences.
Though inferior to many of their neighbours in intellectual
attainments, they are by no means inferior to them in sincerity.
Their chief faults dissimulation, litigiousness, and avarice are
the faults of all Hindus ; but with respect, at least, to dissimula
tion, the first and worst of those faults, experience testifies that of
all Hindus they are the least guilty. The strong points of the
Hindu character are patience, good humour, and natural courtesy,
and in these particulars the Shanars are quite on a level with the
rest of the Hindus. Less polished than their neighbours, they
are not less courteous ; less lively, they are not less good-
humoured ; and as for patience, they have been so oppressed and
Harassed ever since they were a people, that it is too frequently
taken for granted that their patience has no limits. Hence if.
their position in the scale of intellect and attainment must be
admitted to be low, perhaps no caste of Hindus occupies, as a
caste, a more respectable position as regards the moral elements
of character. They are a timid people, much exposed to the
rapacity of their high-caste neighbours and landlords, and greatly
wanting in self-reliance. Accustomed to be led, they are re
luctant to be left to themselves, and reluctant to take any step
alone. Very sensitive and touchy with respect to the honour
due to their caste, that is, to their combined personality, they
are apt to resort to combinations for the purpose of gaining caste-
privileges, or revenging caste-injuries ; and though individually
they are easily influenced, there are no combinations more diffi
cult to break or more impracticable than theirs. However
convinced of the truth of Christianity they may be, they can
rarely be persuaded to act upon their own convictions indepen
dently of the course of conduct adopted by their neighbours.
They prefer to wait till a party has been formed, and if the party
becomes tolerably strong, it then not only dares to act for itself,
but often brings with it the entire village community. When a
movement of this sort is in progress, nobody likes to anticipate
his neighbours, and nobody likes to be left behind.
SHANAH CHARACTER. 47
Most of the peculiarities of the social condition and character
of the Shanars, which have now been mentioned, have worked
together for their good, and have contributed either to the recep
tion of Christianity by members of this caste, or to their growth,
in Christian propriety and order after their reception of it.
Obstacles which exist elsewhere have no place amongst them, and
facilities abound amongst them which are rarely met with else
where. We learn from the parable of the Sower, that the
different results which attended the preaching of the Gospel in
different places were owing, not to the seed, for the seed was in
every instance the same, the good seed of the Word, nor to the
sower, for the sower was the Lord Jesus Himself, but to differ
ences in the soil. Now, amongst the Shanars of Tinnevelly we
have the advantage of having a good soil to labour in. In this
instance, as amongst the Karens of Burmah, the seed sown
amongst a peculiar class of people has brought forth [fruit in
peculiar abundance. God's providence may here be observed
making straight in the desert a highway for His Gospel, making
ready a people " prepared for the Lord," prepared to appreciate
Christian teaching and guidance, and prepared to profit by
Christian discipline.
The chief peculiarity in the social condition of the Shanars
prior to their reception of Christianity was the prevalence amongst
them of demonolatry, or the worship of evil spirits. The popular
superstitions of the Hindus may be divided into two classes ; viz.,
the higher or more classical Hinduism, consisting in the worship
of the gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines of the Brah-
manical Pantheon, and the lower or pre-Brahmanical superstition,
deriving its origin from the early inhabitants of India, and con
sisting in the worship of devils.
A similar demonolatry prevailed amongst the Mongols before
their conversion to Buddhism, and amongst the Turks before
their conversion to Mahometanism, and survives up to the
present day amongst the Ostiaka and other heathen tribes in
Siberia. In India, demonolatry is the religion of most of the
rude inhabitants of the mountains and pestilential jungles ; and
48 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE HELD.
in the provinces in the extreme south, which are farthest removed
from the original centres of Brahmanical influence, it prevails
even amongst the civilized and partially Brahmanized peasantry.
Nowhere does it prevail to a greater extent than in Tinnevelly,
where it constitutes the religion of the Shanars and of the whole
of the lower classes, and enters very largely into the religion of
the middle classes. It was from Tinnevelly or the neighbour
hood that demonolatry passed over into Ceylon, where it is mixed
up with the Buddhism of the Singhalese. Amongst the middle
classes in Tinnevelly demonolatry has received a Brahmanical
shape, and pretends to be the worship not of the enemies of the
gods, but of sanguinary emanations and energies of the supreme
divinities ; but amongst the lower classes it wears no such screen
and puts forth no plausible explanations it presents itself as
devil-worship " pure and simple." 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.
The essential features of the demonolatry of Siberia, commonly
called Shamanism, and of the demonolatry of Tinnevelly, are
identical. Neither system knows anything of a regular priest
hood. Ordinarily the head of the family, or the head man of the
community, performs the priestly office ; but any worshipper,
male or female, who feels disposed, may volunteer to officiate, and
the office may at any time be laid aside. Neither amongst the
Shamanites, nor amongst the demonolaters of India, is there any
belief in the transmigration of souls. 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
DEVIL-DANCING. 49
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.
In Tinnevelly, as in Siberia, bloody sacrifices are offered to
appease the anger of the demons ; but the most important and
essential feature in the worship of all demonolaters is " the devil-
dance." The officiating priest, or " devil- dancer," who wishes to
represent the demon, sings and dances himself into a state of
wild frenzy, and leads the people to suppose that the demon they
are worshipping has taken possession of him ; after which he
communicates, to those who consult him, the information he has
received. The fanatical excitement which the devil-dance awakens
constitutes the chief strength and charm of the system, and is
peculiarly attractive to the dull perceptions of illiterate, half-
civilized tribes. The votaries of this system are the most
sincerely superstitious people in India. There is much ceremony,
but little sincerity, in the more plausible religion of the higher
classes ; but the demonolaters literally " believe and tremble."
In times of sickness, especially during the prevalence of cholera,
it is astonishing with what eagerness, earnestness, and anxiety
the lower classes worship their demons.
It might naturally be supposed that a pure and spiritual
religion, like Christianity, would make little progress amongst
a people who are so besotted as to worship devils ; yet in Tinne
velly and the neighbouring provinces it has made greater pro
gress amongst demonolaters than amongst the followers of the
higher Hinduism. The exceeding greatness of the contrast
between the fear and gloom of devil-worship and the light and
love of the Gospel is found to attract their attention, and it is
generally found to be easy to convince them of the debasing
character of their own superstition, and of the great superiority
of Christianity. We have gone amongst those poor demonolaters
as preachers of a religion of mercy, as preachers of " peace on
earth and good will to men," and have endeavoured to illustrate
its beneficent tendencies by doing them all the good in our
power, and especially such good as they could appreciate. We
50 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE FIELD.
have assured them that God has not abandoned the world He
made, but rules it Himself, and is as merciful as He is powerful ;
we have given them this convincing proof of His mercy, that
" He so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life :" we have told them also that it is unnecessary,
as well as wrong, to worship devils, through any fear of their
malice ; for the Son of God was "manifested" for this very pur
pose, " that He might destroy the works of the devil" " by
dying He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is,
the devil, and delivered those who through fear of death were
all their life- time subject to bondage;" so that if they only put
their trust in Him, and feared and served Him, he would defend
them from all that devils can do. And when they have been
induced to listen to these statements and to ponder them in their
minds, it has generally been found that of all heathens in India,
they are the most ready to throw off the shackles of their slavish
fear, and to enter into the enjoyment of the liberty of the children
of God. Thus the progress of the Gospel in Tinnevelly has
supplied us with another illustration of the truth, that " where
sin abounded, grace did much more abound." In a province where
devils were literally the objects of worship " where Satan's seat
was" the Church of God has received larger accessions of converts
than in any other province in India.
In Tinuevelly the Church " flourishes like the palmyra" flourishes
where perpetual barrenness might have been expected to reign.
Hay I not also say that the position which the Shnrs have
acquired in the fore-front of Hindu Christianity, notwithstanding
their poverty, their want of mental culture, and their lowly rank
as a caste, fulfils the prediction, that " there are last which shall
be first?"
TINNEVELLY MISSIONS.
LECTUEE II.
THE WOBK.
THE first attempt to introduce Protestant Christianity into
Tinnevelly was made, towards the close of the last century, by
the venerable Swartz, who visited the province thrice, and suc
ceeded in establishing a congregation of native converts in the
fort of Palamcottah.
The work which Swartz commenced was efficiently carried on
by Jaenicke, another Missionary of the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, who was sent to Tinnevelly by Swartz, and
who, during the short period in which he retained his health,
made Christianity widely known amongst the rural population,
and succeeded in planting Christian congregations in several
villages in the interior.
With a species of prophetic insight into the future, founded
on his observations of the character of the people of the province,
and especially of the docility and tractable temper of the con
verts, Jaenicke observed, that " there was every reason to hope
that at a future period Christianity would prevail in the Tinne
velly country." Jaenicke was assisted in his labours by a native
Catechist from Tanjore, called Satyanaden, who was ordained in
the Lutheran manner by Swartz, and commissioned to carry on
in Tinnevelly the promising work which Jaenicke had begun.
Satyanaden's labours were eminently successful. It was by him
that the members of the Sh&nar caste, who still form the bulk of
the congregations in almost every part of Tinnevelly, were first
reached and influenced ; by him the first Shnar congregation
was formed, and the first village of Christian Shanars organized ;
and it was in his time that the first of those popular movements
originated, which have often since characterized the progress of
Tinnevelly Christianity. Satyanaden's first Shanar converts formed
D 2
52 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
themselves for mutual protection into a distinct community, and
founded in the heart of the palmyra forest a new village, which
they called Mudal-ur, or " First-town," a place which subse
quently became a sort of metropolis of Shnar Christianity, and
formed, during the dark age of the Tinnevelly Missions, a strong
hold, to which the persecuted of every caste resorted for protection.
Satyanaden's labours in Tinnevelly, though fraught with the
promise of abundant fruit, were not long continued, and after his
return to Tanjore the new Mission was lamentably neglected.
It was visited once by Gericke, in the course of a long missionary
tour through the greater part of the Presidency of Madras, and
once by Kohlhoff, Swartz's successor in Tanjore. At KohlhofFs
request, Ringeltaube, the founder of the London Missionary
Society's Missions in Travancore, bestowed on the Tinnevelly
Mission a general oversight for a short period. This expedient
was disapproved of by the Christian Knowledge Society, and was
discontinued ; but no other European Missionary was sent to
occupy the important post which Jaenicke had left vacant, and
it is questionable whether the " country priests," or native min
isters, who were ordained in Tanjore and sent from time to time
to Tinnevelly, did more good or harm, in the absence of European
supervision.
In 1815, Mr, Hough, then Chaplain to the East India Com
pany at Palamcottah, visited the congregations formed by Jaenicke
and Satyanfiden, and wrote to the parent Society an interest
ing account of the Christian order, steadfastness, and prosperity
by which he found them to be characterized. For several j'ears
he urged upon the Society the duty of cultivating the promising
field to which he had drawn their attention, and especially of
sending out a Missionary ; but being disappointed in his endea
vours, and a German Missionary, who had been sent out from
home, being prevented by sickness from reaching his destination,
he asked and obtained from the Church Missionary Society, which
had recently commenced to labour in India, the means of esta
blishing schools, employing native Catechists, and laying the
foundation of a new Mission. Neither would the Church Mis
sionary Society have considered it its duty to establish itself in
FOUNDATION OF THE MISSION. 53
Tinnevelly, nor the London Missionary Society in the adjacent
province of Travancore, had it not been for the inability of the
older Society, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, to
cultivate efficiently those fields of labour, each of which was first
offered to that Society by Divine Providence. In 1820, Rhe-
nius, one of the ablest, most clear-sighted and practical, and most
zealous Missionaries that India has ever seen, was sent by the
Church Missionary Society to carry on the Mission which Hough
had recently founded, and ere long his energetic labours produced
abundant fruit. The old Mission also was placed under his
general superintendence ; but the new Mission far outstripped
the old ; and at the close of Rhenius's connexion with the Church
Missionary Society, after sixteen years of labour, the number of
souls rescued by him from heathenism (or by the various agencies
set on foot by him), and enrolled under his pastoral care,
amounted to more than ten thousand.
Though Rhenius was by birth and education a Lutheran, the
views of Church government and worship which he adopted were
in general those of the English Dissenters; in consequence of
which, some years before his death, his connexion with the Church
Missionary Society was dissolved, and it became necessary to
reorganize the Mission he founded in some important particulars.
Notwithstanding this, his system of working was, as a whole,
greatly superior to that of the older Missionaries, Swartz himself
not excepted ; and the Tinnevelly Missions are, in a great measure,
indebted to him for the progressive element apparent in their
history. He was, so far as I am aware, the first Missionary con
nected with Church of England Missions in India, by whom caste
was in any degree practically repressed, female education syste
matically promoted, or societies established amongst native Chris
tians for religious and charitable purposes. It is also remarkable
that the practice of assembling the people of every Christian
village morning and evening for united prayer in church a
practice which universally prevails in the missionary congre
gations of the Church of England in Tinnevelly, and which has
now extended itself to Tanjore and other localities was first
introduced by Rhenius.
54 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
It was not until after Rhenius's labours and successes had
awakened general attention in England, that the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel, (which had inherited the Indian
Missions of the Christian Knowledge Society, and which about
that time began to participate in the missionary zeal of the
present century,) bethought itself of its Missions in Tinnevelly,
and resolved to attempt to revive and strengthen them, if
they were still found to exist. From 1792 till 1835, those
Missions had remained as sheep without a shepherd. The only
superintendence of any real value which they had received, had
been bestowed upon them by Missionaries of other Societies
or by Government Chaplains; and they had passed through
seasons of great trial. In 1811, a pestilence swept away in many
places a sixth of the community, and about that time many of
the Shanar Christians, especially in that part of Tinnevelly which
now constitutes my own district, fell back, through fear, to their
ancient heathenism. Many persons would suppose that a com
munity of Hindu Christians, like that which had been planted in
Tinnevelly poor, undisciplined, uneducated, left to itself, sur
rounded by heathen influences would soon have ceased to exist.
On the contrary, in 1835, when the first Missionary of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel reached Tinnevelly, and
began to inquire about the sheep that had been left to their fate
in the wilderness, more than three thousand persons were found
to have steadfastly retained the profession of Christianity, and the
rites of Christian worship, through an entire generation of neglect.
The first two Missionaries, both Germans, who were sent into
Tinnevelly by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
laboured there for a short period only j their place, however, was
immediately supplied by others. Other missionary labourers
followed from year to year ; for the Church at home had awoke,
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had awoke, the Madras
Diocesan Committee of that Society had awoke ; and when I now
look around in Tinnevelly, instead of the two districts that existed
when I arrived, I am rejoiced to see seven, in addition to a new
Mission in the Riimn&d country, each of which is provided not only
with pastoral superintendence, but also, in a greater or less degree,
INTRODUCTION OF THE PAROCHIAL SYSTEM. 55
with the means of extension and advancement. The Church
Missionary Society also has continually been lengthening its
cords and strengthening its stakes, so that it has now thirteen or
fourteen missionary districts, where it only had six when I arrived,
and has established besides an organized system of missionary
itineration in the northern and less Christianized part of the
province.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel has reason to be
thankful that its ancient Mission in Tinnevelly was found to be
capable of revival ; for the revival of an old, neglected Mission is
in some respects more difficult than the establishment of a new
one. Some of the evils, however, of foregone neglect have clung
to the revived Mission; and another consequence is that, as the
Church Missionary Society has obtained possession of the greater
part of the field, the labours of the older Society are now confined
within a very limited compass. When I arrived in Tinuevelly, the
spheres of labour of the two Societies had not been defined by
territorial boundaries; but it was felt to be desirable that each
Missionary should have a district, or missionary parish, of man
ageable extent to labour in, that so the possibility of collision,
or of mutual interference, might be precluded, and ere long an
arrangement of this nature was carried into effect. The field of
labour was divided in a fair and friendly spirit, with regard to
the actual progress each Society had made; but the consequence
is, that the proportion of the area of the province which has
fallen to the share of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
and for the cultivation of which in future it alone is responsible,
amounts now to less than two-fifths of the whole. Notwith
standing this restriction within narrower limits, the introduction
of the parochial system, with its peaceful adjustment of rights,
and its definite apportionment of duties and responsibilities, has,
I believe, been attended with the greatest advantages to each
Society and to the common cause; and, on looking back upon
the past, I attribute to this arrangement a considerable proportion
of the prosperity, as well as of the harmony, by which the Missions
have been characterized. In the warfare which each Missionary
is appointed to carry on, he is now provided with a basis of ope-
56 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
rations 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 exertions which, if scattered
broadcast over the surface of a province, would probably end in
failure and disappointment, are confined within moderate and
practicable limits. The Missionary is able not only to preach
the Gospel again and again in the same village, and to instruct
the people systematically in the knowledge of God's word, but
also to commend to their reception the religion he teaches by his
personal influence, and to watch over and water the good seed
which he has sown.
I shall here give a general idea of the results that have been
accomplished in Tinnevelly, without some acquaintance with which
a description of the work would be comparatively uninteresting ;
and in doing so, I make use of the latest statistics that I have
been able to obtain.
1. The province has been divided into twenty districts, or mis
sionary parishes, each with its parochial organization, and each
under pastoral care.
2. Christian congregations have been formed in 684 villages,
besides a still larger number of villages that are regularly visited
by Missionaries or native teachers.
3. Forty-three thousand souls have been induced to abandon
their idols, or their devils, and to place themselves under Christian
instruction, of whom 27,000 have been baptized.
4. The number of communicants amounts to 5,000, which
gives a proportion of eighteen communicants for every hundred
baptized persons.
