XXIII
EVANGELISTIC TRAINING
On our return from the surveying expedition in the summer of 1884, we found F. B. Gould, Esq., our first British Vice-Consul, already established in Chiengmai. It was an important event for the country; since a British official in any place is a guarantee that at least the outward forms of law and justice will be observed. In one important sense, too, it marked a new era for the mission, or, at least, for the missionaries.
Those who have not tried can hardly imagine the privation of living eighteen years without a mail system of any kind. Our only dependence so far was on catching chance trading boats to and from Bangkok. These were always an uncertain quantity; in very low water they almost ceased to travel. Some boatmen preferred not to be responsible for the mail, not knowing what it might contain. In the great city of Bangkok, and even in Chiengmai, it required a constant effort to keep ourselves informed of the departures of boats. The consequence was that an absence of news from children, friends, and the outside world generally, for three or four months at a time, was very common. Sometimes the interval was as much as eight months. Add to this the time of the long river trip, and our news sometimes would be nearly a year old when it reached us. Mr. Wilson’s family and mine had schooled ourselves to these conditions; but to those who had been accustomed to a daily mail, they must have been almost unendurable.
The new Vice-Consul came, determined by all means to get some regular communication established, if it were only a monthly one. We were only too glad to do whatever we could to that end. It was a matter of pride to both parties that we arranged at once for a regular and most successful semi-monthly mail overland to Maulmein. I furnished a reliable Christian man for chief contractor, and good men for carriers. Since Mr. Gould had as yet no authority from his government to incur any expense, the arrangement was wholly a private affair, with the understanding that all who availed themselves of it should pay a quarterly assessment for the maintenance of the line. But in a short time the British government assumed the whole expense. Mr. Gould promised to get the staff exempt from corvée, or compulsory government service. He had to use his official authority for that.
The Lāo government had absolutely no interest in a mail, whether weekly or yearly; but the Siamese looked rather askance at having in their own country a mail service over which they had no control. It seemed to be in some way a reflection on their national pride. There is little doubt that our private enterprise hastened the weekly government mail from Bangkok, which was started the next year. And since the Maulmein route is quicker by two weeks than the one by Bangkok, the Siamese government has of late maintained both, the two meeting at Rahêng, and giving us a very creditable and regular mail service.
In the spring of 1884 the mission sustained a great loss in the death of Princess Tipa Kēsawn, Prince Intanon’s consort, whom we were in the habit of calling “the Queen.” Placed as she was, she could not well have avoided the making of priests’ garments, and the going through with the form of making offerings to the spirits. But I seriously doubt whether she had any expectation of laying up thereby a store of merit for the future. One thing we do know, that in her last sickness she turned no anxious look to any of these things, at a time when thoughtful Buddhists are always most diligent in their efforts. Dr. Peoples of our mission attended her in her last illness, and the case was submitted entirely to him. Mrs. McGilvary and I were both with her the day before she died. Mrs. McGilvary was with her at her death, and remained to see the body dressed for the coffin. We missed her very much as a friend, and the whole country missed her as a balance-wheel for her husband.
On the arrival of the reinforcement in 1883, a Presbytery was organized of the four ministers, Wilson, Peoples, Hearst, and McGilvary. I was then full of the idea of a theological training-class. My experience of the accumulated power added to the missionary’s efforts by having such assistants as Nān Inta, Nān Suwan, and Noi Intachak, raised in my mind the question, Why not increase the number? Having had no schools, we had, of course, no body of young men educated on Christian lines whom we might train for the ministry; and we could not have such for years to come. But we had in our churches mature men of deeply religious nature, earnest students of Buddhism, and carefully educated in all the learning of their race. And a man so trained has many compensations for his lack of training in our elementary schools. He knows the sacred books of his own people, their strength and their weakness. He understands the thoughts, the needs, and the difficulties of a Buddhist enquirer, and the mode of argument by which these difficulties are to be met, as no young man of his own race, and as no foreign teacher can do. The training needed to make such a man an efficient preacher of the Gospel, is training in the Christian Scriptures, together with practical experience in evangelistic work under efficient direction.
I was at that time giving regular instruction to Noi Intachak, one of the finest young men I have ever known in that country, and very anxious to become a minister.[[13]] To Nān Tā, afterwards our efficient minister, I was giving instruction less regularly, as it was possible for him to take it. But it would have been both easier and more profitable to teach a class of six or eight. By qualifying such a group of young men to work, and then working with them and through them, I believed that my own efficiency could be quadrupled, or even sextupled, as it was doubled when I had Nān Inta to work with.