PROGRESS
During the last decade of Dr. House’s services there were many recruits to the force of workers. But these additions were not a net gain, for in the meantime there were numerous withdrawals on account of health. In 1869 came Revs. J. W. Van Dyke and John Carrington with their wives. Two years later were added Rev. and Mrs. R. Arthur, Rev. J. N. Culbertson and Miss E. S. Dickey. Miss Arabella Anderson came in 1872 to assist in the new boarding school for girls. The year 1874 saw the arrival of an unusual number of unmarried women missionaries. They were Misses S. M. Coffman, M. L. Cort and E. D. Grimshaw. Then, in 1875, Rev. and Mrs. Eugene P. Dunlop reached Bangkok and began a very long period of valuable service.
Increase of workers meant not diminution but rather increase of work. This is typified in the case of Dr. House himself, who jocularly wrote to his brother that “Satan will not likely find mischief for my hands to do,” and then recounts the duties that devolve upon him. The varied activities that he mentions not only show the versatility required of a missionary but indicate the manifold duties that each missionary has to perform. He writes:
“I have recently become a theological professor, four evenings of the week gathering around me in my study the more advanced and promising of the native church members ... and try to pilot them through the leading principles of a system of divinity.”
One of these men, Ooan Si Tieng, was ordained in 1872. He had been the first Chinese convert in the mission and now became the first to receive this full authority from the Presbytery. As pastor of the native church Dr. House had a full measure of sorrows as well as joys, for there is a tide in spiritual affairs that has its ebb as well as its flow, and the years of spiritual awaking were followed by periods of depression. Thus at the beginning of 1869 he writes:
“Our spiritual prospects at the opening of the year are not as bright as last new year—one or two sad and unexpected fallings away from the faith have greatly tried and pained our hearts.”
But this reaction was transient, for two years later, in telling of the week of prayer in January, he writes:
“Our native Christians are quite interested, sustaining the meetings nobly. Indeed I have thrown the meetings upon them altogether and they take turns in leading them. You do not know what comfort it is to have in my little flock enough able and willing to carry on these meetings.... It would do you good to witness the spirit of faithfulness on their part to the souls of their impenitent friends and neighbours.”
In addition to his duties as pastor of the mission church, Dr. House was appointed superintendent of the mission press in 1870, and for that year also was elected secretary of the mission in charge of the records and correspondence. At the same time he was offered a royal appointment:
“Projects are now on foot in both kings’ palaces for schools for the instruction of the young nobility of Siam in English and the sciences. I have been earnestly solicited by the Second King George to aid in establishing the one he is planning. Happy would I be to lend a helping hand if other duties would allow.”
After two years the doctor was relieved of the charge of the Press and appointed again to the more congenial task of supervising the mission school, a position which he continued to fill until his final withdrawal from the field.
In the midst of these incidents the actual growth of the Mission must not be overlooked. It has to be recorded that in spite of arduous and faithful labours of the increasing corps of workers and in the face of all the encouraging marks of advance in Western civilisation, Siam responded very slowly to the spiritual appeal of the Gospel. While she gladly recognised and sought after the material benefits of Christianity she continued to manifest her characteristic indifference to its more vital message. Mr. McDonald, in his book on Siam, Its Government, Manners and Customs, says that when he arrived in Siam in 1861 there was but one native convert in connection with the mission, whereas ten years later there was a church in Bangkok with only twenty members and another in Petchaburi with a like number. He then adds:
“It is just to state that there is scarcely any other field in which modern missions have been established where the introduction of the gospel has met with so little opposition as in Siam proper.... It is equally just to say that there is scarcely any other field which has been so barren of results. Pure Buddhism seems to yield more slowly to the power of the gospel than any other false system.”
The reason for this unyielding nature of Buddhism seems to lie in its ethical theories which are the result of its philosophy of life. In some measure, too, this indifference of Buddhism to a spiritual interpretation of life accounts for its non-resistance towards the preaching of an antagonistic religion. The primary fallacies of Buddhism from the Christian point of view are:
“1. No Creator and no Creating: Things just happened. This conception leads to indifference to nature and to a belief that the body is vile, to be despised and disregarded.
“2. No idea of a Spiritual Personality, whether human or divine. Emphasis is placed on mind and intellect to the exclusion of will and feeling. Hence Buddhism is a philosophy rather than a religion, a theory of existence rather than a motive force.
“3. No true sense of relationship of man to man or of man to God, in the absence of spiritual personality. Everything is ego-centric, each for himself. Hence incomplete ideas of love, faith, sin, holiness, suffering; in the absence of hope fear dominates life.
“4. The greatest fundamental error is the assertion of the Karma law as the sole principle that explains all (the law of ethical causation, by which the merit or demerit of every act in this life effects the future life). This leads to a denial of personality and to fatalism, formality, trust in the individual’s merit, denial of forgiveness and self satisfaction.”
But if the work at that stage had few numerical results to display, yet a keen discernment would show that other larger results were being accomplished. Mr. George B. Bacon, in his volume on Siam, shows a true appreciation of what missions had accomplished up to that time:
“At first sight their efforts, if measured by count of converts, might seem to have resulted in failure.... But really the success of these efforts has been extraordinary, although the history of them exhibits an order of results almost without precedent. Ordinarily the religious enlightenment of a people comes first and the civilization follows as a thing of course. But here the Christianisation of the nation has scarcely begun, but its civilisation has made much more than a beginning. For it is to the labours of the Christian missionaries in Siam that the remarkable advancement of the kings and nobles, and even of the common people in general is owing....
“When Sir John Bowring came in 1855 to negotiate his treaty ... he found the fruit was ripe before he plucked it. And it was by the patient and persistent labours of the missionaries for twenty years that the results which he achieved were made not only possible but easy.”
But there is evidence of even more subtle effect of the gospel. No one who reads of the notable changes in the social customs and political institutions introduced by the young King Chulalongkorn can resist the conclusion that it was the religious support of these ancient practises that had given way under the disintegrating light of the Christian Gospel. Even that earlier attempt of Chao Fah Yai to modernise the religious teachings among his followers shows that the religious philosophy of Buddhism could not stand before the truth of Jesus.