Following the sunrise, a century of Baptist missions, 1813-1913

Front matter

mm

HELENBARRETTMONTGOMERY

^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^

Table Of Contents

Chapter Pagb

I. Back of the Beginnings i

II. Beginnings in Burma 21

Chapter I Back Of The Beginnings

Preparation for Missionary Century. Behind the beginnings of the century of Baptist missionary history now closing, lay a great preparation of the English-speaking Protestant church, of which the Baptists were so unregarded and insignificant a portion. Through the English Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution, the bases of democracy had been so established that a new sense of the worth of the individual had been developed, a new freedom won, and a new sense of personal responsibility had been created, without which no foreign missionary movement was possible.

Discovery and exploration had begun to batter down the thick barriers which divided nations and races. The control of the seas and the leadership in colonization were passing from the Spanish and Portuguese to the English and Dutch. The great spiritual revival of Methodism had permeated and transformed the religious life of England and America. A new spirit of prayer had led to a movement in England in 1774 to undertake a concert of prayer of two years " that God's kingdom may come " ; and America, under the apostolic call to prayer of Jonathan Edwards, had entered upon a seven-years period of intercession " for the spread of the gospel in the most distant parts of the habitable globe."

Two Providential Preparations. Of these wider providential preparations for the new era of missions it would be impossible to speak at length in the limits of the present text-book. It is necessary, however, in order to get proper background, to mention more fully two preparatory movements — the missionary organization of English Baptists, and the historical preparation of the American Baptists, which antedated the beginning of the missionary movement in the nineteenth century.

Carey, "A Consecrated Cobbler." On October 5, 1783, in Northampton, England, a little group of Baptists gathered on the banks of the river Nen to witness the baptism of a young man. The minister. Doctor Ryland, who made entry in his journal, " This day baptized a poor young shoemaker," little dreamed that William Carey would become within nine years of that day one of the great missionary leaders of the age. He was no ordinary yotmg apprentice, even then. While he learned his trade at the bench he studied unremittingly. At the age of twenty he married and set up a little stall for himself. With a book by his side as he wrought, he became as expert in handling books as in repairing shoes. In seven years he became familiar enough with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Dutch to read and enjoy books written in these languages. He had time besides to read the just-published " Voyages of Captain Cook,"

that was the talk of the day. As he read this stirring story of exploration and discovery he made a rude map of the world to hang upon the wall of his little room, and on this he followed the adventurous voyager, and as he read he prayed. The vision of the world dawned on him ; the great world untouched by the message of the gospel. As he read and prayed and meditated, a mighty purpose was born within him.

Called to Preach. A little Baptist church invited him to become its pastor. His salary was about seventy-five dollars a year. By teaching the village children and working at his trade, he managed to increase this to a total income of one hundred and thirty dollars a year. Sometimes he and his wife and children went hungry. They could seldom have meat, but depended largely on the vegetables he raised in his famous garden. At length he was formally ordained as a Baptist minister, and began endeavoring to communicate the visions and purposes stirring within him to his brethren of the Association. His ordination sermon was preached by Andrew Fuller, the most eminent Baptist minister of the day. A story is told that Doctor Fuller, one day wishing to have a shoe-buckle repaired, stepped into Carey's little shop, saw on the wall the big, home-made map of the heathen world, and there, for the first time, became acquainted with the vast dreams stirring in the heart of the young apostle.

A Famous Pamphlet. At that time Mr. Carey was writing a pamphlet entitled, " An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens." When he had it written and could not pay to print it, one of those obscure saints who have done so much in all the ages to further the kingdom of Christ cheerfully gave the price to pay the printer. To-day a worn copy of that rare little pamphlet is worth its weight in gold, but his brother ministers did not highly regard it. At a meeting where he was propounding the question whether the command to disciple all nations laid on the apostles was not equally binding on every generation of Christians, the chairman shouted out : " You are a miserable enthusiast to ask such a question. Certainly nothing can be done before another Pentecost." Doctor Ryland, the pastor who had baptized him, said sternly on another occasion : " Young man, sit down. When the Lord gets ready to convert the heathen he will do it without your help or mine."

