Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

“There is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,

And sinners plunged beneath that flood

Lose all their guilty stains.”

Let me ask the reader to divest his mind for a moment of every sacred association surrounding that hymn, and calmly consider the words just as they stand, and try to imagine what sense, if any, they would convey to the mind of a pious Buddhist, whose ideas of sin are totally different from ours, who has no conception of the nature or need of a sacrifice or atonement, and to whom the shedding of blood, and the taking of all life, even the killing of an insect, is utterly abhorrent, as a deadly sin. Since that incident I have not been inclined to select that hymn for out-door services.

We avoid controversy in preaching to the Buddhists. It seems to be quite unnecessary, and likely to do far more harm than good. The best thing we can do is to tell, as simply and plainly as we can, such portion of the Scripture narrative, particularly the life and teachings of Christ, as we find they can easily grasp, and to deal with the more prominent doctrines of the Christian religion, as they apply to the hearts and lives of the people before us. It is only when a Buddhist has grasped at least the outlines of Christian truth, and not before, that he will be in any position to assent to the proposition that Buddhism is false. Until he does see that, the assertion in public that it is false, together with all that is said in disparagement of it, must appear to him premature, if not gratuitously abusive. In any case it is the unfolding of the truth that convinces, as it is the belief of the truth (not disbelief in error) that saves. No Oriental can fail to see for himself that the teaching of Christ is antagonistic to that of his own religion, on many essential points, and the clear exposition of our own teaching, therefore, is far more essential than emphasizing the differences. One evening, at a street service, a foolish Burman endeavoured to make it out that their religion and ours taught the very same. The incredulous smiles on the faces of the audience at once showed us that it was unnecessary for us to say more than that if their religion taught the same as ours, so much the better. The wish was father to the thought in that case, and the fact that he saw a difference made him anxious to prove there was none. In cases where a person wishes to study the teachings of the two religions, and compare the two closely, the best plan is to put into his hands a tract bearing on the subject, and let him take it home and study it, rather than engage in heated controversy in the streets.

At the same time we do not wish to silence respectful inquiry. Occasionally a question has been asked at these street services, but we have never experienced anything approaching to abuse or disturbance. One evening, not a Burman but a Ponnâ, an astrologer, one of the fortune-telling fraternity, the descendants of the Brahmins from Manipur, spoke up and said he had an inquiry to make. It was with reference to the putting away of sin through Christ, of which we were speaking, and the inquiry seemed quite respectful, and bonâ fide. For his part he could not see how there could be any putting away of sin. If there was, where was it? For example, said he, if a man commits murder, he receives the full penalty of his crime in the body by hanging; and as for the spirit, that passes, by transmigration, at once into some other body, where it receives the appropriate consequences of past deeds, according to the man’s karma (fate), irrespective of any atonement or any intervention of another. What place then was there for the pardon and removal of transgression? This question will show that in Burma we have to do with a people not wanting in acuteness. Our answer was an explanation of the Christian doctrine of a future life.

At the end of our first year we were able to report that we had made a beginning in preaching the Gospel in the vernacular. It was a humble beginning, and consisted only of reading to a small congregation, in the little rented schoolroom, before we built our own, a short written address; only a beginning, but a beginning in the right direction. We were also glad to welcome an addition to our little staff of workers, in the Rev. A. H. Bestall, a missionary sent out from England.