Now, what were our reverend friend and his co-laborers doing during the six years that followed the establishment of the three missions which still manage to exist in India? Surely a lively and scriptural account of those toils and cares of which he speaks would, particularly when told in his glowing style, be highly interesting to the public. Chapters of his voluminous book are devoted to descriptions of temples and tombs of the past ages, and some hundreds of pages to a detailed account of the massacres, battles and disasters incident to the civil war, but not a line do we find in which may be traced the efficacy of the gospel as preached by such pious expounders, nor is mention made of a single grown-up convert won to Methodism during the whole time, save through the agency of filthy lucre, the root of all evil. For our further information, it is true, he refers us to certain tables with which he supplements his work, but that is small consolation, for, though we believe in the old saying that figures cannot lie, we are satisfied from an examination of the tables referred to that this veracious character does not strictly apply to those who collated them.
From Table I. we gather that the Methodist Episcopal Church in India, in 1872, had no less than eighteen male and nineteen female missionaries of foreign birth in Rohilcund and Oude, and eighty-six native assistants, with church-members, amounting in the aggregate to five hundred and forty-one, so that every fourteen and a half members had one foreign missionary, or, counting the local preachers and exhorters, every four converts may now enjoy the sole solicitude of one spiritual guide at least! But in Table II., on the next page, the foreign missionaries are increased to forty-six, or one to every dozen actual Christians, and, taking the entire force of foreign missionaries, native pastors, local preachers, exhorters, and teachers, the whole number of “laborers,” more or less dependent on the missionary fund for a livelihood, are reported at the handsome figure of three hundred and sixty-six, two laborers for every three members! But if we deduct the number of teachers returned at two hundred and thirty-four in Table II. from the whole number of members, we find that for every thirty members who are not laborers, and consequently derive no official benefit from the church connection, there are twenty-three who do. Should matters go on as prosperously as they seem to have done for a few years more, we hope to hear that every native convert who is not a pastor, exhorter, or teacher himself will be able to have the sole and separate use of a missionary or an assistant for his own benefit. We expect, also, to find that the exhausting duties of the foreign missionaries in taking charge each of at least one dozen of converts, including the native preachers, exhorters, and teachers aforesaid, will be duly considered by the board, and that reinforcements will be sent to them forthwith. What the eighty-six native pastors and catechists, as returned in Table II., find to do except to preach to each other, we are at a loss to surmise. Perhaps, however, they look after certain individuals classified as probationers and non-communicant adherents, and by the help of which, and the children of the schools, the compiler endeavors to make out a show of figures. The former class he counts at five hundred and twenty, and the latter at seven hundred and thirty-five, which, with nearly twelve hundred children and the helpers, make the sum-total of the officers and rank and file of the church three thousand and sixty-five, “all won for Christ since the rebellion closed.” Now, taking these figures as correct in every particular, we arrive at the following curious calculation, to which we respectfully call the attention of the admirers of Protestant, and particularly Methodist, missions. According to their own showing, there is in India one missionary for every seventy-seven men, women, and children in the remotest degree connected with the Methodist Church; leaving out the children, there is a foreign missionary for every forty native adults, and taking the bona-fide church-members there is one duly commissioned American missionary for every twelve converts! Taking the whole number of Christians at three thousand, we find the annual conversions to have averaged two hundred and thirty, which amount being divided by forty-six makes the exact number of five persons converted every year by each of our countrymen in India. If we leave out the children who as we have already seen, are simply given away by the authorities,[192] we reduce the whole number of yearly gains to one hundred and forty-five, or an average of three annual converts for each foreign missionary; but when we only count the actual church-members, we discover that forty-two native persons are actually converted every year by forty-six American missionaries, and this calculation agrees very nearly with the statement of Dr. Butler, who says in a note to the very table to which he calls our attention, “Conversions during last year, 56.” How many years, missionaries, native pastors, and catechists would be required at this rate to christianize the two hundred millions of heathens in Hindostan is a problem too difficult for our solution.
So much for the wonderful progress of Methodism in India. Let us now glance for a moment at the personelle of the brands thus snatched from the burning.
The ingenious attempt to make the public believe that any form of Protestantism has at length gained a foothold in Asia is more common than honest, and has been repeatedly exposed and censured by sectarian writers of all classes and degrees, many of whom have lived as missionaries in India, and know the truth by painful experience. A few extracts from their works and speeches will suffice to show at once the deficiencies of the would-be apostles, the character of their neophytes, and the absolute falsity of such statistics as we find in Butler’s tables:
“Missionaries have gone out from this country (England) who have dishonored their great cause, and rather confirmed than shaken the superstitions of the people they visited.”—Cunningham’s Christianity in India, p. 147.
“From the want of superintendence, it is painful to observe that the characters of too many of the clergy are by no means creditable to the doctrines they profess, which, together with the unedifying contests that prevail among them even in the pulpit, tend to lower the religion and its followers in the eyes of the natives of every description.”—Lord Valentia’s Travels, vol. i. p. 199.
“A large portion of the sterility of our missions may be attributed to that discord which Christianity (Protestantism) exhibits in the very sight of the unbeliever.”—Rev. Dr. Grant’s Brompton Lectures.
“The numerous missionaries, although they waste years and words, and even money, have converted very few; yet when they have induced one or two apparently to adopt their particular tenets, it is their fashion to make a clamor in the newspapers and by pamphlets, although too frequently they are not sure of their new converts for any length of time.”—Mackenna’s Ancient and Modern India, p. 516.
“Missionaries announcing the conversion of a solitary Hindoo among thousands of unbelievers are themselves frequently members of some straggling sect, and too often the instruments of fanatical bigotry.”—Travels in India and Kashmir, p. 195.