Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

As time went on we learned several important facts about these people and this work that we did not know at first. We very soon discovered that we lost heavily among our converts by these immigrants returning to their own land, and that our people were not so distributed in India that they could care for them in their native land on their return. But this continual loss made it out of the question to hope for much permanency in this kind of work. Another weakness was that the men did not bring their families with them. And while we got the men converted, they were still connected with heathen relatives in India to whom they would return. But the immediate weakness was in the fact that there were few women and children to complete the Christian families and Christian communities. So family life, school, and Sunday-school work was not possible.

As the work extended somewhat, we were met by the fact that we must depend on paid agents, and could not hope to go beyond a very narrow limit by unpaid volunteer preaching and subpastoral care. Applicants for such places were not wanting. Many of these men in course of years applied, and in turn were found, with few exceptions, wholly unfit for permanent responsibility. In the case of the Tamils especially, this was true. The breakdown of this class of mission employees was nearly complete. This was due to two causes. The one seems to be in the Tamil race itself. They do seem to lack the element of reliability generally in everything that has not the highest monetary value attainable as its goal. It is astonishing how many of these employees failed us at this point. There was the further difficulty, in that we had to employ the men who drifted into Burma as the dislodged members of other missions in India, who were either unwilling to accept the regulations of their own missions, or were not of its better material. We seldom employed a man without certificate of character, and we imported some agents under special recommendation; but our experience with them was generally unsatisfactory for the highest interest of the mission. But I am happy to record that some were very true and reliable.

But the greatest weakness was on our part, in being unable to give the missionary supervision necessary to insure the highest success. We have never been strong enough to give a missionary to this work among immigrants to Burma. Without this close missionary supervision, we can not hope to succeed largely. Then we did not have the money to extend the work largely so as to acquire the momentum, and that would place at our disposal enough candidates to enable us to sift them and employ only the most worthy. But a great deal of good has been done with a very little outlay of money, and this work will be continued, though only incidental to the larger mission plans. We must make the Burmese people our real objective.

For reasons already given, we have been slow in taking up work among the Burmese people. These reasons were in brief, too few missionaries to spare even one man or woman to make the beginning, and for years no missionary appropriation at all was made to Burma. When a little money was given us, we made the best use of it. But we did baptize Burmese before we had any missionary appropriations or missionary to these people. Some inquirers from several miles out on the Pegu River came into Rangoon, and sought out our missionaries. Bishop Thoburn being in Rangoon at the time, a boat was secured and a party made up to visit the village and investigate this new opening. The village was found, and the bishop preached, with a young Eurasian girl as his interpreter. The interest created was considerable, and before the day was over several candidates were baptized. The initial step could not be followed up as we could wish, but two years later I arrived in Burma, and after some months was able to visit this village and the surrounding country. It was a great joy to find some of these converts still true to all they knew of the gospel. One of them could read the Bible, and he had a copy of the good Book and some good tracts. Later on in this region, but a little further from Rangoon, we had our first considerable awakening among the people.

In Rangoon we had one Burmese boys’ school, which for two or three years gave promise of much usefulness. These boys came from the country and city, and were bright young lads from nine to fifteen years of age. They were instructed in the secular studies, and at the same time taught the Bible. A Sunday-school was kept up also. If this school could have been well cared for under a missionary who knew the language, it could have become largely useful and permanent. It finally was broken up by the Burmese teacher going wrong. But if a trained missionary had been in charge, another teacher could have been employed and the school sustained. During the continuance of this school there were a number of boys baptized in the school, and that with their relatives’ knowledge, and there was no special opposition to it. Bishop Thoburn was much impressed with this fact, as such an occurrence in one of the schools in India among the Hindu or Mohammedan boys would have broken up the school. In all the schools we have had, mostly in large villages in the district, the same accessibility to the young Burman has been found.

Among the missions which have become strong enough to found a good school or system of schools, they find not only that the Burmese are ready to send their boys and pay the fees according to the Government school code, but that these same schools are the best missionary agencies, both for the conversion of the Burmese and the Christian training of prospective preachers and teachers. For the latter, years under immediate Christian training are indispensable. As Buddhism is founded on a system of monastic schools, where the boys are indoctrinated in the teachings of that faith, it would seem that any policy which looks to the overthrow of Buddhism should contemplate replacing these Buddhist schools with Christian schools. And when we find the Buddhists themselves seeking education in Christian schools, and willing to pay good fees for the privilege, the prospect for the Christian schools becoming the greatest auxiliary of evangelism is very encouraging. It is my conviction that no nonchristian country in the world presents the prospect of extensive usefulness of the Christian system equal to Burma.

So eager were we to begin mission work among the Burmese, that we took up with whatever opening presented itself. So sure were we that we would not get the ear of the home Church, and so get the necessary funds really to establish the Burmese mission work, that we were ready to accept whatever the field offered that promised to give us access to the Burmese people.

Our first opportunity was thrust upon us. We embraced it with perhaps too much eagerness. But this is a question raised in the light of subsequent experience which no man could foresee. In the early part of 1893, I received a message from the deputy commissioner of the Pegu District, saying that he was opening a large tract of newly-drained rice land to settlement and cultivation in his district, and if I would start a colony of Burmese cultivators on it, he would put at the disposal of the mission from two to three thousand acres of land. This was a very singular proposition, as I had never seen that official but once, and had never been in that part of his district, and had not planned such an undertaking. I went up and made a hurried investigation of the region, and found it a part of a large plain that for a short time each year had too much water for even rice cultivation, which grows in water often a foot deep. The Government felt certain its new drainage canals, dug at considerable expense, would drain this plain. And as its soil was the most fertile possible, and covered with a light grass, which would easily yield to the ordinary native plow, it seemed desirable to co-operate with the district officials, and take up a large section of the land. The deputy commissioner offered to put at our disposal three thousand acres of land, for which we were to have a title as soon as we put it under cultivation. Having no mission money of any account to go on in the conventional method of founding a mission, it does not at all seem to be wondered at that this inviting offer of land was looked upon as a providential way of founding an industrial mission.

Just at this time, in a thickly-populated part of the district, some forty miles away, a company of twenty-eight Burmans, whom I had not seen before, sought me out, and asked me to help them get some land. Taken with the offer of the land by the district officer, it seemed a rare opportunity to get forward with our mission.

The season being far advanced, it was imperatively necessary to act quickly because these Burmans had to make their arrangements for the year, and the opportunity to get this land or any other so well situated we thought would never come again. This combination of urgent features led us to take the land and make the venture at once.