" Expect and Attempt." But finally his persistence did gain a hearing. He was appointed to preach the sermon at the annual meeting of the Association, and chose for his text Isaiah 54 : 2 and 3. The heads of his sermon were two: "Expect great things from God ; attempt great things for God." While the powerful sermon was evidently making a deep impression, still it was true as of old, " Some believed, some doubted." As they left the meeting Mr. Carey grasped Andrew Fuller's arm, exclaiming, "And are you, after all, again to do nothing?"

A Momentous Meeting. In response to his appeals the Association passed a minute that a plan be prepared for the next ministers' meeting to form a Baptist society for propagating the gospel among heathen nations. A little later, October 7, 1792, there met in the little parlor of the widow Wallis, in Kettering, twelve Baptist ministers, who proceeded to form a missionary society. Out of their deep poverty these twelve servants of God contributed thirteen pounds, two shillings, and sixpence. The richer churches and ministers of the denomination stood aloof from the movement, and it was the poorer churches, rich in faith, because nearer to the deep and simple verities of life, who by June, 1793, were able to send out as their first missionaries to India William Carey, a minister, and John Thomas, a surgeon.

Missions Not Wanted in India. It is not within the scope of this book to follow in detail the story of these pioneers. The undertaking w^as regarded with the utmost scorn by the great majority of educated and even religious men in that generation. It had to run the gauntlet of opposition of the British East India Company, which at that time controlled India in the interests of dollar diplomacy. The officers of the Company would not permit Carey to live in India, unless he took out a license as an indigo planter and lived there ostensibly as a trader. Even as a planter Carey was so harassed in attempting to do any missionary work, that he had to secure in the Dutch settlement at Serampore the protection which his own flag denied him. Here for seven years he continued his work of translating and printing the Scriptures. The scholarly work of this obscure Baptist missionary is one of the miracles of history.

Carey as a Translator. Says Professor Henry C. \'edder :

Between 1801 and 1822, thirty-six translations of the Scriptures, in whole or in part, were made and edited by Carey at Serampore. Of these thirty-six versions, six were complete translations of the Bible. Twenty-three more were translations of the entire New Testament. And to six of these some Old Testament books were added later. In four cases the Gospels only were translated, in whole or in part. In making every one of these versions Carey had some share. Several of them he made throughout. In other cases he did only part of the work, but revised the whole. In all, he was directly concerned in the printing of forty-two distinct translations. Four at least of these — the Bengali, Hindu, Marathi, and Sanskrit were his exclusive work from titlepage to colophon. (Slightly condensed.)

The Serampore Brotherhood. This first mission was started with the idea of being pecuniarily independent of the home churches. Doctor Carey, Doctor Marshman, and Mr. Ward formed an organization known as the Serampore Brotherhood. It was a simple and beautiful example of Christian communism. All their earnings were to be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the mission. Their personal expenses were to be made as modest as possible. The little community of nine adults and ten children, with the native helpers and assistants, lived a life of singular beauty and happiness, as it is pictured in the remarkable letters of Hannah Marshman. During a term of years the Brotherhood earned and turned in to the support of missionary work a half-million dollars. Of this amount, Carey gave half and Mrs. Marshman one hundred thousand dollars. In dividing the work, translation fell to Carey, the schools to Marshman, and the printing-press to Ward.

Services to Science and Society. Many people have an idea that the early missionaries were narrowminded in their vision of the scope of the task by them begun, in that they interpreted it as purely a service of evangelism. To such, the career of these pioneer English Baptists will be a surprise. The services to science and society rendered by the Serampore band have been summed up by a recent historian as follows :

The first complete or partial translation of the Bible printed in forty languages or dialects of India, China, Central Asia, and other neighboring lands at a cost of eighty thousand, one hundred and forty-three pounds; the first prose work and vernacular newspaper in Bengali, the language of seventy million human beings ; the first printing-press on an organized scale ; the first papermill and steam-engine seen in India ; the first Christian primary school in North India ; the first efforts to educate native girls and women : the first college to train native ministers and Christianize native Hindus ; the first Hindu Protestant convert; the first medical mission; the establishment and maintenance of at least thirty separate large mission stations ; the first botanic garden and society for the improvement of agriculture and horticulture in India ; the first translation into English of the great Sanskrit classics. (Henry C. Vedder.)