5. Ten thousand children, of whom 7,000 are children of Chris
tian parents, (nearly 4,000 of them boys, and upwards of 3,000
girls,) are receiving the benefits of a Christian education in our
Mission schools.*
* I should here explain that in all these statistics I have preferred to
employ round numbers, as being most easily remembered ; but the exact
numbers are somewhat over, not under, what I have stated.
STATISTICS OF RESULTS. 57
6. Boarding Schools, Training Schools, and educational insti
tutions of various kinds have also been set in operation for the
training up of native schoolmasters and catechists, and eventually,
it is hoped, for the raising up an indigenous ministry, and already,
eleven Hindus, ten of whom are natives of the province, have
been admitted by ordination to the ministry of the Church of
England in Tinnevelly.
7. Progress has also been made towards self-support towards
the support of the Christian institutions of the province by the
zeal and liberality of the natives of the province themselves.
Much, it is true, remains to be done in this direction before our
native congregations stand alone without foreign aid, and possibly
some things remain to be un-done; but, undoubtedly, real pro
gress has been made, for if the funds which are now contributed
by our native Christians to the various religious and charitable
Societies that have been established amongst them, were all
directed into the one channel of the sustentation of ordinary
parochial institutions, they would amply suffice for the support of
one native clergyman, and four native schoolmasters for each of
the twenty districts into which the province has been divided.
In these results we see unquestionable proofs of progress, and
have been furnished with abundant reasons both for thankfulness
to God and for determining to go forward with energy, in His
name and strength, in the doing of what remains to be done.
It must not be supposed that all the results that have now
been stated, have been accomplished by the Society for the Pro
pagation of the Gospel alone ; about two-thirds of all these results
must be placed to the credit of the Church Missionary Society,
which, as I have already mentioned in my introductory lecture,
labours harmoniously in conjunction with the Society for the Pro
pagation of the Gospel. It should also be borne in mind, that
whilst the light of the Gospel burns in Tinnevelly with especial
brightness, none of the adjacent provinces has been left in total
darkness.
It now remains that I should give a detailed description of our
missionary work in Tinnevelly ; but before entering into details,
p 3
58 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
it seems desirable to give a general view of some of its charac
teristic features, especially such as tend to account for the results
that have been accomplished.
Much of the success realized in Tinnevelly has been owing to
the personal influence of the Missionaries; and I am naturally
led by what I have said respecting the introduction of the pa
rochial system, to mention this here, for it is only by means of
the parochial system that the personal influence of the Minister
of Christ can systematically cooperate with the influence of the
truth.
The Missionaries in Tinnevelly have not taken up their abode
in large towns, and contented themselves with occasional or
periodical tours in the country, as has generally been done in
Northern and Western India, but have lived and laboured in the
smaller villages, in the heart of the country, amongst the un
sophisticated peasantry ; and a considerable proportion of their
success appears to be owing to their having thus followed the
leadings of Providence, sought out those who really had " ears to
hear," and endeavoured to bring their teaching and influence to
bear on those classes which experience has proved to be the most
accessible. 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. This is, no doubt, a weak point in their
character ; but it shows the importance of endeavouring to gain
their confidence, and acquire influence over them, if we wish to
do them good. 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
PERSONAL INFLUENCE OF THE MISSIONARY. 59
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 the villages and hamlets in
the interior of the country, among which the Missionaries in
Tiunevelly have preferred to labour, it is astonishing how much
personal influence they have generally acquired, and how much
they have been able to effect by means of that influence, especially
in the neighbourhood of the place in which they reside.
All the people within a circuit of ten miles at least, know inti
mately the European Missionary and his family. They learn his
views, objects, and plans; they acquire confidence in his charac
ter ; they become convinced, from his manner of life and his
readiness to do them all the good in his power, that the religion
he teaches must be a good religion. In time, they cease to think
of him as a foreigner ; they begin to value and follow his advice ;
they learn to regard him as " a teacher sent from God ;" and at
length, impelled by a variety of considerations, amongst which
confidence in his character is one of the strongest, they place
themselves formally " under Christian instruction," and under his
pastoral care. Thus the Missionary's personal influence, which in
large towns is so insignificant, in the smaller villages, and
amongst a simpler, more primitive people, is found to be an
important element of success. Whilst the threefold cord resists
every effort, the cords taken separately are easily broken.
In connexion with all Societies that have stations in the cities
and large towns, it has been found that the usual routine of
preaching and distributing tracts to casual passers-by in crowded
thoroughfares, and at still more crowded festivals, and superin
tending small vernacular schools taught by native schoolmasters,
has been attended with very insignificant results ; and apparently
for this reason, that personal influence the influence of character,
station, and neighbourhood on which so much depends amongst
Hindus, is in this system scarcely brought into action at all.
This view is confirmed by the circumstance that in those schools
60 TINNEVELLY MISSIOKS THE WOKK.
and colleges of a superior order established in some of the great
towns, and in which the Missionaries themselves are the teachers,
the influence they have acquired over the minds of their pupils
has been attended with remarkable results. I have no doubt,
therefore, that much of the success realized in Tinnevelly is owing
to the fact that the Missionaries have availed themselves of the
facilities for influencing the agricultural classes which have been
found to exist, secluded themselves from European society, buried
themselves in the palmyra jungles in search of Christ's lost sheep,
and made homes for themselves, not where ideas of comfort and
refinement would dictate, but where their work lay, and where
they have found their reward.
In connexion with this topic, I should mention another im
portant purpose which our parochial organization helps us to
accomplish. Kegarding ourselves as pastors of the entire com
munity residing within our districts, and remembering that we
are commissioned to " preach the Gospel to every creature," and
to " make disciples of all nations," we are accustomed to invite
all within our districts to place themselves at once under our
pastoral care, without distinguishing between the promising and
the unpromising, or waiting till the unpromising show signs of
improvement, and to form such persons at once into Christian
congregations, subject to the discipline and training suitable to
catechumens. We believe that the adoption of this system is
involved in obedience to our Lord's command, " Preach the
Gospel to every creature " " disciple, baptize all nations" We
believe that if we are to disciple "all," we have no right to
receive the promising, and reject the unpromising, at our own
discretion that we have no right to leave to their fate any who
are willing to learn the Truth, however backward they are likely
to be in learning it ; and that if we would teach all, the best
way the only scriptural way to proceed is, to " disciple " them,
according to Christ's own injunction, that is, to form them into
congregations of "disciples," under systematic instruction and
pastoral care, baptizing them on their profession of faith, and
" teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has
PROPRIETY OF "RECEIVING SINNERS." 61
commanded." Of those who in this way assume the Christian
name, many doubtless will cause us disappointment by their evil
tempers and conduct, through whom the way of truth will be
evil spoken of; but we must not, and do not, through fear of
this or any other difficulties, presume to cast out any who are
willing to receive instruction. In no other way than by hearing,
learning, and believing the Divine Word can sinners be con
verted ; in no other way can the mass be purified than by
commixture with the leaven ; and the " leaven " referred to in
our Lord's parable is not truth in the abstract, but " the king
dom of heaven," truth embodied in the Gospel Church ; which
leaven was not to be kept separate from the meal, as some now-
a-days would wish it to be, but " hid in it, till the whole should
be leavened."
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." It is as if a surgeon, placed in charge of a hospital,
should make a selection amongst the sick, and restrict himself to
the treatment of favourable cases, declining to receive under his
care any whose recovery was unlikely, and should defend his
adoption of the system by pleading the necessity of maintaining
the credit of the institution. Wheresoever this eclectic system
has been acted upon, the results have proved unsatisfactory. It
cannot be expected that Christ will bless a system which pretends
to be wiser and more spiritual than His own, and which, instead
of discipling " all nations," aims only at discipling a select num
ber of the well-disposed and promising of all nations. The Mis
sionaries in Tinnevelly have not been deterred by any fear of
consequences, or regard for popular prejudices, from acting up to
the letter of their Lord's command, "discipling" all who are
62 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
willing to place themselves under their care, instructing every
one who will consent to receive instruction, forming catechumena
everywhere into congregations, and teaching them that " he that
believe th and is baptized shall be saved ;" and to this mode of
working the success that has been realized is doubtless, in part at
least, to be attributed.
In whatever way other classes may be Christianized, no system
but this is adapted to the conversion of the illiterate, the un
thinking, the lower classes generally, the very young and the
very old, all of whom, prior to their reception within the pale
of Christian influences, are equally unpromising and incapable
of acting for themselves. When such persons know not only
what they are to think and believe, but what they are to prac
tise when it is not left to their own judgment what course
they should adopt, on feeling convinced of the truth of what
they are told when they are informed that if they would learn
the way of salvation, and walk in it, they must attach themselves
to the Christian congregation of the neighbourhood, and submit
themselves to the guidance and care of the Missionary of their
district, whom they are to regard as one who has been appointed
to watch for their souls they are relieved from perplexity, and
the obligation of embracing Christianity is felt with greater
practical force.
The perception of this obligation is found to be strengthened
by the practice, universal in Tinnevelly, of assembling the
Christian inhabitants of every village, every morning and even
ing, for public prayer and catechization. There are one or two
full services weekly, besides the Sunday services, in every station
where a Missionary resides, when the entire service for the day
is read, and a sermon preached ; but at the ordinary morning
and evening prayers to which I now refer, and which are con
ducted by the native teachers in the various villages of a district,
we are content with an abbreviation of the prayers, such as would
be read at family worship, together with the psalms, or one of
the lessons, and a brief catechization t or exposition. Catechiza
tion, or catechetical instruction of some kind, is never omitted,
morning or evening, and forms everywhere the chief means in use
DAILY PRAYER AND CATECIIIZmON. 63
for training up our people in divine knowledge. Generally, the
native teacher teaches the people only one subject a week, a
subject appointed by the Missionary in accordance with some
general plan of instruction, and the people are examined as to
their acquaintance with it on the occasion of the Missionary's
next visit. This reiteration of the same lesson is found to be
necessary if we wish the mass of the people to make real pro
gress ; for the same persons are not present every day, and even
if they were, we find we must repeat the same statement fre
quently, " line upon line, and precept upon precept," and put it
before their minds in different lights, before the majority of them
thoroughly comprehend it. In general, the women alone attend
prayers in the morning, when the men are out at work in their
fields, and the men alone in the evening, after the work of the
day is over, when the women are engaged in preparing the evening
meal, the principal meal of the day. All children, however,
attend both morning and evening, and there are a few older
people here and there, who, like " Anna the prophetess," " depart
not from the temple day or night."
One important advantage arising from this system is that,
though the great majority of our Tinnevelly Christians are
naturally dull of comprehension, they are steadily and manifestly
growing in divine knowledge, and in many cases will more than
bear a comparison with persons of a similar position in life in our
English congregations. Another advantage is, that the Christian
inhabitants of the same village, assembling together morning and
evening in the same place, and being catechized together, learn to
consider themselves, though perhaps of different castes, as one
community, one family in the Lord. A circumstance of not less
importance is, that in this way the existence and vitality of the
little Christian congregation is made known to every person in
the neighbourhood ; it is enabled to " hold forth the word of
life," to testify its belief in unseen things, to bear its part in
"condemning the world of the ungodly :" and not only does it
condemn the ungodly, but it attracts the reflecting ; for the very
fact of the native converts assembling together every morning
64 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
and evening to worship God, is an invitation to every one who
has " ears to hear," and the voice of praise and prayer ascending
daily from the humble village church, says "COME!" to all the
neighbourhood. The surrounding heathen too often refuse to be
made acquainted with the doctrines of Christianity ; but they
cannot refuse to become acquainted with the visible embodiment
of those doctrines in the Christian Church. The Church's unity,
her discipline, her zeal for justice and truth, her care for her poor
members, her exertions in behalf of the oppressed, her unwearied
instructions, her daily prayers, her solemn services, her corporate
life, her progressive prosperity, her universal claims these cha
racteristics of the Church render her visible in Tinnevelly, even
to heathen eyes, " a city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid ;"
and it is unquestionable that these signs of life attract and influ
ence the Hindu mind more than abstract truth is found to do.
In sketching the characteristics of the Tinnevelly Missions, an
important place should certainly be assigned to the system of
daily prayer and instruction to which I have referred, and also
to the moral training and religious oversight and discipline which
have grown up together with it, and which would be impracti
cable without it. I am persuaded that nowhere in the world
whether in Missions to the heathen, or in countries long ago
Christianized, and in connexion with no church or religious
organization in the world is there to be found in actual opera
tion at the present time a system of instruction and oversight
more complete and comprehensive than that which is at work in
our Tinnevelly Missions. In those Missions, at least in every
village which has been under Christian training for an adequate
space of time, every individual, young and old, has his weekly
lesson in divine knowledge to learn, and is periodically examined
as to his progress in it ; nearly every child of Christian parents,
male and female, is in school ; and every offence against morals
and religion, whether committed by a baptized person or by
a catechumen, is formally inquired into, either by the Mis
sionary or by the heads of the village, and visited by the
penalties of the local Christian law. That system of " godly dis-
ADVANTAGES OF A " GODLY DISCIPLINE." 65
cipline," the want of which the Church annually laments in
England, is in full operation in Tinnevelly, and its watchful eye
is ever on the convert, at home as well as in church, and at
his work as well as [in his disputes and amusements. Dr. Duff,
who visited Tinnevelly in 1849, particularly noticed the com
pleteness, fatherly strictness, and " earnest workingness " of the
system of instruction and discipline he found there, and com
mented upon it in terms of admiration at the Anniversary meeting
of the Church Missionary Society. It would not be right, how
ever, to ascribe the benefits of this system solely to the Mission
aries by whom it has been introduced, though I think they have
shown that they had a clear perception of their duty as the
founders of a new Christian community ; still greater credit is
due to the people under our care, with whose consent and con
currence this system was introduced, by whose aid, in a very
great degree, it has been carried into effect, and who have proved,
in the majority of cases, by their obedience to the rules of the
Christian municipality, and their reverence for the authority of
their pastors, that they really are a docile and tractable people,
who, whatever be their present condition, may be expected to rise
to a better one, and to occupy an eminent position hereafter among
Hindu Christians.
The effects of this system of religious instruction and moral
training and discipline are highly beneficial in a variety of ways.
The surrounding heathens, perceiving the order, intelligence, and
unity of the native Christian Church, and knowing that she
professes to be fighting against idolatry, under the banner of a
Divine Leader, cannot but feel secretly convinced that she is
destined to win the day. Being themselves split into innu
merable castes and sects, and agitated by intestine feuds, without
order or discipline, without any common bond of authority, or
code of faith, held together only by mechanical agglutination, or
the fossilizing cement of age and indolence, the Hindus cannot
but feel arrested and attracted by signs of life and growth, of
discipline and energy, such as they look for in vain among their
own worn-out creeds. The trained intelligence, and organized
66 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
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. If they gave utterance
to their impression in words, they would exclaim, with Balaam,
when from the mountain tops he beheld in the plains beneath him
the orderly encampment of the Israelites, " How goodly are thy
tents, Jacob, and thy tabernacles, Israel ! The Lord his God
is with him, and the shout of a king is among them !"
To give a distinct idea of the constitution and management of
the Missions in Tinnevelly, it is necessary here to give some ex
planation both of the Indian village system, and of our Catechist
system, each of which has furnished peculiar facilities both for
systematic instruction and for the exercise of discipline.
The village system of India is one of the most remarkable
features of Indian civilization. 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. In India, on the con
trary, every village of any respectability is an incorporation. It
has its council of head men, its rights of jurisdiction, its revenues,
and its meetings for the transaction of public business. Gene
rally, every village has its watchman, its artificers, its priests, its
astrologer, appointed by the community, and paid by means of
endowments or rates ; it has also a village moonsi/ (or petty
unpaid magistrate), a mirdsddr or potail (a sort of mayor and
revenue commissioner), and an accountant, all nominated by the
community, and appointed by Government. The municipality
ordinarily makes itself responsible for the settlement of disputed
claims by arbitration, for the punishment of petty offences, and
for the preservation of the peace ; and though courts and cut-
cherries have been established in every province for the adminis-
VILLAGE SYSTEM OF INDIA. 67
tration of justice on the European plan, nine-tenths of all the
cases that arise are investigated and settled by the heads of the
village under the council-tree, without any reference to Govern
ment authorities ; and it is astonishing how much legal skill,
how much judgment and good temper, these village punckdyets
exhibit. The decisions of the heads of the village carry no legal
force ; they cannot be carried into effect without the consent of
the parties concerned and this is an important safeguard against
abuse ; but they are almost invariably accepted and submitted to
when they are believed to be just and are supported by the
public opinion of the neighbourhood ; and in most instances the
only appeal that is made is from the decision of one village to
that of another and more distant village.
This municipal organization is so ancient and firmly established,
that it may be regarded as the most permanent institution in India.
Dynasties have arisen and fallen, religious sects and schools of
philosophy have flourished and disappeared, but the village muni
cipality retains its place undisturbed. One race of conquerors
after another has swept over the country ; but as soon as the wave
has passed, the municipality emerges again to view : every man
returns to claim his rights, and the old landmarks are restored.
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.
