Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

Once more we were in a difficulty about the principalship of the school. Miss Wisner, who had been in failing health for some time, was arranging to go home on a much-needed furlough, and Miss Keeler, who had been teaching in the school for four or five years since her arrival from America, being needed in her department as teacher, we were in great perplexity to secure a principal for the school. Conference was in session about this time at Calcutta, and after much deliberation it was decided to do a very unusual thing. Mr. and Mrs. Hill were nearing the shores of India. Mrs. Hill was appointed principal of the school. She had never been in India before, and hence could have had no experience in our school affairs, or Indian life. But Mr. Hill had been brought up in India, and had had an intimate acquaintance with schools, and he could advise her in school management. Mr. Hill took the pastorate of the English Church, and Mrs. Hill conducted the school for nearly a year very satisfactorily. The pastorate of Mr. Hill was also successful from the first, and has continued until the present.

Toward the end of 1888 the mission was re-enforced by Miss Turrell, who came out from England to take the principalship of the school. She is an experienced educator, and enjoys the distinction of being the first missionary among us who has gone forth at her own charges, donating her own passage money and services. In the great generosity on her part she deserves the cordial thanks of our entire mission, and especially the good women at home whose work she had done until the present time in the place of one of their own missionaries. Early in 1899, Miss Files returned from her furlough with Miss Charlotte Illingworth, one of our own Rangoon girls, who came back from college in America to take up work as a missionary in the land and school of her early training. Miss Keeler retired from missionary work and, after a visit to America, returned and was married, and lives in Rangoon. After one year’s service in the school, Miss Files was transferred to India, and is teaching in the Wellesley Girls’ School at Naini Tal.

This somewhat detailed record of the labors of our missionaries in Rangoon and the institutions they have built up has been given, because a connected setting forth of this work has never been made. A new mission as ours is often small, and the importance of the several missionaries and their earlier work is not always appreciated until years afterward, when perhaps the exact date can not be recalled. It is the writer’s purpose to make mention of all the missionaries married and single, who have been sent to Burma under the Missionary Societies of the Methodist Church during the first twenty-one years of our work there. To do this it has been most convenient to give at the same time the planting and growth of our English work in Rangoon, with which, either in Church, school, or Orphanage, all but a very few of our missionaries have begun their labors. Those few exceptions will have mention in the two following chapters.

The fact that Methodism in Burma was founded on self-supporting English work, and so continued for the most part still, has the advantage of that self-support long before the Missionary Society could have done anything in the country, and of holding the position for later developments, and also in securing properties from the Government for church and schools at a time when such grants could be obtained. In all these respects, as well as in initial evangelism among English-speaking peoples, our mission has done nobly, and has been cordially approved by all its friends. I am free to say that our people, as a whole, could not have done more under the conditions under which they have worked. More than that, if we could not have entered the field as we did and worked as we have, there would have been no representatives of American Methodism in Burma to this day. Hundreds of people who have been converted, and thousands who have been uplifted by our preaching and teaching, would have been the poorer by so much as our Church and school have brought them. Many poor and destitute whom we have clad and fed and taught would have missed the protection and shelter we gave them. Many strangers who have found friends in times of temptation in a strange and wicked city, would have missed such friends. Earth and heaven are richer for this score of years of faithful work of our little mission.

But this plan of founding a mission has its serious disadvantages, which are now being realized. The foreign missions must have the Christless peoples leaning on false faith as their great objective. To reach this goal quickly and work it permanently, it is of vital importance to master the language of the people among whom you work. Happy is the missionary who has been able to devote his greatest efforts to this end during the first year of his life in his chosen field. He should lay a foundation in this period on which a mastery of the language is easily possible. To do this he must be freed from other labors and all great responsibilities for the welfare of the mission. This opportunity has been lost to all our missionaries who have been plunged into the English first. The responsibilities in every post are extremely exacting. The climate exacts its tribute of strength, and when the large measure of exhausting labor in the school or varied pastoral duties has been met, there is neither time nor strength to apply on a language. So it comes to pass that every such missionary finds himself at a loss as the years move around, and he finds he can not preach to the people in their own tongue. The time has come when we must give the new missionaries a chance at the language as their first and most important undertaking.

CHAPTER XIV
Preaching in Four Asiatic Languages

In other chapters are given the facts concerning the beginnings and development of the English work in Rangoon. The beginning among the natives is of equal interest to the inquirer after missionary information. When a mission without resources begins operations in a foreign country, it may be supposed that it would be very modest in its undertaking. But in the case of Methodism in Burma, and some other parts of Southern Asia as well, rightly or wrongly, it has pursued exactly the opposite course. With a mere handful of workers, including missionaries and their helpers, our people have from the beginning undertaken about every kind of mission work possible. Within two weeks from the time Bishop Thoburn landed in Rangoon he had organized an English Church of seventy members and probationers, and from the membership thus brought together there were volunteer workers raised up to preach among peoples of three different native languages. As the streets were always thronged with these people, it was always easy to get a congregation. This hopeful beginning was in perfect keeping with the theory of missions long in vogue in a large portion of India—that from these self-supporting English Churches there would be raised up the workers who would evangelize the heathen peoples around them. William Taylor was the great apostle of this policy, and most of the Methodist missions not included in the North India Conference were founded on this theory by him and those that caught his spirit.

This theory has fatal defects we now know, but it was believed and put to the test in the way indicated; and while it did not succeed in accomplishing all that it was hoped at the beginning, it did accomplish more than any other theory of missions has done in the same time in proportion to the number of missionaries employed, while its expenditure of mission money for years was almost nothing. This movement carried Methodism into every city in Southern Asia that had a considerable English-speaking population. It gave us English Churches in all these centers. Our methods aroused other missions to do more for these people than they had ever done before. More than this, it committed us to general mission work over this area, and that with no outlay of mission money until safe foundations were laid in all the centers occupied.

Moved by this impulse and flushed with the warmth of a great revival, these laymen in Rangoon began to preach in Tamil, Telegu, and Hindustani. It will be noticed that all these are languages of India proper, indicating that these English-speaking laymen had themselves come from India, and so were familiar with the languages of the native immigrants to Burma. But most of our English-speaking laymen were from Madras or the Telegu country, so that the preaching in Tamil and Telegu were continued; but for a long time we were unable to keep a layman interested who could preach in Hindustani, and it was discontinued, except at irregular intervals.

There were converts from among the heathen Tamil and Telegu people from the start. They were baptized, and later on some Church organizations were formed and some schools kept for the children of these people. Preaching was kept up in the English Church and at half a dozen other places in Rangoon; in Dalla, across the Rangoon River from Rangoon, among the coolies in the mills, and in the jungle villages, and in Toiurgoo, and later in Pegu on the railway. The Tamils and the Telegus were generally found together, and we could sometimes get a layman who could preach in both languages, though generally we had to engage different preachers.