Influence on Other Churches in England. This enterprise of the English Baptists, while little appreciated in many quarters in England, exerted a great influence throughout the world. The Church of England soon after organized its foreign missionary society. The London Missionary Society organized by the English Congregationalists, but having from the first an undenominational charter, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Religious Tract Society are among the organizations in whose establishment one can trace directly the influence of the pioneer Baptist society.

Influence in America. The English Baptists exerted a great influence in America also, through their missionary enterprise. Auxiliary groups were organized in many Baptist churches in the United States in support of the Serampore mission. It is pleasing to American pride to recall the fact that at that time many of the English missionaries sailed to their field of work in India in American ships, via New York. Doctor Wayland has said that he remembered as a boy listening to English Baptist missionaries who were entertained in his father's home in New York City while they were waiting for their ship to sail for India. It will be recalled that the first woman's missionary society in the United States was organized in Boston by Miss Mary Webb to help in the support of the English Baptist work in India.

Death of Carey. In the death of William Carey, in 1834, there passed from earth one of the greatest men who have adorned the history of the Christian church. In character and ability, in labors and sufferings, he was no unworthy successor of the Great Apostle. The

BACK OF THE BEGINNINGS ii

words which, by his expressed direction, were cut upon the simple stone which marks his grave, are eloquent of the humility and simplicity of his character :

A wretched, poor, and helpless worm

On Thy kind arms I fall.

Nothing could be farther removed from the bustling and self-confident discipleship of to-day. Yet perhaps, in these words, with their quaint and almost forgotten theology, we may find the secret of the power which made William Carey different from other men.

Preparation of American Baptists. We have traced briefly and imperfectly the beginnings of the modern foreign missionary enterprise in England. It remains to speak of the further preparation by which the Baptist churches of America had been fitted to take their part in the world-wide enterprise of Christian missions. The Baptists had enjoyed the advantages which come from thoroughgoing and long-continued persecution for opinion's sake. Because of their peculiar views they had found themselves unwelcome in many of the colonies, and in the defense of those views had undergone whipping, the loss of property, imprisonment, and banishing.

Some Baptist Principles. The views which made them singular at that time are those held now by the great majority of Protestant Christians. But in the early days of this country they were regarded as heretical and dangerous. From the days of Roger

Williams the glory of the Baptist denomination has been that it was the steadfast defender of absolute freedom of conscience and complete separation of Church and State. When Roger Williams set up his new government in the wilderness of Rhode Island it was the first time in history that a civil government had recognized the equality of opinions before the law, " leaving," says Bancroft, " heresy unharmed by law, and orthodoxy unprotected by the horrors of penal statutes.''

Freedom of Conscience Unpopular. It is difficult for us to appreciate how strange these ideas of Baptist Roger Williams seemed to the men of his own times. The best men in those days defended the necessity of rooting out wrong opinions in politics and religion by fines, imprisonment, banishment, or worse. They called toleration a word of infamy, and really believed that unless the State tried to make men think alike, there could be no settled government. Even Milton's noble essay in favor of toleration, called the Areopagiticus, went only so far as to plead that " the many be tolerated rather than all be compelled."