The same system has contributed largely to the consolidation,
if not to the extension, of Christianity in our rural Missions
generally, but especially in Tinnevelly, where we have systema
tically availed ourselves of its help. When a Tinnevelly village
embraces Christianity, it immediately forms itself, almost as a
matter of course, into a Christian municipality, and authorizes
68 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORE.
its head-men to exercise a general superintendence over the con
gregation, and, in conjunction with the native teacher or Catechist,
to carry into effect the Missionary's views. 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. They feel themselves re
sponsible for the obedience of the rest of the people to Christian
rules, for their regularity in attending church and sending their
children to school, for the collection of contributions for charitable
and religious purposes, for carrying into effect decisions of Church
discipline, as well as for the settlement of any civil and social dis
putes that may arise. The head-men may be said to hold their
appointment by hereditary right, or in virtue of their position in
society ; for though they are chosen by the people, and appointed
by the Missionary, yet in almost every instance those persons
alone are appointed to whom the people have always been accus
tomed to look up ; and thus the head of the village is also the
elder in the congregation.
So long as Christianity has not acquired a recognized footing
in a village, but is only seeking an entrance, the corporate action
of the community is undoubtedly a serious obstacle to its pro
gress ; for the heads of villages sometimes abuse their power, and
place might before right in their dealings with the poorer mem
bers of the community, and when this is the case they naturally
fear, that the influence of the European Missionary, and the intro
duction of an authority independent of their own, will tend to
check their oppressions and restrain their power within legal
limits. It is from this source that those persecutions proceed
which almost invariably take place on the first entrance of Chris
tianity into a village.
DUTIES OF THE HEAD-MEN. 69
When once, however, a village, or any considerable portion
of a village, has embraced Christianity, and the Christian head
men have won for themselves a tolerably firm position, it is
astonishing in how large a degree this village system furthers
the establishment of Christian laws and usages, and the con
solidation of a Christian congregation into a regularly organized
Christian community. When anything goes wrong in a con
gregation, the Missionary appeals to the elders and head-men
to restore things to rights j whereupon they assemble the
people, or go from house to house, and endeavour to effect a re
formation. There is rarely any danger of their setting the
Missionary's authority aside, and using their power in opposition
to him. Practically, the only danger that exists lies in the
opposite direction. The Missionary's influence in his own dis
trict being much greater than that of any other person, the
people of every congregation, the head-men included, are prone
to refer every case to him, instead of settling it amongst them
selves : a tacit conspiracy is thus entered into to make him a
universal "ruler and divider ; " and if he is young and inexpe
rienced, he will probably fall into the temptation, until his
patience is wearied out with disputes and litigations (a large
crop of which is continually ripening in a country where illiterate
peasants are the proprietors of the soil, and where all property is
held in hereditary coparcenery) ; whereas if he steadily makes it
his aim to develop the capacity for self-government which every
congregation of any size is found to possess, and to organize some
central court of appeal, such as the niydya sabei, or " council of
justice," which we had in Edeyenkoody, and which was composed
of five householders, annually chosen by the whole people, he is
set free to devote his time and strength to the spiritual work of
his office, with only a general directive influence in the adminis
tration of temporal affairs, and the interests of the people them
selves are in the end more effectually advanced.
I must now give some explanation of our Catechist system.
This system is not peculiar to Tinnevelly, but has been introduced,
more or less, in all Missions to the heathen, whether they be
Roman Catholic or Protestant, Episcopal or non-Episcopal. The
70 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
extent, however, of our Tinnevelly Mission brings out the
Catechist system into greater prominence there than elsewhere,
and gives it more of the character of an essential feature of our
Missionary work.
When an European Missionary establishes himself in a new
sphere, he generally finds it necessary to engage a few educated
Christian natives to assist him in making Christianity known in
the surrounding country, to go before him when he purposes
visiting a village in order to invite the people to come and listen,
and to follow up his address by instructing more fully, and in
greater detail, those who are willing to learn. 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. As soon as a few families in a village
have agreed to abandon their idols, and to place themselves under
instruction, it is necessary that they should be formed into a con
gregation, and systematically instructed in everything that a
Christian should know. Accordingly, a Catechist, or native
teacher, is sent to reside amongst them, to teach them their daily
lessons in Scripture history and Christian doctrine, to assemble
them every morning and evening for prayer and catechization, to
instruct them in the habits and usages suitable to a Christian
community, to teach their children to read, and, in addition to all
this to endeavour to win over to Christianity those who remain
in heathenism in that and neighbouring villages.
In most of the smaller congregations the same person is both
Catechist and Schoolmaster ; but when the congregation increases,
a division of labour becomes necessary, and then the Catechist's
work assumes more of the character of the work of the Ministry.
The native word which we render " Catechist" means simply an
" instructor," and is altogether different from that by which the
CATECHIST SYSTEM. 71
ordained Minister is denoted ; besides which, the Catechist con
fines himself in his ministrations to those things which are com
petent to a layman ; so that, although up to a certain point his
work resemhles the Clergyman's, it is not liable to be confounded
with it.
When the Missionary visits any congregation, in his pro
gress from village to village throughout his district, he himself
reads the service, preaches, catechizes, examines the school, con
verses with the people, holds interviews with the heathen ; all
that is to be done, he does himself then and there, with the
exception, perhaps, of the administration of the Sacraments,
which are ordinarily restricted to the mother church in the
central station ; but during the interval that must elapse
before another visit is paid, how is the Missionary's place to be
supplied ? The interval may last several weeks, in some places
several months ; and during that period the native teacher com
municates to the people all that he has been taught by the
Missionary at the weekly meeting of Catechists, and diffuses
around him the influences which he has received. Without the
Catechist, (until such time, at least, as a duly-qualified native
ministry shall be raised up,) no systematic instruction, no sys
tematic guidance would be possible ; illiterate, low-caste converts
would have to be abandoned in despair ; no progress could be
made, even by the most promising congregations, towards self-
government, self-support, or any other sign of maturity ; and even
the raw material of a native ministry could never come into
existence. It is our hope, indeed, that many of our native
Catechists will in time be transformed into ordained native
Ministers, supported by their own native flocks ; and in our
various arrangements that object is kept steadily in view, and is,
or ought to be, systematically worked for ; but as only a very
small number of the native teachers have as yet been ordained,
or evinced such qualifications and such a style of character as
would justify their ordination, and as we have not yet the means
of supporting a very large number, the employment of inferior men
in a subordinate capacity cannot, as yet, be dispensed with. Some
time must yet elapse before the Seminaries and Training Schools
72 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
send out an adequate supply of men who are duly qualified even
for the subordinate posts of Schoolmaster and Catechist, and
some time must also elapse before the more promising persons
employed in those subordinate offices are tested, strengthened,
and ripened for the superior and more sacred functions of the
Ministry ; but the time will, I have no doubt, come, and is
coming, for already eleven Catechists have been ordained in
Tinnevelly alone, and whilst we are waiting and working for
the higher good, we thankfully avail ourselves of the lower;
we use the lower, indeed, as a means of rising to the higher.
Our native Catechists are carefully trained for their work, not
only before they are sent out, but during the whole period of their
employment. Many of those who have hitherto been in employ
ment had few or no educational advantages in early youth ; for
it is only of late years that our Training Seminary was established.
They could read and write when they were first employed, but
that was all ; but every Missionary devotes an entire day every
week to the instruction and training of his Catechists in their
vernacular tongue, and some of them have now made considerable
progress in every department of theological knowledge ; so that
if their piety, zeal, and energy were equal to their intelligence,
they might be ordained at once.
In addition to instructing my Catechists in various branches
of necessary knowledge, it was my custom to give them every week
an outline of the sermon which I intended to preach on the fol
lowing Sunday ; explaining to them at length, or calling upon
them to explain, how each part of the outline should be filled
up. Then, not only was this sermon preached on the Sunday to
each of the twenty-four congregations comprised in my district,
but it was also used, throughout the following week, as the basis
of catechization at morning and evening prayers ; and whenever
I visited a village, I was accustomed to question the people, to see
how much they had retained of the various discourses that had
been addressed to them. One year all the Missionaries, by mutual
agreement, instructed their Catechists, and through them the
people, in Bishop Pearson's masterly book on the Creed ; and I
THE CATECHIST SYSTEM DEFENDED. 73
have heard many of our people say that they had never had so
clear an idea before of the symmetry and grandeur of the Chris
tian system. The Seminary for training up Catechists and
Schoolmasters, which was founded in Sawyerpuram by the Rev.
G. U. Pope, and which is now under the care of the Rev. H. C.
Hux table, has begun to furnish us with a supply of youths who
have been educated in English, and, through the medium of
English, in the higher departments of learning ; and from
amongst the new order of Catechists thus supplied to our Mis
sions, we may fairly expect a body of well-educated, useful native
Ministers to be raised up.
The employment of native teachers would not be practicable to
such an extent as it is, were it not for the social and economic
facilities which India affords. So great is the value of money in
Tinnevelly, and so few openings are there for the skilled labour
of educated young men belonging to the middle and lower classes,
that the services of almost any number of persons, respectably
connected and possessed of the rudiments of education, can be
obtained for any purpose for which they are required, for the
insignificant sum of from 51. to Wl. per annum. There is often
a difficulty in obtaining for the office of Catechist a person of
adequate piety, steadiness of character, and energy ; but the
difficulty is a moral one, not also, as it would be in this country,
a pecuniary one.
It may possibly be supposed by some persons that the employ
ment of laymen in such duties as I have described is uneccle-
siastical. It should be remembered, however, that we should be
most happy to supersede native Catechists by native Ministers, if
men of the proper qualifications could be supplied to us in suffi
cient numbers, and if we could raise the large additional funds
that would be required for their support ; for SQL per annum is
the lowest stipend which has yet been paid to any native Min
ister, and this averages five times as much as the salary of a
Catechist, and five times as much as there is any prospect of the
majority of our hamlet congregations being able to raise. It
should, therefore, be remembered that, in the great majority
E
74 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
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. Under these circumstances, an occa
sional visit from an ordained Missionary, whether European or
native, (and nothing beyond an occasional visit is practicable at
present,) would not meet the necessities of the case. If they are
ever to become Christians worthy of the name, they must be
trained, guided, and systematically taught, and this can be done
at present only by a resident Catechist. This being the case, so
far from the employment of laymen being unecclesiastical, it
would, I think, be unecclesiastical as well as unscriptural to
hesitate for a moment to employ them ; for all ecclesiastical pre
cedents from the brethren in Apostolic times who " went every
where preaching the word," and the brotherhoods and sisterhoods
of the mediaeval period, down to the Scripture-readers and paro
chial schoolmasters of our own times prove this, that the
Church's " feet have been set in a large room ;" and the only
exceptions to this are such as prove the rule, by proving for our
warning how much has been irretrievably lost to our own branch
of the Church by morbid scrupulosity about the employment of
laymen in subordinate offices and the adaptation of means to
varying circumstances and times.
In many poor, populous country parishes in England, I have
noticed the existence of hamlets situated at a considerable distance
from the parish church ; and I have too often found on inquiry
either that Christianity had no visible, corporate existence in those
outlying hamlets at all, and that the people were destitute of
accessible means of grace, or that the only Christianity they had
was nourished by a little Methodist chapel. It was impossible to
avoid contrasting this state of things with the arrangement which
MOTIVES BY WHICH CONVERTS HAVE BEEN INFLUENCED. 75
would have been made in similar circumstances in Tinnevelly.
There the hamlet would be an affiliated out-station of the parish
church. A layman, a man of the people, (perhaps a small farmer,
or a small shopkeeper, trained and guided by the Minister of the
parish, and perhaps partially supported by parochial funds), would
be acting as the Clergyman's representative, collecting the people
daily in the little oratory of the hamlet a separatist chapel no
longer for prayer and praise and spiritual instruction, preaching
to them every Sunday the Clergyman's sermon, and accompanying
them on special occasions, as at Christmas and Easter, to the
parish church. I need not stop to inquire whether some still
better arrangement than this might not be discovered ; but
surejy~, in comparing even this with the arrangement, or rather
the no-arrangement, which one generally finds in England, it is
not without reason that I maintain that our Tinnevelly plan is of
the two decidedly to be preferred.
I have mentioned some circumstances which have contributed
to the reception of Christianity by various classes of people in
Tinnevelly, and some which have contributed to the consolidation
and growth of the new Christian community. My sketch would
be far from being perfect, and the impression I produce would be
far from being accurate, if I said nothing respecting the motives
which have induced many of the people to place themselves
under our care. Wherever we have gone, we have preached to
the people the Gospel of Christ, in accordance with Christ's own
command; we have known nothing amongst them save Christ,
and Him crucified, and it is unquestionable that the Gospel,
without the help of any extraneous influences, has again and
again proved itself " mighty through God to the pulling down of
strongholds." Still, it is equally true, that in the greater number
of instances the conversions that have taken place have been the
result, not of spiritual motives alone, but of a combination of
motives, partly spiritual and partly secular, the spiritual motives
predominating in some instances over the secular, in others the
secular predominating over the spiritual : and this holds true,
not only with respect to Tinnevelly and the Missions of the
E2
67 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
Clrnrch of England, but with respect to every rural Mission in
India, with whatever Society it may be connected, and whatever
may be the idea of its condition which is commonly entertained.
May I not add that this has held good of every conversion of
tribes and peoples, as distinguished from the conversion of isolated
individuals, which the history of the Church has recorded 1
When T admit (the word " admit " is scarcely a correct one, it
would seem to show that we have ordinarily put the case in a dif
ferent light, whereas we have never done so,) when I avow that
secular motives have contributed to the results realized in Tinne-
velly, I wish to preclude misapprehension in a very material point.
I do not include in those motives the sordid desire of pecuniary
gain. The motives to which I refer, though secular, are not
sordid. Our Tinnevelly converts receive from us no pecuniary
assistance whatever, and on their becoming Christians they are
expected not to ask, but to give; and they do give, and that
largely, to various religious and benevolent objects, and entirely
support their own poor. In promoting the welfare of our converts
we have never aimed at alluring heathens, by the prospect of
temporal benefits, to connect themselves with our Missions, or to
accept our teaching; and when individuals or villages have
wished to bargain with us, as they have sometimes wished, that
they will become Christians on such and such terms, we have
invariably refused to have anything to do with such venal con
versions. The desire of direct pecuniary benefits cannot, there
fore, be the motive by which our people have been influenced.
The secular advantages obtained by our converts are such as
naturally and necessarily flow from Christianity, or are of such
a nature that the expectation of obtaining them would be quite
consistent with the persuasion that Christianity is from God, and
with the wish to be guided by its principles. The expectation
of receiving from the Missionary of the district advice in per
plexity, sympathy in adversity, and help in sickness, and of
being at all times kindly inquired after and spoken to ; the desire
of being connected with a rising, united body, which is guided
by European intelligence, and governed by principles of Christian
SECULAR ADVANTAGES. 77
justice ; the expectation of being protected in some measure from
the petty tyranny and caste pride of their wealthy neighbours ;
the fact that the native Christians appear after a few years to
acquire a higher standing in society, and to enjoy more peace and
prosperity than fell to their lot when they were heathens; the
desire of advancement on the part of the lower castes, who find
that we consider them as capable of advancement, and teach them
to feel that they are men, these feelings and desires, arising
from the perception of the indirect benefits conferred by Chris
tianity, have had more influence in the minds of the people than
the expectation of receiving any direct worldly advantages ; and
such feelings, though secular in their origin, are obviously quite
consistent with sincere Christian faith.
Similar feelings are found to produce similar results in a greater
or less degree in all Missions. For example, the offer of a superior
English and scientific education, sufficient to qualify those who
receive it for Government situations, is found to allure the sons of
the more wealthy inhabitants of the great Indian cities within the
sphere of Christian teaching and influence. The offer of medical
advice brings another class within the reach of the Missionaries.
In one particular, however, the manner in which the principle is
acted upon in Tinnevelly appears less open to objection than
in those cases. The secular advantages which are enjoyed by
the converts in Tinnevelly are such only as naturally and neces
sarily flow from the reception of Christianity, and are not held
out beforehand to any class of persons as an inducement to them
to submit to Christian teaching.
In giving our people, when oppressed, advice and assistance to
the best of our ability, we have sometimes been blamed on the
supposition that we have steppe ,1 out of ^ur proper sphere. It
has been held apparently that when the flock is oppressed, it is
the duty of the shepherd to stand by silent and unconcerned, and
to leave the result to chance or to the tender mercies of official
wolves. I repudiate, however, this interpretation of our duty as
Christian Pastors. With few and rare exceptions, in taking an
interest in the oppressions to which our people were exposed, we
78 TINNEVELLT MISSIONS THE WORK.
have simply done that which it was our duty to do towards those
to whom we stood in the relation of pastors and friends, that which
no man of Christian feeling and benevolence could help doing.
We could not help advising the perplexed, sympathising with
the injured, encouraging the degraded to arise, "rejoicing with
them that rejoiced, and weeping with them that wept." "We
could not help saying with the apostle, " Who is weak, and I am
not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?" Christianity has
" the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is
to come," and they whose office it is to introduce Christianity
amongst a heathen people, and to lay the foundations of a Chris
tian community, cannot properly be blamed for exhibiting the
truth of each part of this promise, and proving that the religion
they teach is man's best friend.
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. Accordingly, many
persons have undoubtedly placed themselves under the pastoral
care of the Missionaries, not so much through the desire of ob
taining Christian instruction or salvation from sin, as through
their desire for protection and sympathy, or through the influence
of secular motives generally.
It is desirable to mention here, that what I have said
respecting the influence of secular motives, refers exclusively
to the reception of persons, in the first instance, under Chris
tian instruction as catechumens, not to their subsequent re
ception by baptism into the Christian Church. If a person
wished to receive baptism, and it were certainly known that he
was influenced by secular motives, I would never consent to
desecrate the sign and seal of regeneration, by administering it
to a person who was so obviously unfit to receive the spiritual
SPIRITUAL AGENCIES AT WORK. 79
blessing. In such cases our rule should be that which was ex
pressed by Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch, " If thou believest
with all thine heart, thou mayest." Even as respects the re
ception of persons in the first instance under Christian instruction,
it is a fact of great importance to the right understanding of
this subject, that there are thousands upon thousands of heathens
in Tinnevelly, whom all secular motives combined have failed to
draw within the region of light. Consequently, where persons
more or less influenced by such motives, have become Christians,
it is not only possible but probable, that there has also been some
secret operation of God's Holy Spirit in their minds, and some
special arrangement of circumstances in His providential dealings
with them, predisposing them to accept the offer of the Gospel.
