Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

The writer is convinced that the measurable failure to give to the cause of missions as our people are able to give, is due to the failure to get the information to them in an effective way. It is not the writer’s intention to locate the responsibility or discuss a policy of raising missionary funds, but clearly a virtual standstill in receipts under present conditions is defeat for the missionary cause.

One fact is certain, our present methods of raising funds leaves the majority of our people without feeling the immediate and imperative need of this cause, or inspiring them with the certainty of gaining a great result by the investment of money in missions. We are in the second year of the “Thank-offering” movement, and more than eleven million dollars have been pledged toward the “Thank-offering,” and certainly not nearly one hundred thousand dollars of this amount has gone to missions. Not one dollar in a hundred!

One chief reason why this disparity exists is because all other causes have employed special agencies to reach every nook and corner of the Church, and the cause of missions is being operated at long range and on general principles, often as only one of the “benevolences,” and must necessarily fail to advance to any considerable extent under present conditions and absolute restrictions.

But there are hopeful indications. Some officials and some pastors begin to see the situation and to inquire what can be done to relieve the straits. A number of loyal souls are tenderly giving their most cherished treasures to the cause of missions. In a year’s campaign at home I have come in heart-touch with so many such that I would gladly believe there is a multitude who cherish the cause of missions as supreme, as it really is.

The Mission Conference in Burma, little company that it is, is being re-enforced by a promising band of six missionaries, long overdue it is true, but now gladly and gratefully received. Nearly all of these are being sent by the sacrifice of people who give largely of that which is a sacrifice to give. One missionary family is being sent out and sustained for a part of this year by more than fifteen hundred dollars given by the preachers of the Kansas and the St. Louis Conferences. This very large giving of men of very small resources to a special object that touched their hearts has put new courage into all our little Burma Mission. In this giving they have helped put true-hearted missionaries in the field, and I believe permanently enlarged their sympathy for missions, if indeed they have not also indicated an improved policy of raising mission funds.

The Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, through some of its young lady Auxiliaries, is doing most generous things for the re-enforcements to Burma.

Burma has waited long for even small re-enforcements, and needs yet many other things before it is fairly launched as a mission. But with the re-enforcements we have now in immediate prospect, we are so encouraged we can return to our field and take up the work with renewed courage and hope, knowing of the increased number of friends of missions who support us with money and prayerful sympathy.

A hope I often cherished in times of great weariness and discouragement seems in part being realized. Many times in Rangoon, when wearied to exhaustion with the work of two or three men, I have gone up to the Sway Dagon Pagoda, and, looking upon its gilded mass and the Burmans chanting their meaningless laudations, I have longed for heralds enough to bring these people the gospel instead of Buddhism, and to replace the pagodas of the land with Christian Churches; longed for re-enforcements that came not. Then I turned into the northeast corner of the pagoda area and looked upon the graves of the British officers who fell in the war of 1852 while storming that pagoda. Then down the slope up which that band of Anglo-Saxons charged, to the graves of soldiers who were buried where they fell. My blood warmed with the thought that these men gave their lives without a word of complaint for their queen whom they loved, and the flag which they raised over this far-distant land, to the immense benefit of the land of Burma. Then I remembered that the world-wide empire of which this is a part had been secured and maintained by men who, as these, had laid down their lives for the flag they loved.

From this scene and its suggestions I turned away, encouraged to hold my post till re-enforcements would come up for the preaching of the gospel of the Son of God, who sent me to Burma. Here was a very human kind of encouragement. Looking up the shining pagoda shaft I saw a sprout of the peepul-tree, the sacred tree of Buddhism, which grows anywhere on any surface where its spores can find lodgment; which when neglected has torn to fragments hundreds of pagodas, here springing from the great pagoda two hundred feet from the ground. It had found an opening through the gold leaf, or perhaps had been buried in the mortar with which its surface had been plastered, and had sent its roots deep into the brick mass of the pagoda; while its green branches grew in a thriving cluster over the gilded sides. What did it matter that this tree was two hundred feet from the ground, and had no moisture save what its roots could extract from the dry bricks and its leaves draw out of the air! This peepul-tree can thrive anywhere!

Beautiful symbolism! The gilded colossal pagoda represents the lifeless system of hoary Buddhism. The growing young tree represents the religion of Jesus Christ, filled with the life of the Son of God. It will crumble Buddhism back to dust, as that tree, if fostered, will destroy the pagoda, Buddhism’s most ornate symbol. Looking on this scene, my heart took new courage, as under Divinely-given cheer, to labor on for the salvation of the Buddhists and other people of Burma.