Roger Williams' Radical Position. Roger Williams went further than this, even to the full length that men have come in the three hundred years since he lived. " It is the will of God," he said, " that a permission of the most pagan, Jewish, Turkish, and antichristian consciences be granted to all men in all nations and countries." These brave words were in a little book which according to the quaint custom of the time had a most thundering and imposing title: " The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience." The book had two editions its first year; a great sale for those days. It represented a dialogue between two sorrowful angels, Truth and Peace, who, after long wanderings over the earth, had met in some dusky corner to confer over the hate and passion which curse mankind and fill the earth with tumult and misery. Controversy with John Cotton. When the little book, with the great thought and the long name, reached New England it stirred up Rev. John Cotton to make a reply. This he did with great earnestness arid the conviction that he was demolishing a dangerous heresy. He called his work " The Bloody Tenet Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lamb." W^e must not even peep between its pages to see how the good man tried to answer Roger Williams. We must remember, however, that he was a good man and true, zealous in controverting what he, with nine out of ten educated men of his day, regarded as dangerous heresy. If there was one thing Roger Williams loved almost as well as succoring some poor fugitive, or repairing some injustice, it was a good fight. We are not surprised, therefore, to find him thundering out a reply to Mr. Cotton. " The Bloody Tenet yet more Bloody by Mr. Cotton's Endeavor to Wash it White in the Blood of the Lamb," was the name he gave his book. They were hard hitters, the controversialists of those days. They called each other names, hard, mouth-filling names, and indulged in all sorts of personal abuse.

14 FOLLOWING THE SUXRISE

In his reply to John Cotton, in spite of its controversial defects, Roger Williams wrote one of the noblest defenses of soul-liberty ever written. It arraigns the bloody doctrine of persecution for opinion's sake before the bar of man and the bar of God. It sweeps in stormy music through argument, persuasion, humor, pathos, sarcasm, tenderness, hatred. It finally gathers in a great surge of passionate invective to hurl against the tenet he abhors: " Yet this is a foul, a black, a bloody tenet; a tenet of high blasphemy against the God of peace, the God of order who hath made of one blood all mankind to dwell on the face of the earth, a tenet against which the blessed souls under the altar cry aloud; this tenet having cut their throats, torn out their hearts, and poured forth their blood in all ages as the only heretics and blasphemers of the world ; a tenet loathsome and ugly, a tenet that kindles the devouring flames of combustions and wars in most nations of the world, a tenet all besprinkled with the bloody murders, stabs, poisonings against many famous kings, princes, and states ; a tenet that corrupts and spoils the very civil honesty and national conscience. No tenet that the world doth harbor is so heretical, blasphemous, seditious, and dangerous to the corporeal, to the spiritual, to the present, to the eternal good of men as the bloody tenet (however washed or whitened) of persecution for cause of conscience."

Triumph of His Ideas. When Roger Williams died, an old man, poor in money, but rich in friends, rich in faith, rich in noble enthusiasm, the State he had founded was one of the smallest and weakest in a young, weak country. It did not seem possible that the ideas for which he stood were to influence the whole world, and to control one of the greatest nations of the earth. Professor Gervinus, in his " Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth Century," sums up the matter as follows:

Roger Williams founded in 1636 a small, new society in Rhode Island upon the principles of entire liberty of conscience, and the uncontrolled power of the majority in secular affairs. The theories of freedom in Church and State taught in the schools of philosophy in Europe were here brought into practice in the government of a small community. It was prophesied that the democratic attempt would be of short duration. But these institutions have not only maintained themselves here, but have spread over the whole Union. They have superseded the aristocratic commencements of Carolina and New York, the high-church party of Virginia, the theocracy of Massachusetts. They have given laws to one quarter of the globe ; and dreaded for their moral influence, they stand in the background of every democratic struggle in Europe.

Baptists in Revolutionary Times. Their steadfast adherence to these unpopular doctrines had been at once the glory and the source of strength to the Baptist churches of America. They were for the most part composed of poor and obscure men. Most of the ministers received no salaries, but worked at various trades during the week. At the time of the Revolution there were not a half-dozen highly educated Baptist ministers in the entire country, but the pressure of persecution had welded them into a brotherhood, and the progress of liberal ideas was making them increasingly strong throughout the country. The outbreak of the Revolution found the Baptists doubly zealous. They had not only the patriotic stake common to all the colonists, but also the disabilities and injustices under which they suffered, to impel them to throw themselves whole-heartedly into the great struggle for human freedom. In fact, the majority of the chaplains in the Revolution were Baptists. With the accomplishment of the Revolution the repressive statutes against the Baptists were for the most part repealed, although it was not until 1833 that the last trace of repressive legislation disappeared in Massachusetts.

