Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon

by Sir Samuel White Baker

It was then that the powers of the world were armed against her, and all Europe joined to tear the laurels from her crown, and fleets and armies thronged from all points against the devoted land, and her old enemy, the Gaul, hovered like his own eagle over the expected prey.

The thunder of the cannon shook the world, and blood tinged the waves around the land, and war and tumult shrieked like a tempest over the fair face of Nature; the din of battle smothered all sounds of peace, and years passed on and thicker grew the gloom. It was then the innate might of the old Briton roused itself to action and strained those giant nerves which brought us victory. The struggle was past, and as the smoke of battle cleared from the surface of the world, the flag of England waved in triumph on the ocean, her fleets sat swan-like on the waves, her standard floated on the strongholds of the universe, and far and wide stretched the vast boundaries of her conquests.

Again I ask, is this the effect of "chance?" or is it the mighty will of Omnipotence, which, choosing his instruments from the humbler ranks, has snatched England from her lowly state, and has exalted her to be the apostle of Christianity throughout the world?

Here lies her responsibility. The conquered nations are in her hands; they have been subject to her for half a century, but they know neither her language nor her religion.

How many millions of human beings of all creeds and colors does she control? Are they or their descendants to embrace our faith?—that is, I are we the divine instrument for accomplishing the vast change that we expect by the universal acknowledgement of Christianity? or are we—I pause before the suggestion—are we but another of those examples of human insignificance, that, as from dust we rose, so to dust we shall return? shall we be but another in the long list of nations whose ruins rest upon the solitudes of Nature, like warnings to the proud cities which triumph in their strength? Shall the traveler in future ages place his foot upon the barren sod and exclaim, "Here stood their great city!"

The inhabitants of Nineveh would have scoffed at such a supposition. And yet they fell, and yet the desert sand shrouded their cities as the autumn leaves fall on the faded flowers of summer.

To a fatalist it can matter but little whether a nation fulfills its duty, or whether, by neglecting it, punishment should be drawn down upon its head. According to his theory, neither good nor evil acts would alter a predestined course of events. There are apparently fatalist governments as well as individuals, which, absorbed in the fancied prosperity of the present, legislate for temporal advantages only.

Thus we see the most inconsistent and anomalous conditions imposed in treaties with conquered powers; we see, for instance, in Ceylon, a protection granted to the Buddhist religion, while flocks of missionaries are sent out to convert the heathen. We even stretch the point so far as to place a British sentinel on guard at the Buddhist temple in Kandy, as though in mockery of our Protestant church a hundred paces distant.

At the same time that we acknowledge and protect the Buddhist religion, we pray that Christianity shall spread through the whole world; and we appoint bishops to our colonies at the same time we neglect the education of the inhabitants.

When I say we neglect the education I do not mean to infer that there are no government schools, but that the education of the people, instead of being one of the most important objects of the government, is considered of so little moment that it is tantamount to neglected.