Rather we acknowledge with gratitude that this is in accordance
with the good purpose of His goodness in every age.
There is another circumstance which it is equally important to
remember. Whatever be the motives by which those who have
placed themselves under instruction have been induced to listen
and learn, whether because they had " seen the miracles," and
approved of the teaching, or " because they had eaten," or ex
pected to eat, "of the loaves," or, as often happens, through both
sets of motives together, it is the Gospel of Christ's saving love,
the message of reconciliation to God through the blood of Christ,
and that only, which we have preached to them and taught them ;
it is by the Gospel that we have reached their consciences, and
gained their hearts ; and it is through the efficacy of the Gospel
that they have been enlightened, washed from the impurities of
idolatry, and raised to their present condition. Whatever in
fluences may have brought any of them into connexion with us
in the first instance, all the benefits they have derived from that
connexion, and all that gratifies the mind, and awakens hope in
our progress from station to station throughout the Province, are
direct results of the preaching of Christ's Gospel, and the ad
ministration of the ordinances and discipline of Christ's Church.
We have not thought it necessary to prepare heathens for Christian
teaching by any civilizing or educational system, or to make a
80 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
distinction amongst them by any discriminative process. In the
state in which we found them, in many respects a very unsatisfac
tory state, and without preparation or p^lu^e, save that of learning
their language, we have preached to them the words of life. "We
have said, as we were commanded, " Thus saith the Lord, believe
and ye shall live ;" and the results have proved the propriety of
the course pursued.
Of the persons who have embraced Christianity from mixed
motives, partly religious, partly secular, such as those I have
described, the majority are found to adhere to it after all excite
ment from without has passed away, and learn to value Christ
ianity for higher reasons. From time to time, also, we discover
amongst them a few pure-minded, truth -loving persons, whom
Providence had been preparing even in heathenism for the re
ception of the truth, and for bringing forth the fruits of right
eousness. The congregation, consisting perhaps of the inhabitants
of an entire village, was brought in, as it were, by the tide, and
yet after a time we discover amongst the sand and sea-weed not
a few pearls of great price, fitted to shine hereafter in a kingly
crown.
I now proceed to furnish some particulars respecting the interior
economy of a Tinnevelly district. As there is little difference,
even in details, and no essential difference, between one district
and another, and as I am necessarily best acquainted with my own
district, and most interested in it, it is the work of my own dis
trict that I am about to describe ; but that will serve, I think,
more or less to illustrate Tinnevelly missionary work in general.
It was towards the end of the year 1841 that I arrived in Tin
nevelly, and took up my abode at Edeyenkoody, which became
from that time the nucleus of a new missionary district. Although
the Missions of both the Church Societies, particularly those of
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, were then in a much
less flourishing condition than they are now, I was even then
delighted with the signs of progress which I witnessed. I had
already had nearly four years' missionary experience in connexion
with the London Missionary Society, during which period I had
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF TINNEVELLY. 81
been labouring in the city of Madras ; but, before my arrival in
Tinnevelly, I had seen few signs of missionary progress. In
Madras and the neighbourhood the native Christians connected
with the various Missions were isolated individuals, not communi
ties, and all taken together were not equal in number to the
Christian inhabitants of a single Tinnevelly district. In the
province of Tanjore, on my way to the South, I saw communities
of native Christians, villages entirely inhabited by Christians ;
but, at that time at least, they exhibited few appearances of reli
gious vitality. In Tinnevelly, however, I not only found large
communities of Christians, entire districts of country more or less
Christianized, but I also found those communities characterized by
ever-increasing energy, and by unequalled docility and liberality.
I was so much delighted by what I then saw, though many things
were still evidently unshapen and rudimental, that on preaching
my first sermon in Tianevelly, in the Mission Church at Nazareth,
I took for my text these words, (contained in the Epistle for the
day,) " The night is far spent, the day is at hand." My impression
that the day was about to dawn has not been fully realized it is
not day yet the darkness is still sorely reluctant to give place to
the light ; for, though 43,000 souls have " come to the light," and
are learning, with more or less singleness of purpose, to " walk in
the light," more than 1,200,000 souls, in that province alone,
remain in wilful darkness still ; nevertheless, on comparing what
now exists in Tinnevelly with what I found in it, I cannot but
perceive reasons both for thankfulness for the progress already
made, and for hoping that the dawn, though long deferred, will
soon arrive.
When I arrived in Tinnevelly there were but two districts in
connexion with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, viz.
Nazareth and Moodaloor, each of which was under the care of a
Missionary ; but it had been determined that I should endeavour
to form a third, which should comprise an outlying portion of the
Moodaloor district, together with an extensive, more distant, and
hitherto almost unknown tract of country. The field of labour on
which I thus entered, lies along the southern shore of Tinnevelly,
J5 3
82 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
being about twenty miles in length, and, on an average, five miles
in breadth, with a population of about 20,000 souls. It com
mences about twenty miles from Cape Comorin, the hills above
which are distinctly visible from my house. Christianity had been
introduced, in the early period of Satyanadan's labours, into the
eastern part of this district, or that part which is included in the
great palmyra forest, and chiefly inhabited by Shanars ; but this
neighbourhood was afterwards more wofully neglected than any
other part of the old Tinnevelly Mission, and the great majority
of those who had embraced Christianity, including, in many
instances, entire villages, fell away from it, in the absence of
pastoral care during the pestilence which ranged so violently
all over the southern provinces about thirty years before my
arrival.
After our Missions in Tinnevelly had been recommenced, and a
Missionary had been located in Moodaloor, the few scattered con-
gregations that remained were occasionally visited by a Missionary,
and Christianity again began to extend towards the western part
of the district. For several years before my arrival my district
was periodically visited from Moodaloor, but no Missionary had
statedly and continuously laboured in the district before my
arrival, no Missionary had resided in it, and almost everything
pertaining to parochial organization had to be built up in it
from the foundation by myself.
The district derives the name by which it is known amongst
Christians from Edeyenkoody, the name of the village where I
took up my abode, and where there is now the principal Christian
congregation in the district. The meaning of the name " Edeyen
koody," or properly, Ideiyan-kudi, is, " the shepherd's habitation."
This was the name of the place before I went there, and before
Christianity was known there ; it was not given to it, therefore,
by me, as might have been supposed : still, I always thought it a
very appropriate name for the residence of a Missionary-Pastor,
and very suggestive of the duties which I was sent there to dis
charge ; for I went there as " a shepherd," as a servant of that
" good," that divine " Shepherd, who gave his life for the sheep ;"
PRINCIPAL TRUTHS PREACHED. 83
and the purpose I had in view in going there was to endeavour to
gather into Christ's fold the sheep for which He died. I wish I
could add that the object I aimed at has been accomplished ;
but whilst some have listened to the Good Shepherd's voice,
the majority have preferred the dangers of the wilderness to
the pasture and protection provided for them in the fold of
Christ. There, as everywhere else, it has been found that
" many are called, but few are chosen." Still there, as elsewhere,
" God's Word has not returned unto Him void, but has accom
plished that which He pleased, and prospered in the thing
whereto He sent it."
In the district committed to me I made it my business to
become acquainted with every village and hamlet, arid, if possible,
with every family, and endeavoured, by myself, and with the help
of my native assistants, to make known to " every creature " the
message of reconciliation to God through the blood of the Cross.
There were two truths which I found by experience every one,
however rude, could comprehend, and which every one, however
hardened, could appreciate, and those truths I always took care to
teach and enforce. The first was that the burden of guilt which
every man feels that he carries about with him, and which false
religions leave untouched, is removed by Christ, " the Lamb of
God which taketh away the sin of the world," and by Him alone ;
the second, that in the conflict with evil which every man must
wage, if he would be saved, and in which false religions leave him
to his own resources, the religion of Christ supplies him with the
help he needs, inasmuch as it brings him into contact with God,
and opens to him a channel of sanctifying grace in the supply of
the Spirit of Jesus. In these truths is the substance of the
Gospel, and I have found them everywhere, not only intelligible,
but fitted to produce serious thought. Proofs of the folly of
idolatry leave the heart and character unchanged, but virtue goes
forth from these truths respecting Christ, to heal every one that
believeth.
Whilst I endeavoured, in journeying from village to village,
to preach the Gospel to every creature, it was also my endeavour
81 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
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. Accordingly, wherever two or three agreed to
accept the message of mercy, I formed them into a new congre
gation, and commenced to "teach them all things whatsoever
Christ had commanded."
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." On leaving my district for a season,
about three years ago, on account of failing health, it was my
privilege to make over to a younger Missionary, to tend and
keep in my absence, a Christian flock of 2,672 souls persons
who were not merely occasional hearers of the Gospel, but who
had formally placed themselves under Christian instruction, and
under my pastoral care, and whose names were in our church
books as baptized persons or catechumens. On my arrival in the
district thirteen years before, I found about 1,200 persons under
my charge, some of whom had been transferred to iny care by
the Church Missionary Society. The average number of accessions
from heathenism during the period of my labours was, therefore*
over a hundred a year. There were times in which there was no
visible progress, and times of trial when new comers were sifted,
and their numbers diminished ; but taking the entire period, and
in the main, there was a visible ascent and progress, and during
the last two years alone, the accessions amounted to 640.
When we stand on the sea-shore, and look at the rising and
falling waves, we may sometimes be in doubt for a time whether
the tide is ebbing or flowing, but if we fix our eye upon a mark,
and wait patiently for a while, our doubts will soon be removed ;
just so, I may have felt doubtful for a particular year or half-
year, whether the Christian cause was advancing or receding, but
CONGREGATION OF EDEYENKOODY. 85
on looking back upon the whole period, and observing how the
wave of Christian influences reached and passed over village after
.village, I cannot now doubt that the tide was rising.
All the native Christians who were under my care when I left,
did not reside in the same place, or form a single congregation :
they were all inhabitants of the same district, but they resided in
twenty-four different villages, scattered over a considerable extent
of country j and though the greater number of them occasionally
assembled in the mother-church in Edeyenkoody, on an average
once in three months, as one fold under one shepherd, yet,
properly speaking, they formed twenty-four different congrega
tions, under the instruction of nearly as many native teachers.
The largest congregation in the district is that of Edeyenkoody,
where the mother-church is situated, where we have central,
superior schools, where I resided, and from whence I visited the
other villages in the district in succession. That congregation
numbered upwards of 600, and I endeavoured to make it a
model congregation, and the village itself, in all its arrangements,
material as well as moral, a model village to the rest of the
district. The next congregation, in point of numbers, was that
of East Tavurey, which contained upwards of three hundred
souls. The rest were small, some of them very small, congrega
tions, averaging about eighty souls each, and differing one from
another very widely in condition and prospects some of them
centres of Christian light, and exercising an important influ
ence in the neighbourhood, others unsatisfactory, and a source of
anxiety.
Wherever there is a congregation, however small, our local
Church Building Society, a society which depends for support
entirely upon our native Christians, and receives no aid from
Missionary Societies, or from Europeans, has erected in the
village a little place of Christian worship, in some instances a
church, more generally a church-school a little edifice, how
ever plain and primitive, which may be used as a school during
the day, and in which, not only on Sundays, but every morning
and evening throughout the Aveek, old and young, men, women,
86 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
and children may be assembled together to hear God's word, and
to join in His worship. Most of those little edifices are very
rude and mean, compared with the churches of Christian England,
being generally built of sun-dried bricks, in the old Egyptian or
Babylonian style, and thatched with palmyra leaves. I might
almost be ashamed to call them " churches," were it not that each
of these little edifices is, as its Tamil name, " Kovil," signifies,
" God's house," inasmuch as they who assemble there meet in the
name of God their Saviour, and as He has promised to be with
them : I trust, therefore, it may be said of each of them, as of
Zion, that " the Lord will recount, when he writeth up the people,
that this man and that was born there." It is also deserving
of mention, that the village church is invariably the best built,
cleanest, airiest building in the village ; and if this rule continues
to be adhered to hereafter if as civilization progresses, and the
people learn to build better houses for themselves, church archi
tecture continues to keep ahead of domestic architecture, the
churches of Christian India may at length rival, as the heathen
temples do already, the churches of Europe. Similar hopes may,
I trust, be entertained respecting the progress of a more important
species of ecclesiastical architecture the architecture of the
spiritual church of India, the church of living stones.
In the village of Edeyenkoody itself, the building now used as
a church, though spacious, and somewhat church-like, is only of a
temporary order; but a permanent stone church, capable of accom
modating 1,200 persons, is in progress; I am sorry to say, how
ever, that for want of funds the progress it makes is far from being
as rapid as I could wish. The plan of the church was kindly fur
nished me by the Secretary of an English Church Building Society ;
and though the style is simple, yet, as it is to be a permanent,
stone-built church, and a specimen of good church architecture
to the rest of the district, as it is to accommodate 1,200 persons,
and as building in stone is more expensive in that remote neigh
bourhood, than in some other places in India, the entire cost of
the church will not be less, and may be more, than 8001.
About 300. have already been expended, and the building has
PERMANENT CHURCH IN COURSE OF ERECTION. 87
advanced only as far as the windows, so that I reckon that about
5001. more will be required.
I hope to obtain a certain proportion of this sum from time to
time from our native Christians ; but although they are very
liberal in proportion to their means, as will be shown in a
subsequent lecture, yet, I have generally preferred directing all
the contributions that they were able to give for church-building
purposes into the channel of our local Church Building Society,
a Society which has built and kept in repair about thirty small
churches and schools in various parts of the district. I trust
therefore, that some Christian friends in this country will have
the kindness to help me to finish, in an appropriate style, a
church which is so much required, and which is to be the
mother-church and the model of a large circle of Mission churches.
I should add, that it is a fixed rule of the Society for the Pro
pagation of the Gospel not to make any grants for church
building.*
Some persons will, doubtless, wonder how one Missionary could
tend and guide twenty-four different congregations. The task
is certainly a difficult one, and would have been quite impossible,
but for the help of our native Catechists. Any one who knows
what is involved in the care of a single congregation, however
small, in this old Christian country, where all preliminary diffi
culties were overcome centuries ago, may form some conjecture,
though still but a very inadequate one, of the work and care, the
pressure of anxiety, the ceaseless succession of hopes and fears,
of successes and disappointments, connected with so large a
number of newly formed congregations, each consisting of con
verts from idolatry or demonolatry, or of the children of converts,
and each surrounded by a darkness which comprehends it not, but
is desirous of extinguishing it. For the first five or six years I
had few native teachers of any kind to assist me, and such as
* The best way to send me contributions for this purpose will be to
remit them through the Society, i.e. to send the donation to any of the
Secretaries or Treasurers of the Society, with the request that it may be
sent out to me.
88 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
I liad were persons who had had no educational advantages in
their youth. By and by, however, I obtained the help of youths
whom I selected from the most promising pupils in the village
schools, or who had already entered upon the employments of life,
and those I instructed and trained, in a sort of local training-
school, as well as my other engagements would admit. A
Training-School was subsequently established at Sawyerpuram for
the training up of schoolmasters and Catechists for the benefit of
all our districts in common ; and before I left Tinnevelly it had
begun to supply us with native helpers of a superior class.
During the whole of my residence in Tinnevelly, as mentioned
already, I was accustomed to devote an entire day every week to
the instruction and improvement of my Catechists, on which
occasions I communicated to them all I wanted them to com
municate to the people. I was thus enabled to multiply myself,
as it were, and to discharge many of the duties of the pastoral
office in some twenty-four different places at once.'
The catechetical mode of preaching which is adopted in Tinne
velly is particularly well fitted to the present condition of things
in our congregations. Let my reader accompany me for a moment
to Edeyenkoody, and see for himself what our plan is, and how
it works. It is Sunday morning, shortly after sunrise ; the
peal of four gongs has rung out, and the people are assembled in
church ; we enter and look around. No white face is visible save
those of the Missionary and his family, no English word falls upon
the ear ; but the order of the service is the same as our own, and
the few points of difference that are apparent are such as explain
themselves. The people are seated, not in pews or on benches,
but cross-legged on the floor, some on mats, some without. The
men sit on one side of the church, the women on the other ; the
"readers," or educated portion of each sex, in front, the un
educated behind j and there are two transepts, fully commanded
by the preacher's eye, in one of which are seated the boys, in the
other the girls. The chief peculiarities we notice in the course
of the service are, that the responses are made by the whole mass
of the people, perhaps in rather too loud a tone for English ears,
CATECHETICAL PREACHING. 89
and that during prayer the whole congregation, with the excep
tion of a few old people and women with children, kneel on the
hard floor, without hassocks and without support. I read out my
text, and before I proceed farther, make sure that every one has
heard it, by asking a few of the children, and of the people who
cannot read, to repeat it to me aloud. 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. Sometimes I question a particular indi
vidual by name, more commonly a class ; and if the question I
asked is not answered by those to whom it is put, I put it to class
after class till it is answered, beginning, perhaps, with the school
children, then asking the uneducated adults, and finally ques
tioning the educated young people. Sometimes, if an erroneous
answer is given, it leads to a clearer view of the truth itself, for,
in that case, I not only tell the people that the answer is wrong,
but point out to them in what respect it is wrong, and this is
sometimes the most instructive part of the discourse.
