Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

“The Bassein Sgau Karen Mission is the crowning glory and most perfect flower of the Karen Missions of Burma. Begun in 1837 by the preaching of Mr. Abbott, who spent but five or six days there, the good work went on, entirely through the labour of native converts, and the circulation of books and tracts in Karen and Burmese, till in 1839 more than 2,000 were converted, though only one had been baptized. The fires of persecution raged fiercely; the converts were beaten, chained, fined, imprisoned, sold as slaves, tortured, and put to death; but not one apostatised. Mr. Abbott and the other missionaries were forbidden to enter Bassein under pain of death, and in 1840 he removed to Sandoway, Arakan, which was British territory, separated from Bassein by the Yoma range of mountains; and from there he and his associates managed the Karen Mission for thirteen years. In 1852-53 the missionaries and the Sandoway Mission were transferred to Bassein. About 20 churches and 2,000 members went from Arakan, and in all there were 58 churches, about 6,100 members, and nearly 5,000 converts not yet baptized. More than 5,000 had passed away from Burmese cruelties, cholera and other pestilences, famine and exposure on the mountains. The whole number of converts up to that time had been about 16,000. Their course since then has been one of steady progress. In 1854 the churches became self-supporting, and missionary efforts for the heathen around them by the native evangelists were commenced; village schools were established, and a town High School commenced under Mr. Beecher’s efforts. The spiritual condition was improved; in 1866 all the schools were supported by the churches. Mr. Abbott died in 1854, and Mr. Beecher in 1866. In 1868 Mr. Carpenter took charge, and, while constantly striving for their spiritual growth, he pushed forward educational measures and a thorough system of schools, culminating in the Ko-Thah-Byu Memorial Hall, till in twelve years this people, steeped to the lips in poverty, expended in the building, supporting and endowing of schools a sum equal to £27,000, besides building their chapels, supporting their pastors, their village schools, and their native missionaries; and in 1875 and 1877 sent 1,000 rupees to the sufferers from famine in Toungoo, and to the perishing Telugus. Since 1880, under Mr. Nichols, they have continued to advance. They have endowed their High School, ‘the best in all Burma,’ with about £10,000; they have 425 students of both sexes, a fine printing office, and an extensive sawmill and machine shop. Both board and tuition are free to those who can pass the examination. They have enlarged their great Memorial Hall, and built and endowed a hospital. The discipline of the churches is strict; their pastors are well and thoroughly trained; their benevolence is maintained on a system which reaches every member; and in their dress, furniture, domestic life and social condition, they compare favourably with the country churches in Christian lands. There are now in the Bassein Mission 89 churches, and nearly 10,000 members, with an adherent population in their 85 Christian villages of about 50,000 souls.

“There are in all Burma about 480 Karen churches, with about 28,200 members, and an adherent population of 200,000.”

Well may we exclaim in view of these facts and statistics, “What hath God wrought!” Seldom, indeed, has such a record as this been possible, that in the short space of fifty years so lowly a people should not only embrace the Gospel, but should rise to the happy conditions of civilised life, and of educational and social progress, such as they enjoy. Most gladly do I add my independent testimony to the thorough success of this mission work amongst the Karens, as instances of it have come within my own observation.

I have known intimately in Upper Burma, for years, Karens doing well in different walks of life—in the medical profession, as teachers, as clerks in Government offices, and as surveyors—who are as devout, upright and consistent members of the Christian Church as are to be found anywhere. I have sat and listened in Upper Burma with wonder and admiration to a concert consisting of classical English music, anthems, glees, choruses and solos, rendered by Karen young men and maidens from the High School at Bassein above mentioned, that would have afforded the greatest delight to any English audience, and would have been the rage of the season, if the same had been given with such perfect musical accuracy, sweetness and harmony in London or Manchester. I have been brought into close daily contact for two or three years, in the work of our own Mission, with two Karen young men, members of the Baptist Church in Lower Burma, who came to help us at the outset of our work, and I am able to testify that in regard to educational attainments, Christian character and consistency, truthfulness, purity and integrity of life, I found them all I could wish. If I had never met with any other evidence of the kind, this alone would have been quite sufficient to prove the mighty power of Divine grace to uplift the lowest and the most degraded, if only the circumstances afford a fair chance and the Gospel be fairly presented.

If few fields of missionary labour have yielded such rapid and satisfactory results, it is because in few instances indeed have the social conditions and even the very traditions of a people afforded such a conjuncture of favourable circumstances as was the case with the Karens. In the case of the Mission of the same Society to the Burmans and other Buddhist races of Burma, there has been no such striking and phenomenal success. There are to-day twenty Karen converts to one Burman, and the work throughout has been in like proportion twenty times as hard in regard to obtaining success amongst the latter as amongst the former.

The question of mission work in relation to successful results, and the tractability of different races in respect to the Gospel, is a very wide and complex question, that has never yet received the patient and intelligent study it deserves. People find it difficult to understand why, in the same Mission, Burmese work should yield such different results from Karen work, and why converts should be numbered by units in Benares and by thousands in Tinnevelly; though they can see reasons, when it is brought home to them, why Cornwall should be a much better field for evangelical preaching than County Cork. And the conclusion is often too hastily reached in favour of some pet theory or method as against others. But a wider experience goes to show that though the right methods and the right men are essential to success, success on this large scale is far more than a question of methods and men. It is largely a question of the circumstances in which the people are found. In the prosecution of missionary labours in different lands, and even amongst different races in the same country, the utmost diversity obtains in their conditions.

We meet, for instance, with nations enjoying very ancient civilisations, like the Hindus and the Chinese; some, like the Mahomedans, under the power of a religion which they hold with the utmost tenacity of enthusiasm; others again, like the Buddhists, in proud possession of a philosophy and a literature that fully satisfies them. It is in such cases that the Gospel is confronted with its greatest difficulties. In conjunction with these conditions, others of a social character are sometimes found, that greatly increase the difficulties of the situation, as, for instance, where large communities are hedged round with the restraints of caste, which, while they secure them in the exclusive enjoyment of rank, influence and privilege, greatly cripple them in respect of liberty of conscience and conduct. To win people to the Gospel from such conditions has always been a difficult task, for it usually requires them to give up all that human beings ordinarily value most.

But in the case of races like the Karens of Burma, the Pariahs and other low castes of India, and the negro slaves of the West Indies, Christianity finds human beings suffering from special disabilities, a lowly people, shut out, by the selfishness of those above them, from all the ordinary chances of bettering their lot, ill-used, oppressed, enslaved, kept in unlettered ignorance, deprived of all that makes life worth living. When the Gospel messenger speaks to them hopefully of a better state of things, and holds out a helping hand, it is evident, even to their dark minds, that this is their one chance of improvement, both in temporal and eternal things. They have everything to gain and almost nothing to lose by embracing the Gospel, and the consequence is that the success of the Gospel amongst such races is usually rapid.

Another class of races there is, consisting of tribes wild and barbarous, beyond the confines of civilisation, and from time immemorial left to themselves, whose state of primitive savagery precludes the possibility of any elaborate form of religion, quite unlettered, and without a written language. Such are many of the races of the interior of Africa, many of the hill-tribes of Asia, and the inhabitants of the groups of islands in Polynesia. Here, again, are found the conditions generally favourable for a rapid ingathering, notwithstanding their extreme barbarism and coarse brutality at first, amounting sometimes to cannibalism. For even the savage is conscious before long that he has something to gain by adopting the ways of civilisation. Where mission work has been conducted with perseverance in such countries it has always been successful.