OBJECT—MEANS—STUDY OF BIBLE—PUPILS KEPT IN SYMPATHY WITH THE PEOPLE.—PEOPLE STIMULATED TO EXERTION AND SELF-DEPENDENCE—TAHITI. —MADAGASCAR.
Let us now look at some of the principles on which missionary education was here carried on, that we may see what kind of an instrumentality God was pleased to crown with his blessing.
The Seminary was founded, not to polish the manners, refine the taste, or impart accomplishments, but to renovate the character by a permanent inward change. The main dependence for bringing this about was the power of the Holy Ghost—the only power that can impart or maintain spiritual life in man. This dependence was expressed in fervent prayer, offered for years amid discouragement and opposition, and, instead of ceasing when an answer came, only offered by a greater number. It is worthy of note that some of the seasons of greatest revival were preceded by disasters that threatened the very existence of the mission.
The principal text book was the word of God; partly, as we shall see, through a providential necessity, but chiefly because it was God's own chosen instrumentality for the salvation of our race; and it was eminently adapted for the education of such a people. The teachers could say, with a beloved co-laborer on Mount Lebanon, "To the Scriptures we give increased attention; they do more to unfold and expand the intellectual powers, and to create careful and honest thinkers, than all the sciences we teach." It is also most efficient in freeing mind and heart from those erroneous views that are opposed to its teachings; and actual trial developed a richness and fulness of practical adaptation to the work that astonished even those who already knew something of its value. Its precepts and instructions were also clothed with power: requirements and counsels which from the missionary had only awakened opposition, coming from the Bible were received as messages from heaven. Said a Nestorian to a missionary who had been speaking to him the words of God, "His words grew very beautiful while we were talking." In reference to every suspicious novelty or distasteful duty, the Bible was the ultimate appeal. The missionary could say to them as Paul did to an early church, "When ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of man, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe." Besides, those thus educated were to teach others, and needed to be thoroughly furnished from the divine oracles with the truths they were to impart. It is not strange, then, that in the Seminary the Bible was studied both doctrinally and historically; that they had a system of theology and tables of Scripture chronology; that biblical biography and geography were regular studies; that different portions of Scripture occupied different years; and that, instead of Butler's Analogy and Wayland's Moral Science, were the Epistles to the Romans and Hebrews studied with all the accurate analysis and thoroughness bestowed elsewhere upon the classics. Such teaching would yield good fruit any where, and the good seed found good ground in Persia.
So much for the instrumentality; but, then, influences are every where at work to check the growth of the plant of grace, and these must be overcome. There is danger that missionary education may be made worse than useless by allowing the sympathies of pupils to become alienated from the masses around them. Children from heathen families may be puffed up with an idea of superiority to their own people. Their taste may be cultivated so as to render disgust with heathen degradation stronger than the Christian desire to do them good. A foreign language, foreign dress, and foreign habits may widen the gulf that separates them from their people, till, what with an undue exaltation on the one hand and a suspicious jealousy on the other, usefulness is well nigh impossible. But here such tendencies have been carefully watched and guarded against. The pupils have been trained with the view of doing good among their own people. No line of separation has been drawn in dress or diet, furniture or household arrangements. While taught to be neat, the goal kept ever in sight has been, a happy usefulness in their own homes, the elevation of the mass just as fast as was consistent with mutual love and sympathy, the people not feeling that their daughters were denationalized, and they not lifted out of sympathy with the homes they were to bless. Hence, even in 1844, we find the mud floor of the small school room covered with straw mats; one window, of oiled paper, admitting the light; and a brick stove, with a few rude benches, its only furniture. In the other room, where the cooking was done, the pupils ate, and spent their time out of school. Here were two windows of like material; and besides the mats, the floor was covered with a thick felt, on which they spread their beds at night. A table was provided, covered with a coarse blue and white check. There were also a set of coarse plates and a few other dishes, but no knives nor forks. They eat their soup with wooden spoons, and their other food with their hands. Their clothing, like their cooking, was mostly in native style; and they were taught to make it for themselves.
Another object in missionary education is, to do enough to stimulate to exertion, and yet not foster inefficiency or undue dependence. The Nestorians are poor, but doing too much for them may make them still poorer. They must be brought to sustain their own institutions at the earliest possible moment, and their training should keep that end in view. Hence Miss Fiske writes, "At first I was inclined to do more for them than afterwards, and at length settled down on this principle,—to give my pupils nothing for common use which they could not secure in their own homes by industry and economy. So I furnished only such articles as they could buy in the city. I preferred that they should make all their own clothing, and may have grieved friends sometimes by declining clothing which they offered to send for them. We chose rather to spend our own strength in training them to provide for themselves. I do not mean that I am not glad to see foreign articles in Oroomiah; but we were in danger of fostering a more expensive taste than they would have the means of gratifying. Our great object is to raise up the most efficient coadjutors from among the people, and they must labor among their neighbors as of them, and not as foreigners, and be prepared to carry forward the work when we leave it.
"At first we clothed as well as boarded our pupils, and then led them to provide one article after another, till they clothed themselves. It was delightful to see the interest parents began to take in clothing their daughters, in order to send them to school after they provided their own garments. They took better care of them, and so learned to take better care of other things. Since I left, Miss Rice has advanced farther in this matter; and last year most of the pupils paid a trifle for tuition, amounting in all to over twenty dollars. It often costs more than the amount to secure these pittances; but it does our pupils good, and we spared no pains to this end."
It is touching to see the spirit manifested by some parents in this connection. One very poor widow, whose little field of grain had been devoured by locusts, brought a large squash and a quantity of raisins which she had earned by laboring for others—a self-denial almost equal to her previous giving up of her only bed for the use of a daughter in the Seminary, which she brought, saying, "I can sleep on the hasseer [rush mat], if you will only receive her into school."
It certainly is not benevolence to do for others what they can do as well for themselves, or to do for them in a way to diminish either their ability or disposition to provide for themselves. Missionaries may be in danger of staying too long and doing too much for a people, rather than of leaving them too soon after the gospel has taken root among them.
Native pastors came into being at Tahiti simply because the French drove off the missionaries. They were not ordained before, but at once proved themselves equal to the work that Providence assigned them; and after twenty years of French misrule, in spite of Popery on the one hand and brandy and vice on the other, there are now more church members under these native pastors than ever before.