In addition to all this catechizing, and whilst it is going on, you
may hear a peculiar scratching sound arising from various parts of
the church ; this proceeds from persons who are writing out notes
of the sermon with the iron style on slips of palmyra leaf. I never
knew any male member of our congregations remain silent when
asked a question, if he were able to answer it; and sometimes, if the
question is a very easy one, the answer will proceed from twenty
different persons at once. The women, as is natural, are not so
ready to reply as the men ; yet I do not think it advisable to let
them escape altogether, but ask them a question now and then
to keep their attention alive ; and in the smaller congregations,
especially at the ordinary morning prayers, where there are few
men present, they answer as freely as I could wish.
This system would probably be found impracticable in this
country. Many English people feel an unconquerable repugnance
90 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
to allow their voices to be heard in public ; and even when they
understand a thing, they get so confused and abashed, when ques
tioned about it in a promiscuous assembly, that they would be
unable, even if they were willing, to reply. 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.
Another excellent arrangement for the instruction of our people
consists in our adult Sunday-schools. The majority of our
Tinnevelly Christians were converted, not merely from idolatry,
but from the gloomiest demonolatry ; they belonged, with few
exceptions, to a poor, rude, and illiterate class of society ; and
few of them were able even to read before their conversion. In con
sequence of all this, their mental condition was dark and uncul
tivated, and they stood in peculiar need of systematic instruction,
not only in the principles, but in the details of Christianity and
morality. This instruction is supplied by the adult Sunday-
schools, which I have established wherever I could. The children
are not forgotten on Sundays ; but as they are carefully instructed
every day in the week, our chief attention on Sundays is claimed
by, and given to, the adults.
In Edeyenkoody our Sunday morning service is held shortly
after sunrise ; the afternoon service closes a little before sunset ;
and the middle of the day, which is too hot and uncomfortable
for Divine service, being left unoccupied, it is appropriated to the
adult Sunday-school. It is noon, and the gong has rung for
school ; we re-enter the large temporary church, where the school
is held, and again look around. We find as large an attendance,
both of men and women, as at Divine Service in the morning ;
ADULT SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 91
say from 100 to 120 adults, out of a population of 600 souls.
They are all seated, as before, on the floor of the Church, not in
rows, however, as at Service, but in ten or twelve separate semi
circles, each of which forms a class. The " readers " formed only
one class at first, but they have now increased to four, viz. two
of men ; and two of women ; and the members of these classes
read, and are questioned upon, some book of Scripture, chapter
by chapter, besides repeating some portion from memory. Those
who are unable to read once the great majority, now a minority
are arranged into classes according to the amount of their
knowledge, and are taught portions of the Catechism, or Scrip
ture texts arranged in a series, or a summary of important facts
and doctrines. In this country, Sunday-school pupils are almost
invariably children, and their teachers almost invariably grown
persons. In Edeyenkoody we see exactly the reverse ; the pupils
are the adult inhabitants of the village, farmers, traders, and
labourers, including the " head-men " themselves, and the teachers
are their children or grand-children, in some instances boys and
girls who have not yet left school. 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.
Though they look to the teacher for the words of the lesson, and
repeat them patiently again and again, until they know them by
heart, it sometimes happens that they have a clearer insight than
their teacher into the meaning of the lesson. The teacher
depends, perhaps exclusively, upon his lesson-notes, whilst per
haps the pupil has had the meaning written in his heart by the
Great Teacher himself. We endeavour to teach words as well as
things ; for there are many " forms of sound words," in Scripture
and out of it, which every person ought to know ; nevertheless, it
often happens that the older people find it difficult to retain
words in their memory, whilst they have succeeded in grasping
92 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
the idea, in which the substance of truth resides. I was once
examining a very old man, who wished to be baptized, and,
according to custom, I asked him, amongst other things, if he
could repeat the Belief, which I knew he had been taught. He
made the attempt, but after a few incoherent sentences, gave it
up in despair. At length he raised his hand, and said, " I'll tell
you, sir, the meaning of it. We are all sinners, and the Lord
Christ undertook for us all, and if we believe in Him we shall
be saved ; I know that, and that is all I know." In this instance
the poor man had really learned much in learning a little; for
the substance of saving truth, the kernel of the Gospel, was
contained in his reply. Such of the members of the congregation
as are able to read are expected to attend also a Bible class,
which is held on a week-day. On Wednesday at noon, about the
time when all work ceases in Hindu villages, on account of the
extreme heat, and when every one seeks the shade for a couple
of hours, we are accustomed to assemble the people in church for
the Litany and a short sermon, when the attendance averages
about half that of the Sunday. After the service is over, the
readers remain for about half-an-hour, and then I give them a
general idea of the meaning and connexion of the chapter which
they are to prepare for next Sunday's class ; so that if I am to
be out " in the villages " on Sunday, my absence may not be seri
ously felt.
We have another service, with a sermon, every Friday ; but as
Friday is the market-day in the neighbourhood, the village is
nearly deserted the greater part of the day, and a noon-tide ser
vice is impracticable. The service is therefore held in the
evening, between sunset and the native hour of dinner ; and, on
this occasion, though I invariably preside during the service, and
take some part in it myself, the prayers are read, and a sermon is
delivered, by one of the native Catechists. Friday, as I have
mentioned already, is the day I spend with the Catechists, and
the sermon to be preached on Friday evening by each Catechist
in succession, on a subject given him by myself, is a part, and not,
I think, the least important part of the course of training by
ADMINISTRATION OF DISCIPLINE. 93
which our native teachers are fitted for their duties. There are,
of course, great differences in the character of the sermons that
are then delivered some flimsy and weak, some high-flown, some
solid and instructive ; but in this, as in everything else, I have
noticed a great improvement ; and I have rarely heard better
sermons anywhere than those which were delivered in his turn by
Gnana-moottoo, a Catechist of mine who has just been ordained.
It may be regarded as a matter of surprise, and looking at
things from this distance, I feel surprised myself, that people who
are not in any way dependent on the Missionary should submit, as
our people out there do, to all the teaching and training, the
church-going and school-going that I have here described ; and
yet it is a fact, that they not only submit to it, but generally
enter into the spirit of it, and co-operate in carrying it on with
more or less heartiness and zeal.
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. In this country I might send for an
absentee, but would he come when he was sent for'? possibly he
would regard my sending for him as a sufficient reason for never
coming to church again. In Tinnevelly, however, when we send
for a man, he comes ; and as some cases of negligence or irre
gularity will always occur in a large village, I had a particular
hour every week appropriated to this department of discipline,
and on that occasion it was the duty of the " head men" of the
village to be present, that their influence and authority might
strengthen mine. Occasionally, but very rarely, some person
who was more obstinate than usual, would refuse to come when
he was sent for, but this was considered by all his neighbours as
94 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
so highly improper a procedure, that he generally yielded before
long to the current of public opinion, without rendering it
necessary for the village authorities to "sit upon him" under the
council-tree.
Wherever this system of catechetical instruction and congre
gational discipline has been acted upon for any length of time,
the best effects have been apparent. I feel confident that most
of our Shanar and Pariar Christians in Tinnevelly, notwith
standing their natural dulness, will be found to have a better
knowledge of God's word, and of divine things generally, than
the majority of persons belonging to classes and conditions con
siderably superior to theirs, in connexion with English congre
gations. As respects knowledge and order, docility, and liberality,
" the preparation of the heart, and the answer of the tongue,"
they undoubtedly occupy a high position amongst Christians.
I am far, however, from undervaluing the indirect results of the
transmitted Christianity of Europe results, of which the value
is apparent, even in the rural districts, and amongst the labouring
classes of this country j for when divine grace takes possession of
an English peasant or of an English artizan, and his heart is
touched by the constraining love of Christ, he rises at once, and
almost without an effort, to a higher, more manly, more con
scientious, more emotional, more enlightened style of piety than
even Hindu converts of a superior order generally reach.
Whilst we have devoted much attention and effort to the
instruction of the adult members of our Tinnevelly congre
gations, we have not been forgetful of the still greater importance
of the Christian education of the young. The rising generation
is everywhere the hope of the Church, but especially so in a
heathen country, in a recently-formed Christian community.
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
PROGRESS OF EDUCATION. 95
grown old in sin, and who have been converted from the evil of
their ways late in life.
With this conviction in their minds, the Missionaries have
laboured hard for the benefit of the rising generation, and
undoubtedly Christian education has made much progress in
Tinnevelly progress very much greater than might have been
expected amongst a class of people who had been content, in
most instances, from the beginning of their history, to live in the
grossest ignorance, and who, when we first became acquainted
with them, neither desired nor appreciated any sort of education.
Though, however, they were scarcely in a condition to appreciate
the advantages of education, they were willing to believe that the
Missionaries knew better than they what was good for themselves
and their children ; they were willing to be guided and ruled j
and the result has been, not only that the children of Christian
parents have grown up an educated generation, but that edu
cation is now generally appreciated by the parents themselves.
In many of the more important Christian villages in Tinnevelly,
the proportion of the population in school amounts to one in four,
or twenty-five per cent., a proportion which has not been, and
indeed cannot be, exceeded in any country in the world. This
proportion has not, indeed, generally been reached, and the
educational condition of our smaller, poorer, outlying villages, is
necessarily inferior to that of villages that are more populous
and more prosperous ; yet the general average, in all our dis
tricts taken together, reaches sixteen per cent., and the number
of children, male and female, Christian and heathen, in the
school-lists in the various Christian schools in the province,
amounts to 10,000. In my own village, Edeyenkoody, the
proportion of the population ;in school was fully one in four; and
even when I took all the villages in the district, promising and
unpromising, into the average, the proportion fell very little
short of that. When I left the district, the number of native
Christians of all ages under my care was 2,672 : at the same
period the number of children of Christian parents in the various
schools that had been established throughout the district was 575
96 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
(300 boys and 275 girls) ; and in addition to this band of
Christian children, 295 children of heathen parents were receiving
as many of the advantages of a Christian education as they were
willing to receive.
It is evident that in the education of a goodly band of
children, a most important door of usefulness has been opened to
the Missionary. Whatever opinion may be entertained of the
older converts, and how unpromising soever the condition of
some of them may be supposed to be, we have their children, at
all events, in school, to bring up from the first in " the nurture
and admonition of the Lord ;" and as the parents are uniler
Christian instruction and pastoral oversight no less than the
children, we have reason for hoping that the lessons of truth
which are taught in the schoolroom during the day, will not be
obliterated at night, when the children return home, as too often
happens when the parents are heathen.
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. I do not expect, indeed, that English will ever be
much studied by that class of children that chiefly attended my
schools. It is difficult in every country to induce the children of
small farmers and farm-labourers to remain in school long enough
to learn even their own tongue thoroughly ; and as English is in
Tinnevelly a foreign tongue, and the study of it rather a scholarly
accomplishment than a necessity, it will always be found, not
only difficult, but impossible for the great majority of Shanar
children to learn English.
It is a consolation, however, that they are provided with a
good supply of intellectual food in their own language. We had
VERNACULAR SCHOOLS. 97
the Bible in Tamil three translations of the greater portion of
it the Prayer-book, a printing press in every province, and an
increasing and improving Christian literature. Our people are
able to read in their own tongue God's " wonderful works," and
His wonderful mercy ; and we find no difficulty in getting access,
by means of that tongue, to their minds and hearts.
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. When you
enter any of our schools, you see most of the children very
scantily clothed many of the little boys, indeed, with the
smallest apology for clothing that an ingenious economy can
invent. You find them also seated, not on forms, but cross-legged
on the floor, learning to write, not with pen, ink, and paper, but
first on fine sand spread out before them on the ground, and
afterwards with the iron pen or graver on the palmyra leaf.
The first books they use also are oleis, or written leaves of the
palmyra ; and their arithmetical exercises are worked out, not on
slates, but either on the olei, or in their heads. 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 ; and though, doubtless, it
has sometimes happened that I have not been duly seconded in
p
98 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
such endeavours by the native schoolmasters, and that even when
all favouring circumstances concurred to inspire me with hope,
the result has been sorrow, not joy, and I have appeared to have
been labouring in vain ; yet, on the other hand, the good seed
has not, in every instance, fallen upon a bad soil. 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.
I was accustomed to devote four days in succession every
month to the examination of the schools. The children be
longing to a particular class in each school were all assembled at
once in Edeyenkoody ; a day was devoted to the examination of
each class ; and as a portion of every school in the district was
present, and the comparative efficiency of each school was brought
out in the course of the examination, not only the children, but
also the schoolmasters themselves were examined, and stimulated
to exertion.
My own ^special contribution to the education of the youth of
the district was the instruction of a particular class every
morning. This class comprised all the children that could read
with ease in the boys' and girls' day-schools and the boarding-
schools in Edeyenkoody. Morning prayers were over about half-
past six ; and at seven o'clock my class, generally numbering
about thirty pupils, assembled. The children then read before
me a chapter, or a portion of a chapter, of Scripture in order,
and were questioned and instructed in its meaning. Sometimes
one day was devoted to a chapter, sometimes four or five days,
according to the amount of difficulty contained in it, or the de
sirableness of a thorough comprehension of it; and in this
manner, slowly and carefully, with successive generations of
pupils, I went four times through the Gospels and the Acts of
DAILY SCRIPTURE CLASS. 99
the Apostles, twice through the historical portions of the Old
Testament, and twice through the Epistle to the Romans. Once
a month a day was devoted to the examination of the children
by written questions and answers ; and whenever I was absent
as when it was my duty to visit the out-villages I appointed
the most intelligent catechist or schoolmaster to take my place.
Some heathen children who attended our Edeyenkoody day-
schools were members of this class for several years ; and two
of them, of their own accord, and through the force of real con
viction of the truth, abandoned the heathenism of their families,
and boldly put on Christ.
It would be needless to point out the advantages which our
children must have obtained from this opportunity of being
instructed so systematically in the Word of Life. For the
advantages of the system to myself, also, I have no less reason to
be thankful. I have often felt and said, that I learned far more
Divinity in teaching my class of Tamil children every morning in
Edeyenkoody, than ever I did in College when studying expressly
for the Ministry.
The class was over at about half-past eight or nine; and then,
after taking a refreshing swim, and breakfasting, I was ready for
the ordinary work of the day. My day's work varied very much
in character with the varying circumstances of the time. It is
the popular notion that Europeans in India go to sleep for a
couple of hours in the heat of the day : this may have been the
practice formerly, but the siesta is now almost unknown. The
old East is at last waking up, and the handful of Englishmen
that are in India, and on whom all hope for the improvement of
India depend?, have too much to do to sleep in the day-time.
" They that sleep" must content themselves with ''sleeping in
the night." We cannot safely walk about in the day-time in the
open sun, but we can, and do apply ourselves as closely to in-door
work, and even, in certain emergencies nnd with certain pre
cautions, to out-door work, as we should do in England.
Correspondence, or the examination of candidates for the sacra
ments, the settlement of disputes, or inquiry into cases of disci-
100 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
pline, brick-and-mortar work, or accounts, visiting the sick, or
the administration of medicine, a service, or study, used ordinarily
to occupy my time every day till the afternoon, when I was
accustomed to set out to visit some village in the neighbourhood.
In visiting the more distant villages I was generally out several
days at a time, including two Sundays a month ; and when thus
out on a tour, I always visited two villages a day. The nearer
villages I visited in the evenings from Edeyenkoody ; and in thus
visiting a village, it was my custom not only to assemble the
Christians in church for a service and sermon, with catechization,
and afterwards to enter into conversation with them, and advise
and encourage them, as might be required, but also to endeavour
to see and converse with the heathen of the neighbourhood, espe
cially such of them as were supposed to have "ears to hear."
The Female Boarding School at Edeyenkoody seems to call for
special notice, inasmuch as there was no department of missionary
work carried on in the district which was more interesting or
useful. This school, which was under Mrs. Caldwell's care, was
partly intended as a training school for native schoolmistresses,
and there are several young women usefully employed as school
mistresses in various districts in Tinnevelly who were trained up
in this school ; but the principal object we had in view was that
of training up a certain number of the more promising daughters
of our native Christians to be specimens and patterns to the rest
of the people of what Christian women ought to be, and, thus, of
raising the character of the female portion of the community.
The pupils are admitted into the school at a very early age, be
fore their habits are fully formed ; they are isolated to a great
extent from native society, brought up under our own eye, under
our own influence, and not only instructed in useful knowledge,
but trained up in the habits and proprieties of the Christian life.
We have had, at various times, in the school from thirty-five to
fifty pupils, all of whom have been boarded, lodged, and clothed,
as well as educated ; and they have been supported partly by the
contributions of Christian friends, partly by grants from Societies,
and partly by the sale of lace made by the pupils themselves. We
POSITION OF WOMEN IN INDIA. 101
have endeavoured to give the school, as far as possible, the cha
racter of an " Industrial School," not only as a help towards
making it support itself, but as a benefit to the pupils in after
life ; but, notwithstanding this, its support is chiefly derived
from charitable sources, and though living is peculiarly cheap in
Tinnevelly, and a school of this kind may be maintained there at
less expense, perhaps, than in any other part of the world, yet it
must be admitted that, at the cheapest, it is an expensive species
of education, and we should certainly not have established and
carried on a school on so expensive a plan, had it not been for
our conviction of its absolute necessity.
It had been found by other Missionaries before us, and we also
found, on putting it to the test, that day-schools for girls did not
fully meet the peculiar circumstances of India, and that if we wished
female education to make any real progress, for one or two genera
tions at least, we must rely chiefly on female boarding schools.
