India, Its Life and Thought

by John P. Jones

The Golden Lily Tank in the Madura Temple

It is unique in the large proportion of Christians which are among its inhabitants. Though the Christian community in India averages only one per cent of the population, in the State of Travancore it amounts to 25 per cent. It is here that we find the ancient Syrian Church, with its three hundred and fifty thousand souls. Though it calls itself "the Thomasian, Apostolic Church," and though the Romish Church accepts the legend, modern historians deny its apostolic origin, and claim that it was founded no earlier than the third century. Even thus, it furnishes an intensely interesting study. The writer was deeply interested to see and enter its two churches at Kottayam, both of which are at least eight hundred years old.

Four centuries ago, Roman Catholicism used all the resources of the Inquisition in order to absorb this Church. They succeeded only too well, and half of the Indian Syrian Church is now subject to Rome. Nearly a century ago, the Church Missionary Society of England lent a helping hand to the Syrian Church, and has brought new life and progressive energy, and a new spiritual power and ambition, into a portion of that decrepit type of ancient Christianity.

Furthermore, a century of work given by the London Missionary Society and the Church Missionary Society has created a Protestant Christian community of more than one hundred thousand souls in that little kingdom alone.

We pass from Travancore into the little State of Cochin, on the north. We are impressed by the colossal Christian church in the town of Cochin, in which, however, only a small handful of English people worship every Sunday evening. It was erected by the Portuguese four centuries ago, and is a charming study. It is here, shortly after Vasco da Gama had completed the first round-the-Cape journey, that this house of God was erected by his followers. Two centuries later, the Dutch came, conquered the Portuguese, occupied their house of worship, and desecrated their tombs. In that church to-day one can find tombstones inscribed on one side by the Portuguese to their departed friends, and, on the other side, in Dutch, to commemorate departed Hollanders.

But the most interesting sight, by far, in this quiet old Indian town, is the community of white Jews who live on its southern side. No one knows when they came here. They probably arrived at the Dispersion of the first century of our era; or it may be later. But the community must have been reënforced from time to time, as they have maintained, in a marvellous way, the fairness of their complexion. It will not require much imagination, as one enters their synagogue, to think of the synagogue of Nazareth of old. As we ascend the stair-way into the little schoolroom above, and hear the little ones reciting, in pure Hebrew, passages from the Pentateuch, we can easily imagine that we are listening to the voice of a dear little Boy, nineteen centuries ago, reciting to His master those same passages in that same tongue in Palestine. There is hardly a place on earth where Judaism has met with fewer vicissitudes and changes than on this western coast of India.

It is only a couple of hundred yards farther away that we find the synagogue of the black Jews—the descendants of those who were given by the ancient king to be slaves to the white Jews. They adopted the religion of their masters, and are still praying, like their masters, for the coming of the Messiah, of whose arrival and triumphs in India they seem to be oblivious.

Leaving Cochin, we pass along the coast as far as Bombay, which has been called the "Eye of India," and also the "Gateway of India," two names which are equally appropriate to this beautiful city. There is hardly another city on earth where more races and religions blend. And its streets are made exceedingly picturesque by the many costumes of its polyglot population. Before the arrival of the plague, some eight years ago, Bombay was perhaps the most populous city in India. But this fell scourge has decimated its population and has robbed it of much of its ambition.