This necessity arises out of the peculiar position of women in
India, and they who have not been in India themselves will be
enabled in some degree to realize this necessity, when I. explain
to them familiarly what the position of Hindu women is.
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.
It is a mistake to suppose that Hindu women are treated like
slaves, if hard work is regarded as an essential feature of slavery ;
for, perhaps, in no country in the world have women less work
to do than in India. They live an easy, shady life, with little to
do and less to think about ; they are well fed, better clothed than
the men, well hung out with jewels, rarely beaten when they
don't deserve it, and generally treated like household pets. In
their own opinion, they have nothing to lament as a class, but
102 TINNEVELLT MISSIONS THE WORK.
are as well treated as women could wish to be, and are perfectly
content. 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. Nor is this the custom among the lower classes
only; it is the custom amongst every class of Hindus, in every
part of India where I have been. When they are assembled
together on any festive occasion, you never see the women seated
on the same level with the men : if there is a dais or any
elevated place, the men occupy the elevation, which is the
place of honour, and the women squat cross-legged on the ground,
or stand. If a party are going any-where on a visit, the men
always walk first, the women humbly follow ; the wife never
so far forgets her place as to walk side by side with her husband,
much less arm in arm. 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. There is no
feminine pronoun no word signifying "she" in the ordinary
spoken dialect ! The only pronouns of the third person com
monly used are vddii, " he," and adi, c: it." " He" of course denotes
''the lords of the creation," and to whom or what does "it"
apply ? to women and cattle and irrational things in general.
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,
IGNORANCE AND HELPLESSNESS OF THE WOMEN, 103
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. I never
myself met with a heathen -woman who could read, and in thai
district in the South where I laboured, and where I was well
acquainted with the condition of the people, no woman, I suppose,
had learned to read from the beginning of the world, till Christ
ianity was introduced, and our Christian schools established.
The consequence of this ignorance is, that Hindu women are
exceedingly superstitious and exceedingly silly ; but instead of
the men being ashamed of this silliness, they think it the normal
condition of the female mind. For instance, one of their poets,
in describing the excellences of various classes of people, says
" To be a simpleton is the ornament of a woman."
Nor did the poet, in uttering this sentiment, mean to be sarcastic
or to excite a laugh. He uttered it in all seriousness, and thought
he was saying something to which every one would assent.
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. What then, it
may be asked, do the women do 1 They have to attend to their
household affairs, they have to attend to the comfort of their
families, they have to go through a good deal of religious and
social ceremonial ; and this, with few exceptions, is regarded as
the sum-total of their duty. The women belonging to the very
lowest class in society, the class of agricultural slaves, work
nearly as hard as their husbands in the fields and in the open
sun ; the women belonging to the classes immediately above add
a few pence a month to the family income by spinning cotton ; a
104 T1NNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
few \romen also are bazaar keepers, or hawkers of cakes ; but the
women belonging to the more comfortable classes and the higher
classes have no occupation whatever for their spare time. The
whole of their time is not occupied by the preparation of the
family meal and their simple household duties ; after all
this is over, much time remains at their own disposal, and
as they cannot read, and cannot sew, and cannot do any sort
of "work," their time hangs very heavily on their hands,
and they are driven to spend a large portion of it in ceremonies
or in sleep, in gossip or in scandal. We may be sure that the
devil will find plenty of occupation for those idle hands and
those idle tongues !
After this description of Hindu manners, the women of England
will scarcely be inclined to envy the women of India. But, it
may be asked, Why do women occupy in this country so different
a position ] 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 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 when the people had become Christians, the difficulty of
inducing parents to allow their daughters to learn to read seemed
for a time insuperable. " Of what use can reading be to women 1 ?
it is contrary to the custom of the country, it is disreputable ;
OF HINDU WOMEN. 105
surely you don't want our daughters to resemble dancing-girls ?
It is necessary, of course, that they should become Christians, and
learn by heart various texts and prayers, but that is all the learning
our women require. Do the women of your country learn all the
sciences that men do ?" Such was the line of opposition generally
taken ; and hence, if we wanted female education to make any
real progress, we found it necessary to make it popular to
sweeten it to the taste of the ignorant by linking to it advantages
which they could appreciate to board and clothe a number of
pupils, in addition to instructing them : and fortunately this very
arrangement has enabled us to give the pupils a thoroughly good
education such an education of mind and character, together
with instruction in useful knowledge and useful employments,
as should enable them to commend to their neighbours the edu
cation they had received, and dissipate prejudice by the influence
of their example. This is a result which the female boarding-
school certainly has accomplished ; so much so, indeed, that it is
retained now chiefly on account of its intrinsic usefulness, for the
prejudice of our native Christians against female education has
disappeared, and even in our day-schools the number of the girls
bears now the natural proportion to the number of the boys.
We found it all the more necessary to labour for the promotion
of female education, when we found that Hindu women, notwith
standing their ignorance, are very influential in their families. It
is commonly supposed, even by Europeans who have some ac
quaintance with India, that Hindu women are destitute of
influence ; but this is a mistake. After residing amongst them
for some years, and acquiring an intimate acquaintance with their
social and domestic life, we found that the majority of the married
women of India are quite as influential in their families as women
anywhere are. Indeed, it is inevitable that this should be the
case, for whatever be their education or their intelligence, mothers
have necessarily more influence than any other persons in the
bringing up of their children and an influence at least equal to
that of other relations in all moral and social matters affecting
the interests of the family. Children are brought up in the
106 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE, WORK.
atmosphere of their mother's influence, and though they may
surpass their mother in intelligence, they are seldom able to rise
above her in manners, morals, and tone of mind. Hindu women
have much more influence with their husbands, also, than is com
monly supposed.
Looking at the studied way in which they are assigned the
lowest place in society, one would not have expected to find
this to be. the case; but the fact is so, and I can only account
for it on the supposition that nature is too strong for arti
ficial rules. I have frequently met with Hindus who have can
didly alleged as a reason for their not becoming Christians, the
refusal of their wives to give their consent. 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. Hence it will be seen how desirable
it was that we should have a female boarding-school, in addition
to our day-schools, and that some at least of the future wives and
mothers of the district should be so taught and brought up that
there might be a reasonable hope of their using their influence in
their families for good.
The result has not only justified, but exceeded our expectations.
It cannot be said, indeed, that every girl brought up in the school
has turned out exactly what we could have wished, but the result
has proved satisfactory in so large a number of instances the
boarding-school has evidently been the centre and focus of so
many of the reforming, purifying influences which have been at
work in the district of so many of the pupils it can be said
that they are the best behaved, most Christian-minded, most
European-like women in the villages in which they live con
sistent communicants and useful members of society that there
SCHOOL-MADE LACE. 107
is no department of missionary labour pursued in the district
which has more amply justified the expenditure incurred in its
behalf.
The expense of conducting the school has been much smaller,
indeed, than might have been supposed. A school of this kind
would be very expensive in England ; but money goes so far in
Tinnevelly, owing to the extreme cheapness of the necessaries of
life, that we have found ourselves able to educate and maintain a
pupil for the small sum of 21. 10s. per annum. Out of this sum,
which amounts to a little less than a shilling a week, we can
board and lodge, and clothe, and educate a pupil, from her child
hood till her fifteenth or sixteenth, year, by which time her friends
get her settled in life ; and we are generally able to lay by a little,
even out of this small sum, to meet contingencies. One sees from,
this how far a shilling will go, and how much good a shilling may
do, in the Mission field of Tinnevelly.
"Whilst the school has chiefly been supported by contributions
from Christian friends, and grants from Societies, it has always
been our endeavour to give it the character of an Industrial
School, partly in order to enable it as far as practicable to support
itself, and partly to meet the want of some means of employment
suitable for women, which appeared to be one of the most crying
wants of the neighbourhood. Accordingly, Mrs. Caldwell set about
teaching the first pupils of our Edeyenkoody boarding-school to
make lace ; and the experiment has succeeded so well that lace-
making has already become in Edeyenkoody a flourishing branch
of manufacture, and a source of considerable and increasing profit
to the school. The lace has an excellent sale the demand far
exceeds the supply and, although lace-making is far from being
a profitable employment in this country, our native Christian
women in Tinnevelly find it very remunerative ten times more
remunerative, indeed, than any other sort of employment which
was open to them before, besides being a clean, becoming employ
ment, peculiarly suited to the habits and capabilities of Hindu
women. The quality of the lace may be judged of from this, that
specimens of it were sent by the East India Company, at its
108 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WOKK.
expense, to the Paris Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations f
and subsequently to the Art-Treasures Exhibition in Manchester,
and that a medal was awarded for it to the Edeyenkoody School,
as well as another to that of Nagercoil, (in which this branch of
industry originated,) by the Council of the Madras Exhibition.
One important result of all this is, that the condition of the edu
cated Christian young women of the neighbourhood has been very
much improved. Formerly the women were totally ignorant, and
generally as helpless as they were ignorant entirely dependent
for their support upon their relations : now, it not unfrequently
happens that a young woman is not only better educated, but
actually able to earn more than her husband, or her brother; and
although this is not likely to be the case universally or always, nor
is it our object to bring it about, yet undoubtedly it has had a
good effect in the neighbourhood, in proving to the men, that
women really can learn when they are taught, that they really can
turn their learning at times to some profitable account, and that
female education is far from being either the chimerical or the
dangerous thing they had supposed it to be. When we first began
to teach girls to read and sew, and do similar unheard-of exploits,
some of the men would ask us sarcastically, " Are you going to
teach the cows next 1" but the tables have now been turned upon
those Avho said so, and they confess that women are so like men,
after all, that we were right in teaching them as we did.
Another excellent result of the success of this portion of our
work is, that it has proved to the people of the neighbourhood
that Christianity has " the promise of the life that now is, as well
as of that which is to come," it has proved that if Christianity
finds any class of the community degraded, it does not leave them
as it found them, but sets about rescuing them from their de
graded condition ; and this is a very important lesson for
heathens and newly-converted Christians to learn.
I have mentioned that the school was partly supported by
grants from Societies, viz., by grants made by the Society or
Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Madras Diocesan Com
mittee of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The
EXPENSE OP SUPPORT! KG A PUPIL. 109
grants of the former Society for all such objects have ceased, and
those of the Madras Committee of the latter Society through the
financial difficulties with which it has had to contend for some
time) have been reduced one-half ; yet, notwithstanding this
curtailment of income, I am anxious not to diminish, but to
increase, the number of pupils in the school, and also to establish
a somewhat similar Industrial Boarding Schocl for Boys, for the
purpose of endeavouring to raise the tone of mind and character
amongst the rising generation of young men. We are, therefore,
under the necessity of depending more than ever upon the help of
friends who are interested in the improvement of India and in the
Christian education of the Hindus. The amount required for the
support and education of a pupil is, as I have said, 21. 10s. per
annum, and already some kind friends have sent me contributions
towards this purpose. In every case in which funds are supplied
for the support of a pupil, I undertake to send annually to the
donor's address a special report of the condition and prospects of
the school.*
There are many other details of our Tinnevelly work, besides
those I have now given, which my limits will not allow me to
describe. I have accomplished that which I intended if I have
given a tolerably distinct idea of the general features of the
interesting and important work which is being carried on. Our
work in Tinnerelly is indeed a very interesting as well as a very
important one, but it would be an error to suppose every portion
of it to be of as cheering and encouraging a description as some
of the particulars that have been mentioned. The whole picture
will not bear to be painted in rose-coloured hues. Much of our
work is of a very up-hill character, requiring in those who are
* It may be desirable to mention here, for the information of friends -who
may be so kind as to undertake to support a pupil in our Boarding School,
and who wish to know how to send future contributions for this purpose,
that the best way will be to remit them, from year to year, amongst
the other contributions of their parish or neighbourhood, through the
local Treasurer, taking care to have it stated in the accounts sent up to the
Society, that it is a " Special Contribution for Edeyenkoody Boarding
School.
110 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE WORK.
engaged in it, much patience and love, as well as much energy.
It is no easy task to induce hereditary idolaters and demonolaters
to abandon their national superstitions, and to embrace a religion
which is generally regarded by their fellow-countrymen with
jealous}' as a foreign religion, and with dislike as a holy religion ;
and even after they have been induced to embrace it after the
entire inhabitants of a village, for example, have abandoned their
idols and placed themselves under Christian instruction, instead
of all difficulty being at an end, as some persons might too hastily
suppose, the greatest difficulty of all is that which then meets
our view the difficulty of training up the new Christian com
munity in accordance with " the mind that was in Christ," so as
to render it really worthy of the Christian name. That is a
difficulty indeed ! 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. Few people but Mis
sionaries know what the remodelling of a community means, or
how many difficulties are involved in the process. Still, every
Missionary who has been engaged in it has found all difficulties
overcome in time by gentle firmness and resolute patience, by
" prayer and pains." If he can but convince the people that he
loves them, and that the God who sent him loves them, success is
certain in the end ; and in the meantime, whilst " the care of all
the churches " in his district fills his mind, whilst he is struggling
with difficulties at twenty points at once, he finds in this holy
war a noble, delightful excitement, a joy in battle, which is his
present reward.
TINNEVELLY MISSIONS. Ill
LECTUKE III.
THE RESULTS.
HAVING described the Field and the Work, I now proceed to give
a brief estimate of the Results of our labours in Tinnevelly. The
work being one in which I have taken part myself, it may be
supposed to be difficult for me to give au impartial estimate of its
results. It is my wish, however, and shall be my endeavour, to
be impartial to tell, not how things ought to be, but how things
are ; and thero are so many undoubted proofs of progress
apparent in the South Indian Missions, but especially in those
of Tinnevelly, that the difficulty of being impartial, and putting
in the shadows where they are required, is really not so great
as might be supposed.
It used to be said, that it was impossible to convert the
Hindus, and they who said so, the Anglo-Indians of a former gene
ration, did their best to fulfil their own prophecy by preventing
Missionaries from labouring in India. Now that the possibility
of the conversion of the Hindus has been proved by the conver
sion of a considerable number of them, of almost every caste, the
point of attack has been changed, and it is asserted that there are
no sincere Christians amongst the Hindus, so that the conversions
that take place from time to time are of no value. Some of the
persons who make this assertion have been in India themselves ;
but there are many Englishmen in India who know no more of
our native Christian congregations, or of the social and inner life
of either heathens or Christians, than if they had never been out
of England. They are content to remain profoundly ignorant of
what Missionaries are doing, and of the real condition of the
native Christian community. They adopt the language which
passes current in "society," and English society in India is
thoroughly pervaded with the notion that every race should keep
112 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
to its own creed, and that it is an ungentlemanly thing for a man
to change his religion. This is a notion which high-caste heathens
take much care to encourage. Their own religion makes no pro
selytes, and accepts none; consequently, they regard those who have
adopted a foreign religion, especially if they are guilty of the addi
tional crime of being of lower caste than themselves, as " the filth
of the world and the off-scouring of all things;" and hence, Euro
peans who occupy official positions in India, who are surrounded
by high-caste subordinates, and breathe every day of their lives
an atmosphere of high-caste blandishments, too often mistake the
prejudices instilled into their minds by Brahmans for results of
their own observation. It is also a significant fact, a fact which,
so far as I know, admits of no exceptions, that when English
gentlemen of this class are awakened to spiritual life, they make
the discovery that there is a reality in missionary results, and a
sincerity amongst native Christians, notwithstanding their defects,
which they had not expected to find. They may find, it is true,
a dark side to the picture, as well as a bright one ; but they in
variably admit it to have been a gross mistake to suppose, as they
did, that the picture had no bright side at all.
In this country missionary labours and successes are some
times exposed to the opposite danger of being over-estimated.
It sometimes seems to be supposed that all our converts must
have been converted not only from idolatry to Christianity, but
from sin to God ; that they must all have been renewed in the
spirit of their minds, and become real, spiritual Christians. 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. This view of the case is equally erroneous with the
former, though originating in a more friendly feeling, and it is
hard to say which species of exaggeration does the cause of
Missions most harm. The fact is, that the work of God in
heathen lands does not differ essentially from the same work at
home. In Tinnevelly as in England good has to struggle with
OPINION OF ANGLO-INDIANS. 113
evil, truth with error, light with darkness : nowhere on earth
shall we find the characteristics of heaven. They are in error
who dwell upon the dark side of the picture, and ignore the
bright side ; and they are equally, though more amiably, in
error, who fix their eyes exclusively upon the bright side, and
ignore the dark.
The work of Misions in Thmevelly is a real work, with real
difficulties and real encouragements, and it only claims to be
judged by the principles on which every similar work is estimated
in Christian countries.
In endeavouring to form a fair estimate of the results which
have really been accomplished, we are sometimes met at the
outset by the statement that all our native Christians belong to
low and degraded castes. The great majority of Hindu converts
belong undoubtedly to the lower classes of society : in the country
they are small farmers and farm labourers, not unfrequently
slaves ; in the cities they are mostly domestic servants of Euro
peans. But though this is the case of the majority, it is not the
case with all ; and even if it were, what then ? It would only
follow that in India, as in ancient Greece, not many wise, not
many noble, not many mighty are called, but that God had
chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith.
Few of the English resident in India ever have the opportunity
of seeing any native Christians but those who belong to the class
of domestic servants, and they sometimes complain of members of
that class in unmeasured terms. It is a common saying amongst
the English in India, that Christian servants are worse than
heathen ones ; and though I regard this assertion as false and
calumnious, yet I admit that the character of persons of that
class is often unfavourably affected by their position. Tried by
any standard whatever, the character of the Christian members
of any caste will more than bear a comparison with heathens
belonging to the same caste, but if persons belonging to different
castes or classes are compared, the comparison is unfair. The
domestic servants of Europeans in the Madras Presidency gene
rally belong to the caste of Pariars a caste which has been
114 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
degraded by long-continued oppression, and which is one of the
fevr castes that are accustomed to use intoxicating liquors.
Pariars sometimes boast that they belong to " Master's caste," and
many European masters have discovered to their cost that their
Pariar servants entertain no superstitious scruples respecting
meats and drinks. Unquestionably, therefore, this caste appears
in some particulars at a disadvantage in comparison with some
of the more temperate, more polished castes, and those of this
caste who have become Christians have peculiarly strong tempta
tions and many evil customs to contend with. It is an aggrava
tion of the difficulty that the majority of European masters
measure their servants by a stricter rule than they apply to
persons who are not in their employment, and rarely take any
interest in their moral and spiritual welfare, beyond maligning
all native Christians when any of their domestics commit an
offence. It should be remembered, on the other hand, that
nineteen-twentieths of the native Christians in the Madras
Presidency belong to classes considerably higher than the Pariars
in the social scale ; they reside in the rural districts, and never
come in contact with Europeans at all, either as domestic servants,
or in any other capacity. In Tinnevelly, in particular, there are
thousands of native Christian ryots who have never yet seen any
European layman. In the course of my fourteen years' connexion
with Tinnevelly, my own district was visited only thrice by
Europeans who were not Missionaries ; and in such circumstances
it is obvious that none but the Missionaries are in a position
to form or to express any reliable opinion respecting the character
o/ our native Christians, or even respecting their condition in life
and social influences.
If it is to be regretted that the majority of our native Chris
tians belong to the lower circle of castes, it is for a reason that
lies deeper than anything yet mentioned.
If a man gives up anything for Christ, he receives from Christ
sevenfold more in spiritual gifts and graces; he rises rapidly to
the stature of a perfect man in Christ. On the contrary, if he is
so situated that -he is called upon to give up little, either because
HINDti CHRISTIANS OF THE HIGHEST CLASSES. 115
he has little to give up, or because he meets with little opposition,
and more especially, if he gains, on the whole, in a temporal
point of view, by becoming a Christian not indeed in a pecu
niary sense, for that can rarely happen, but as regards protection'
from oppression, or any similar advantage the probability is
that he will acquire little elevation of spirit, or enlargement of
heart, and little experience of the power of faith. Individuals
may, indeed, be met with, even under such circumstances, who
will rise to Christian eminence ; but if there be a community in
this position, like the bulk of our native community in Tinne-
velly, in the first ages at least of its Christianity, that com.-
munity may be expected to exemplify the truth of this state
ment. On the other hand, there is nothing new in this in the
history of the Christian Church, for it has ever been a character
istic of Christianity, that it has delighted to preach the Gospel to
the poor ; and it has ever been another of its characteristics, that
it has elevated the temporal as well as the spiritual condition of
those who have embraced it.
It is also necessary to bear in mind, that though the majority
of our native Christians belong to the poorer classes, all do not.
There is a small, but steadily- increasing portion of the native
Christian community in India, consisting chiefly of the high
caste youth converted to Christianity in connexion with the
educational department of Missions, who may be regarded as
Hindu Christian gentlemen. The social rank of some members
of this class is as respectable as their attainments in English
scholarship ; and as they have invariably renounced caste and
kindred for Christ's sake,- they have attained thereby to " great
boldness in the faith" and " a good degree" in Christ's school.
Such persons bear the same relation to the less educated, less
distinguished majority, that the ornamented capital of a column
does to the simple, solid shaft ; and not only do they furnish a
reply to the objection that our native Christians belong to the
lower castes alone, but they tend to raise the tone of character
and feeling throughout the entire body. They are " the first-
fruits unto Christ" from the higher classes of the Hindus, and
116 TINNEVELLT MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
they lead us to expect in due time a rich harvest of accessions
from those classes to the Christian cause.
In proceeding to furnish an estimate of the results of missionary
labours in Tinnevelly, I begin with temporal results, such results
being the first that strike the eye of persons visiting our stations.
The whole of the civilization of Northern Europe being due to
Christianity, we cannot doubt the power of the Gospel to civilize
a community ; it is evident too, on comparing Protestant com
munities with Roman Catholic, that the civilizing power of the
Gospel is in proportion to its freedom from corruption. On
turning to Tinnevelly, and comparing the temporal condition of
the native Christians with that of the heathens, we cannot but
be struck with the visible improvement which the Gospel has
effected.
In passing from village to village you can tell, without asking
a question, which village is Christian, and which is heathen.
You can distinguish the Christian village by such signs as these
the straightness and regularity of the streets, the superior con
struction and neatness and cleanness of the cottages, the double
row of tulip-trees or cocoa-nut palms, planted along each street
for ornament as well as for shade, and the air of humble re
spectability which everywhere meets your view all so different
from the filth and indecency, the disorder and neglect, which
assure the visitor that a village is heathen. You notice also, as
you pass through, a marked difference in the people themselves
especially in the women. The Christian women are more decently
attired, and more intelligent-looking than their heathen sisters ;
and instead of hiding themselves on the approach of an European
stranger, they come out and give him, as he passes, the Christian
salutation.
In every case with which I am acquainted, villages which have
held fast and valued the Christianity they received, have risen,
sometimes in the first generation, always in the second, to the
enjoyment of greater prosperity and comfort, and to a higher
position in the social scale, than any heathen village of the same
caste.
PROGRESS OF NATIVE CHRISTIANS IN CIVILIZATION. 117
My own village of Edeyenkoody furnishes an illustration of
this. For some years after my arrival the houses of the people
continued to be, as all Shanar houses had always been, unfit for
civilized human beings to live in : in the course of time, however,
one of the villagers resolved to build a better house for himself,
and gradually the movement extended and became fashionable,
until at length almost every person in the village, from the
richest to the poorest, has built for himself a new house ; and the
new houses the people have thus built for themselves are twice or
thrice as large as the houses they were content to live in before,
besides being much loftier, airier, and more respectable-looking,
with little verandahs in front, and various other arrangements
which used to be seen only in the houses of high-caste people in
the towns. There is still undoubtedly room both for architectural
improvement and for sanitary improvement ; nevertheless, the
changes that have already taken place are a good omen for the
future, especially seeing that they have been carried into effect
by the people themselves, of their own accord, and at their own
expense, and are directly the results of Christian influences.
Christianity has given the people higher ideas of their capa
bilities and duties, even with respect to their present life ; it has
taught them self-respect, and some degree of self-reliance : it has
not made them, perhaps, more industrious, for in their own quiet,
apathetic way, almost all Hindus are tolerably industrious already ;
but it has made them more enterprising, more energetic ; it has
knocked off the fetters wherewith their intellects were bound,
and bid them go forth free ; and thus it has opened before them
an unlimited prospect of progress and improvement.
It may seem a low view of matters to say that it is a character
istic of Christianity that it teaches people to be cleanly ; and yet,
if it be true, as is proverbially said, that " cleanliness is next to
godliness," it is a circumstance worth mentioning, that an in
creased attention to cleanliness has invariably accompanied the
reception of the Gospel in Tinnevelly. The higher classes of the
Hindus have always been very cleanly, for daily ablutions are a
part of their religion; but the lower classes are very filthy in
118 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
their habits, and Shnars of the poorer sort are, perhaps, filthier
even than castes that are lower than themselves in the social
scale, which is owing to the nature of their employment, the men
being climbers of the palmyra, and the women and children
boilers of palmyra sugar.
When dealing with people of this and similar classes, who had
agreed to place themselves under Christian instruction, I have often
thought of the appropriateness of Jacob's address (Gen. xxxv. 2),
" Now, therefore, put aM-ay the strange gods that are among you,
and be ye clean (or bathe), and wash your garments." In the
history of our Christian communities in Tinnevelly this putting
away of idols and washing of the garments have always gone hand
in hand, so that, though there may be room for improvement still,
the external appearance of our people, especially when assembled
in church, is so much more respectable than that of their heathen
neighbours, they are so much cleaner and brighter-looking, that
they would inevitably be supposed by a stranger to be of higher
caste than they are.
This improvement, like every improvement of an outward and
visible character, is especially apparent in our young people. I
wish I could take you, my dear reader, to Edeyenkoody on a
Sunday, and enable you to se6 for yourself the degree in which
our young people are improved. Though you cannot speak a
word of the native language, and are unable to ask any person
a question, yet, if you only use your eyes, you cannot but be con
vinced that Christianity has proved a remarkable blessing to the
rising generation. There they are, sitting in the front rows on
either side ; and they are evidently, as a class, in advance of the
older people. You see them better dressed and cleaner-looking, to
begin with : then also they are evidently more intelligent; generally
they have softer and more amiable looks ; they have books in their
hands, and when a question is put by the preacher, it is from them
that the answer generally proceeds ; they have the praises of God
in their lips ; and there is an air about them which bespeaks
them to be the Church's children, "born in her house." They
owe these signs of superiority to the education they have received,
LIBERALITY OF NATIVE CHRISTIANS. 119
for they have been brought up from the beginning in Christian
knowledge and Christian habits, whereas most of the older people
whom you see sitting behind, were converted from heathenism
late in life, and have rarely lost the stains and rust of their
original condition.
The progress of the Christian community will be very satisfac
tory, if each generation gets as far ahead of the previous one as
the rising generation has already outstripped the past. We cannot
expect in a single generation all the results, whether temporal or
spiritual, which we aim at. We have learnt that God "visits
the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation." Now, neither the fourth nor even the third
generation of native Christians worthy of the name, has, as yet,
come and gone ; at most we are dealing now only with the second
generation of Tinnevelly Christians. It is to be expected, there
fore, that some of the results of the poison of a hundred previous
generations of heathenism should still remain, and that the
Christianity of India, how far soever superior to heathenism,
should appear more or less marred or vitiated ; but if each
generation rises superior to the one that went before, we shall
have every reason not only to be content, but to thank God, and
take courage.
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. This is a rule on which we may place special
reliance in India, for the Hindus are notoriously a penurious,
hoarding people : generally a Hindu is as reluctant to give his
money as he is to shed his blood ; and one scarcely ever hears of
a debt being paid before the payment of it is enforced. This
being the case, if Hindu converts, and especially if converts from
demonolatry a system of gloom and hate, in which the charities
120 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS TIIE RESULTS.
of life have no place have learnt to open their hearts and hands
and contribute liberally to the support of religious and charitable
Societies, it must be concluded that the Gospel has really taken
root amongst them, and begun to bring forth fruit ; nor will the
force of this argument be much weakened by the fact that, in
Tinnevelly, as elsewhere, the amount of a particular donation is
sometimes determined, not by the importance of the object, but
by the amount which neighbours have given ; and that there, as
in the primitive Churches and amongst ourselves, it is occasionally
necessary to say, " Let every man do according as he is disposed
in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a
cheerful giver."
In Tinnevelly religious and charitable Societies have been es
tablished in each of our districts for almost every purpose we wish
to accomplish ; and those Societies depend for support, not upon
Europeans, for there are no Europeans resident in the rural
districts, but upon the native Christians themselves. In my own
district, for instance, I had a Church Building Society, and a
Society for the Relief of the Christian poor, both independent of
other districts, besides an Association connected with the Tinne
velly Tract and Book Society, and one connected with the Bible
Society; and since I left Tinnevelly another Society has been com
menced, in my own as in most other districts, for the diffusion of the
Gospel by native itinerants amongst the neighbouring heathen.
I am unable to state the precise sum- total of the various
charitable contributions raised in Tinnevelly, amongst the native
Christians of all the districts connected with both Missions, but
the best estimate I have been able to form is that it amounts to
1,1 00. sterling a-year. I can state with certainty the exact
amount raised in my own district ; and in this, as in other
things, there was so much emulation at work, that there was
little difference between one district and another, allowance being
made for difference in numbers and worldly circumstances.
Leaving out of account whatever contributions I may have re
ceived from Missionaries and other European friends, I find that
the native Christians of my own district contributed 12QL to
COMPARATIVE VALUE OF MONEY. 121
their various societies and charities, during the two years that
elapsed before I left Tinnevelly. This sum also, handsome as it
is, must be estimated at far more than its apparent value ; for
the value of money depends, not upon its weight or tale, but
upon its relation to food. At the Gold Diggings a pound will
scarcely purchase half as much of the necessaries of life as in
England ; consequently, a donation of a pound given to a Mel
bourne Society must be reckoned as one of ten shillings only.
On the other hand, the value of money is much greater in India
than in England. As estimated by the average price of rice in
India, compared with the average price of wheat in England, I
reckon the value of money in India to be seven to one six to
one perhaps in some districts, at least seven to one in Tinnevelly :
that is, one pound will purchase seven pounds' worth of food ;
consequently, a donation of one pound to a Tinnevelly Society
must be reckoned as one of seven pounds. By food, I under
stand, of course, such food as is necessary to natives of the place,
whose constitutions are adapted to the climate. Some things are
regarded as necessaries of life by Europeans, which most Hindus
have not yet learnt to regard even as luxuries. 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. Looking, however, exclu
sively at the wants of the native at his natural wants and at
the very limited range of his artificial wants, the estimate of
the value of money which I have deduced from the price of grain
is certainly a correct one, and a similar conclusion may be drawn
from a comparison of the rate of wages paid in India and in
England respectively, to agricultural labourers.
A good agricultural labourer in Tinnevelly will think himself
Q
122 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
well paid at a shilling a week ; and, if he has no family, he will
proba'bly manage to live at the rate of sixpence a week, and thus
lay by half his wages. A man with an income of ten shillings a
week is regarded as a gentleman ; but I was not fortunate enough
to have any such gentlemen in my congregations. All my own
people belonged to the class of small very small farmers, hired
palmyra-climbers, and farm-servants, or slaves ; and though most
of the farmers were owners of the lands they cultivated, I do not
think there was a single native Christian in the district, whose
income averaged more than five shillings a week.
It is necessary to bear these things in mind, in forming an
estimate of the liberality of our native Christians. If we must
multiply by seven to find the equivalent value of their incomes,
we are bound also to multiply by seven to find the English equi
valent of their contributions to charitable Societies. Estimated
by this rule, the 1201. contributed in two years amount to 840,
and this being the case, it must be admitted, I think,, that the
religious sincerity of the mass of our Tinnevelly Christians has
been proved by an unanswerable argument. "W ithout confound
ing liberality in almsgiving with Christianity, it is evident that
Christianity must have taken deep root amongst our people to
produce the fruit of such liberality as I have described. May I not
say, indeed, on comparing that liberality with the average amount
contributed to religious and charitable Societies in many parishes
in this old Christian country, that in the sandy plains and pal
myra forests of Tinnevelly, Christendom is furnished with a new
illustration of the prophetic axiom, " there are last that shall be
first?"
I have said that we have public meetings in Tinnevelly, as in
this country, in aid of our various religious and charitable asso
ciations, and certainly those public meetings are remarkably well
attended. Not long ago, if you observed bands of villagers
men, women, and children dressed in their holiday attire, and
all threading in the same direction the pathways through the
fields, you \vould naturally have concluded that they were going
to attend some heathen festival, and that the plantains, baskets of
MEETINGS OF NATIVE SOCIETIES. 123
sugar-candy, and other articles of produce they were carrying
with them, were intended to be laid at the feet of the idol. In
many extensive districts in the South it would now be unsafe to
form this conclusion. You would probably find, on inquiry, that
the people you saw were all going to attend a sangam a public
meeting connected with one of our Societies and that the articles
they were carrying with them were intended to swell the col
lection at the public meeting.
The last meeting I attended in Tinnevelly, the meeting of the
Tract, Book, and Bible Association connected with my own
district, was held at Edeyenkoody, a few weeks before I left. It
was held in the middle of the day, and all who attended the
meeting had to give up some portion of their day's work those
who came from a considerable distance an entire day's work in
order to enable them to attend it. There had been heavy rain
also for several days before the meeting was held, there was rain
on the day of the meeting, and there was rain upon the meeting
itself, for the large temporary church in which the meeting was
held was in a leaky condition. Notwithstanding these various
discouragements, there were upwards of 800 persons of all ages
present on the occasion, all of them native Christians connected
with the district. Surely this looks as if the people generally,
however defective they may be in some things, had learned to
take an interest in the spread of Christianity.
On the occasion referred to, some fifteen men, agricultural
slaves, belonging to a village eleven miles off, came to bid me
good-by after the meeting was over. I saw that there were none
of the women of their village with them, and rather wondered at
this; for there, as here, there is generally a larger number of
women than of men present at such meetings. I asked them
why this had happened. They answered, " The river was swollen ;
so the women were obliged to turn back, but we swam." " Oh,
you swam the river, did you 1 " I said. " Yes," said they ; " and
we wish to set off at once, for we want to cross the river again
before it is quite dark." Thus, those poor people walked in all
twenty-two miles that day, and swam a river twice, in order to
124 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
enable them to attend the meeting! Making all due allowance
for difference in climate and in mode of life, I think I may
fairly say that the practical interest those poor Hindu rustics
took in the propagation of Christian truth, though not directly a
proof of their piety, was at least a proof that in them the good
seed had found a good promising soil, in which fruits of faith
and labours of love were likely to grow apace.
I come now to more directly spiritual results of the reception
of the Gospel. It is admitted that Christian profession and
Scriptural knowledge, docility and liberality, though excellent
things after their kind, may fall ahort of spiritual life. It is
desirable, therefore, to inquire whether, and to what extent, our
native Christian community in Tinnevelly has been endowed
with spiritual life from on high. Amongst our native Christians
such spiritual life as operates mightily in " works of faith, and
labours of love, and patience of hope," is certainly rare and
I fear, it must be added, it is rare in this country too. It is a
gift of special grace, possessed not by the " many " who are
" called," but by the "few " who are " chosen." 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 ; we shall
discover the existence of a similar mixture, in ever varying pro
portions, in every century of the history of the Church. Every
where nominal Christianity has accompanied real Christianity,
and everywhere real Christians have been a " little flock." This
state of things was clearly predicted by the Divine Founder of
Christianity himself.
Look, for example, at our Lord's prophetic parable of the
sower. According to that parable, one portion only of the good
seed of the word " brings forth fruit unto perfection," three-fourths
SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. 125
of all the seed that is sown are lost. One portion falls by the
wayside, and is trodden under foot ; another portion falls on a
good, but a shallow soil, and though it springs up speedily, it
speedily whithers away ; a third portion is choked with thorns ;
a fourth portion alone finds a good soil, the soil of " a good and
honest heart," a heart specially prepared by Divine grace for the
reception of the good seed, and it is in that soil alone that
the good seed not only takes root, but grows, and brings forth
fruit " in some sixty, and in some an hundred-fold."
Now, no exception to this state of things is furnished by Indian
Missions in general, or by our Tinnevelly Missions in particular.
We miorht wish, indeed, that all our native Christians had em-
O 7 '
braced Christianity purely and solely from a conviction of its
Divine origin, and of the suitableness of its blessings to their
spiritual wants, without being influenced by its collateral, tem
poral advantages; we might hope also that they would never
forget " the wormwood and the gall" of their inherited heathenism,
or " the exceeding great love of their Master and only Saviour "
in dying for their redemption; we might hope that all who
abandoned heathenism would also abandon sin, that all who were
converted to Christianity would also be converted to God, that all
who became Christians in a heathen country would become real
Christians, really renewed in the spirit of their minds, filled with
real love and zeal, Christians likely, to rise speedily to "the
stature of perfect men in Christ;" this and much more we
might hope for, and even expect ; but the reality, though quite in
accordance with what Scripture and our European experience in
dicate, is little in accordance with such bright expectations. The
many, in our Tinnevelly Missions, walk, as the many have ever
walked everywhere, in the broad easy way of worldly compliances,
and they who adorn the doctrine of God their, Saviour, are the few.
On looking round us in Tinnevelly, we shall find no lack of
merely nominal Christianity ; and yet here I must draw a dis
tinction between what we call nominal Christianity in Tinne
velly, and much that is called^by that name in England, but
which appears to me to have no right whatever to the name.
126 T1NNEVELLY MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
In this old Christian country, especially in our crowded cities,
many of those who call themselves " Christians," never enter a
place of Christian worship, never bow the knee to God in prayer,
never open God's word, know nothing of God except as a name
to swear by. Such persons have no right even to the name of
Christians, and when they are called by that name it can only
mean that they are not Mahometans or Buddhists. In Tinne-
velly such persons would not be called Christians at all ; their
names would be erased from our Church-lists, and Christianity
would not be discredited by the supposition that they are hers.
When we speak of nominal Christianity in Tinnevelly, we speak
of something which has a certain right to the Christian name.
Our nominal Christians come to church, they send their children
to school, they have abandoned their idols, they have formally
placed themselves under Christian instruction, and under our
pastoral care ; they have come within the sound of the Gospel, and
within the range of holy influences ; they contribute to the funds
of our various Societies ; they submit to a discipline in a remark
ably docile manner; many of them have applied for, and
received baptism, some of them come regularly to the commu
nion ; in short, a considerable number of our " nominal Chris
tians" would be reckoned very good Christians, and very good
church-people too, in some parishes in England ; and if we call
them "nominal" Christians merely, it is because we have not seen
in them what we have longed to see " the power of godliness,"
the new life of real, spiritual Christianity and find it necessary
to distinguish them from that much smaller, but much more
interesting class of native Christians, who show that they are
animated by the spirit of Christ.
I am not disposed to think lightly of the value of such nominal
Christianity as I have described. A great and very important
work has been done, when so many as 43,000 people in one pro
vince of heathen India have been brought thus far, though it
should be thus far only, towards the heavenly Zion. The altar
has been built, the wood is piled upon the altar, the offering
which St. Paul speaks of " the offering up of the Gentiles,"
VALUE OF EXTERNAL CHRISTIANITY. 127
has been placed upon the wood, and it only remains for the
fire of Divine grace to descend and kindle the whole into a
flame.
I am aware that there are some persons who think the ex
tension of a nominal Christianity amongst heathens as no benefit
at all, but a positive evil, and who withhold their sympathy from
any system of Missions but that which professes only (with very
doubtful success, however,) to " gather in the elect." I not only
think that idea erroneous, but I regard it as a mischievous error.
A religion which is merely nominal and external will not, it is
true, save any man's soul ; but if our country were not a nominally
Christian one, inhabited by a church-going, Bible-taught people,
how much more seldom would real religion be met with 1 Suppose
that large numbers of our unspiritual, unconverted countrymen
were to abandon the profession of Christianity, cease attending
church, throw away their Bibles, withdraw from the company of
their Christian fellow-countrymen, and return in a body to th
heathenism of their Saxon forefathers, would this apostasy be
better or worse than their nominal Christianity ? would there be
a greater or a less probability of real religion eventually making
progress amongst them ? or would not they who now regard the
extension of nominal Christianity in India as a doubtful benefit
or as a positive evil, speak loudly and warmly of the importance
of even an external profession of Christianity 1 If this case is
correctly put, why should we have one law for Europeans and
another for our dealings with a people who are lower in intellect,
in civilization, and in religious development, and who are there
fore more likely, in their progress to real religion, to pass through
the stage of nominal religion ? Instead, therefore, of that morbid
dread of the extension of nominal Christianity which some good
people evince, it should simply be our desire and prayer that
"the power of godliness" may become co-extensive with the
"form" of it, and that the "dry bones" of heathenism may not
only be clothed with sinews, and flesh, and skin, but vivified and
raised up by the Divine " breath. '
It is greatly to be deplored that any persons, whether Europeans
128 TINNEYELLY MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
or Hindus, should remain content with the empty form, without
the substance of godliness ; and it should therefore be regarded
as a special consolation, that we who have laboured in Tinnevelly
as Missionaries and as pastors, who " speak what we do know,
and testify what we have seen," are able to testify that there is
in Tinnevelly, not only much of a vague general profession of
religion, but an encouraging amount of genuine piety. In each
of our little congregations God has "a seed to serve Him." There
is " a little flock," would that I could say they are not a little
flock ! of persons who appear to be " called, and faithful, and
chosen followers of the Lamb ; and such persons show the
reality of their religion by the regularity of their attendance on
the means of grace, by their zeal in the acquisition of religious
knowledge, by the quiet consistency of their lives, by their devout
confidence in God's care, by their conquest over their caste-preju
dices, by the largeness of their charities, and in a variety of other
ways which are quite satisfactory to their pastors' minds. The
existence of this class of persons, though they are still a minority
everywhere, is an immense encouragement to the Christian Mis
sionary ; for it proves to him that the Gospel has not waxed old
has not become effete, as some people affirm but is still, as in
primitive times, "the power of God, and the wisdom of God" to
the salvation of every one that believeth : it proves that Chris
tianity is not merely a new dogma, or a new society, but new love,
new life ; not merely a new patch upon an old garment, or a
new garment upon " the old man," but the creation of " a new
man" in Christ Jesus.
The existence of a considerable amount of real Christian piety
amongst our native Christians, may be inferred from the number
of our communicants. In almost every portion of our Tinnevelly
Missions, the proportion apparent between the communicants and
the baptized part of the Christian population is very remarkable.
Amongst a Christian population of about 43,000 souls, about a
third of whom are still unbaptized, the communicants amount, in
round numbers, to 5,000. This gives a proportion of about one
communicant to every six baptized persons throughout the pro-
COMMUNICANTS. 129
vince. In some villages with which I am acquainted, the pro
portion is one in five ; and if there are not at least one in eight
of the baptized inhabitants of a village communicants, that is,
if there are not at least 100 communicants in a village of 800
baptized inhabitants we are accustomed to think the religious
condition of that village deplorably low.
We should form, it is true, an erroneous impression of the
religious prosperity of Tinnevelly if we looked at these facts from
a purely English point of view. The Hindus, and other semi-
civilized races, have so much less mental independence and self-
reliance than the English, and when disposed to act right are so
much more teachable, tractable, and submissive, that a pastor's
recommendation carries greater weight, and his influence produces
greater effect than is ordinarily the case in English congregations.
Hence, if we take an English congregation and an Indian one,
which are equal in numbers, and equal, as far as man can judge,
in the aggregate amount of their piety and zeal, we shall gene
rally find a considerable inequality in the number of the com
municants.
In estimating the value of facts like this, differences in mental
temperament are certainly to betaken into account; nevertheless,
we should not be doing justice to our Missions if we did not
attribute a considerable share of the difference to the system
pursued. Our people may be more docile than the English, but
our system also is better. . It is not the custom in any of our
missionary stations, as it generally is in England, for people to
come to the Lord's Table when they please, and keep away when
they please, without any reference to character or preparation,
coming unprepared and going away unblessed. We have a " godly
discipline," and a regular system of instruction and training,
similar to that which in this country precedes Confirmation, but
generally a good deal stricter. At all our stations in Tinnevelly,
on the Saturday preceding the administration of the Holy Com
munion, we are accustomed to hold " a preparation," or preparatory
meeting, which all who wish to partake of the Communion, are
expected to attend. From a distance of four or five miles people
130 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
attend this meeting almost as a matter of course, but people who
live at greater distances are indulged with subsidiary " pre
parations " nearer home. At these meetings the Missionary con
verses with the intending communicants, catechizes them, explains
to them whatever requires to be made clear, prays with them
if need be, warns and exhorts them, or comforts and strengthens
them, privately and endeavours in every way he can think of,
to prepare them for the reception of the Holy Communion with
a right faith, a reverent mind, and a lively hope. It might be
expected that the strictness of this system would deter com
municants, and yet, so far from deterring them, nothing seems
so effectually to increase their number ; for persons who would
not think themselves fit to come to the Communion itself, feel no
scruple about attending the communicants' class, and thus they
are gradually led on " from strength to strength," till in due
time they venture to come to the Table of the Lord.
During the last six months that elapsed before I left Tin-
nevelly, wishing to leave behind me something that might be
useful in my absence, I reduced to a connected shape the prayers,
iustructions, and meditations which I had been accustomed to
supply to my people, month by month, at the preparatory
meetings, and gave the whole for publication to our Tinnevelly
Book Society. The book was adopted and published by the
Book Society, and an edition of 3,000 copies of it printed at the
Church Mission Press in Palamcottah. May I not say that this
is a fact which speaks volumes t In a province where devils
were the principal objects of worship, " where Satan's seat was,"
3,000 copies of a book intended for the guidance and edification
of Christian communicants have been called for, and have been
printed and sold. Surely this may be regarded as proving that
Christian piety must have made real progress. Allowing a
certain abatement for the mental temperament of the people,
and for the results of systematic preparation, what remains is so
considerable and encouraging, as to warrant our saying, " what
hath God wrought ' "
D
In my own district the number of communicants was at first
HINDtf PIETY REAL AFTER ITS KIND. 131
very small. For two years, amongst about a thousand native
Christians there was only one person, in addition to a few
catechists and schoolmasters, to whom I felt myself at liberty to
administer the Communion. Those were days of darkness and
dreariness indeed, and I well remember sometimes saying to
myself, " Lord, I am left alone." But it was God's will that
I should not always be left alone. After the schools came into
full operation, and especially after the pupils who had been
educated in our Female Boarding School began to take their
places in our various congregations, as Christian wives and
mothers, a great improvement began to take place, and by and
by I found myself surrounded with a band of men and women
but especially of women whose hearts God appeared to have
touched.
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. Many a person in Christian England, though without
God in the world, and without a particle of love for the Saviour
who died for him, exemplifies by his high sense of honour and
gentlemanly integrity, what the indirect influences of many ages
of Christianity can effect : place beside him a recent convert
from heathenism, and though the latter has been awakened to
spiritual life by a vital spark from on high, and be sincerely
desirous of following his Saviour, it is well if he does not suffer
in our estimation from comparison with one who has so greatly
the advantage of him in point of external circumstances. 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
132 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE EESULTS.
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. The Gospel does not all at once eradicate natural
disposition and national failings. Our Indian converts, though
they have become Christians, have not become Englishmen ; they
remain Hindus still, and that means much. But whatever their
failings may be, a counteracting impulse has been brought to
bear upon them, and they have yielded themselves to that
impulse, so that I have no fear respecting the final result. Both
" the leaven" and " the lump" may be inferior to what we have
now in England ; but the difference between the Indian leaven
and the Indian lump is equally marked and decided, and we may
regard it as equally certain that in due time the lump will be
pervaded by the leaven. The Indian leaven itself also is probably
destined to improve in strength and virtue.
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. Reasoning from analogy, in a district where the people
have received the Gospel from, on the whole, a higher order of
motives, where the faith introduced is that which was " once de
livered to the saints," without superstitious admixtures, and
where the Holy Scriptures are freely distributed, and the Scrip
tural education of the young is universal, we have surely reason
to expect that the heavenly leaven will, sooner or later, work in a
not less effectual manner, and with not less happy results.
When a person learns, on first becoming acquainted with Tin-
nevelly, that the greater number of the native converts em
braced the Christian religion either from secular motives, or from
THE CHURCH RESEMBLES A BETEL-GARDEN. 1 33
a mixture of motives, partly secular, partly religious, and when
he notices the imperfections and faults which are apparent in the
majority, he may conclude as some have naturally, but too
hastily concluded, that all the religion of the province is unreal.
In this instance, as in many others, a little knowledge leads to an
erroneous conclusion, a more thorough knowledge reveals results
that are as satisfactory and encouraging as the circumstances of
the case will admit of.
The real state of things may be illustrated by a beautiful
analogy drawn from the betel gardens of India. The betel leaf is
the smooth, pungent, aromatic leaf of a climbing plant, somewhat
resembling the pepper-vine, which, is almost universally chewed
by Orientals, not as a narcotic, but as a mild agreeable stimulant.
The betel-vine is a delicate and tender plant, which, requires much
water and much shade ; and, accordingly, it is trained, not up a
naked pole, like the hop, but up the stem of a rapidly growing,
straight, slim, leafy tree, called in Tamil the agatti, which is
planted thickly in rows throughout the betel garden, so as both
to give the betel the support it needs, and to screen it from the
scorching rays of the sun, by the continuous shade of its inter
mingling branches. At a distance, and to a casual observer, the
agatti alone is apparent, and it might be supposed that we were
looking at an agatti garden, not at a betel garden ; but inter
spersed among the agattis, planted in the same soil, and fed by
the same water, is another and more precious plant, whose wind
ing tendrils and smooth green leaves attract our notice when we
have entered the garden, and begun to look closely around. It is
only for the sake of screening and sweetening the betel that the
agatti is grown, and when the betel-leaf is ripe, the agatti which
supported and defended it is cut down, and either applied to
some trivial use, or cast into the fire. Thus it is in our missions
in Tinnevelly, and in the visible Church in general, which in
every country is a betel garden, in which " the many " who are
" called," attract more notice than " the few " who are " chosen,"
though they are of infinitely less value, and in which " the few "
grow up amongst " the many," undistinguished from them except
134 TINNEVELLY MISSIONS THE RESULTS.
by the close observer, and are trained up for heaven, in green,
and fruitful humility, under their protecting shade.*
It is quite certain that God has not left Himself in Tinnevelly,
or in any other place where his word has been preached, and his
Church planted, without witnesses to the saving efficacy of his
truth. Whilst He causes " the Gospel of the kingdom " to be
" preached in all nations for a witness unto them," it is evidently
his design that it should not ordinarily or always be a witness
against them ; for He has been pleased in so many instances to
accompany it with " the demonstration of his Spirit and of
power," as to prove to all nations that Christianity is from God,
and a remedy for the spiritual diseases of the Hindus, as well as
of all other races of men.
* This analogy will be found also in " Pettitt's History of the Tinnevelly
Mission." I have occasionally used Mr. Pettitt's words ; but the analogy
itself struck me shortly after my arrival in Tinnevelly, when I stated it,
nearly as above, in a letter to a friend.
THE END.
U. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.
Just Published, Demy 8vo. price 21s.
A
COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR
OF
THE DRAVIDIAN
OR
SOUTH-INDIAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES.
BY THE
REV. R. CALDWELL, B.A.
MISSION A RY OP THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THF. GOSPEL IN' FOREIGN PAP.TS,
AT EDKYENKOODY, TINNEVELLY, SOUTHEIIN INDIA.
THE object of this Work is to supply a desideratum which
lias long been felt in Comparative Philology, viz , an investiga
tion of the Dravidian, or South-Indian Family of Languages,
somewhat resembling Bopp's celebrated Comparative Grammar
of the Indo-European Family.
The author examines and compares the grammatical prin
ciples and forms of the various South-Indian languages of
which the Tamil and Telugu are the most highly cultivated
and the best known, in the hope of contributing to a more
thorough knowledge of their distinctive characteristics and
essential spirit ; and, in doing so, it is also his endeavour to
ascertain the relation which this family of languages bears to
the principal families or groups into which the languages of
Asia and Europe have been divided.
%* All foreign words, to whatever family of languages they may
belong, are represented in this ivorTc in the Roman character with
only a few diacritical marks for the purpose of facilitating
comparison.
LONDON : HARRISON, 59, PALL MALL.