Baptist Growth. Following the close of the Revolution there came a considerable expansion in the numbers and influence of the Baptists. In 1770 there had been but ninety-seven Baptist churches in the Colonies, and many of these so small that one pastor supplied several. A large number of churches too were entirely dependent on the chance services of traveling evangelists for the preaching of the gospel. In 1792 the membership of all the Baptist churches was thirty-five thousand, and in 1800 they numbered one hundred thousand. The proportion of Baptists was one to two hundred and sixty-nine of the total population in 1776, and one to fifty-three of the population in 1800. Their history of persecution and the necessity of vigorous upholding of religious conviction had not been without evil results. The danger of the Baptists at the beginning of the century was that a certain hardness and sectarian sufficiency had come to characterize them, as they saw the triumph ol their principles so long opposed. It was just at this time that the new vision of the world's need summoned them to undertake greater tasks, and led hem out into a deeper and more vital piety.

The World of One Hundred Years Ago. The contrast in the numerical status of the Baptists at the beginning of the nineteenth century and their position to-day is not more striking than that which exists between the world at the opening of the twentieth century and that of the nineteenth. When Judson sailed, one hundred years ago, the population of the United States all told numbered less than that of New York State to-day. The young nation was wrestling for its life in the second war with England. Except for a fringe of thinly settled States along the Atlantic seaboard, the territory of the United States was unsettled and for the most part unexplored. Roads were few, communication difficult, credit poor, money scarce. There were no railways, steamboats, trolleys, or telegraph and telephone lines. Europe was shaken by Napoleonic wars. In place of the German nation there was a group of weak and jealous States ; in place of United Italy a huddle of little despotisms harried under the big Austrian despotism of the North and the Papal despotism of the South. Italy had become " only a geographical expression." The Turkish power held southeastern Europe in its grasp. India, under the exploitation of the East India

B

Company, was closed to missions. China, except for a few jealously guarded ports, was a forbidden land. Japan and Korea were hermetically sealed against free intercourse with the rest of the world. Africa was a dark land of mystery and cruelty.

Moral Conditions of a Century Ago. The moral condition of the world was almost as depressing as the political situation. The great wave of infidelity that swept over France, Germany, and England in the latter half of the eighteenth century was sharply felt in the United States. Not even the mighty impulse of the Methodist awakening had been sufficient to arouse fully the churches of England and America. It was in 1802 that the " Morning Herald " of London recorded that a butcher at Hereford had sold his wife at auction for one pound, four shillings at the last market day. Less than seven per cent of the population of the United States were church-members at the opening of the nineteenth century. In the colleges and among the leading men skepticism was both flaunted and fashionable. The churches were not only weak in numbers, but lax in discipline and discouraged. In the beginning of the century there were only three professing Christians among the undergraduates at Yale, and in 1813 only one in Princeton College. Drunkenness and gambling were common and unrebuked. Liquor flowed freely at every house-raising, even when a minister was to be ordained or a church dedicated.

The lottery was so respectable that it was not frowned upon as a means of supporting enterprises of highest character. And, in fact, it was not at all unusual for a church about to build to appeal to the legislature for a franchise to run a lottery in order to raise the necessary funds.

The Awakening. It is easy to see by the perspective of a century that the beginnings of the missionary enterprise, feeble though they were, marked the turn of the tide. The foreign mission enterprise was both the sign and the stimulus of the new life, acting and reacting on the life of the Church. When the philosophic history of the nineteenth century comes to be written there is little doubt but that foreign missions will be appraised as one of the profound movements of the human spirit breathed upon by the Divine Spirit.

Culrocs, Carey the Pioneer Missionary. Philadelphia, American

Baptist Publication Society.

Marshman, The Serampore Missionaries. New York, Ward,

1867.

Williams, Seramp^ore Letters. New York, Putnams, 1892. Straus, Roger Williams.

Tilley, British in India, 1600-1828. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin

and Company.

Montgomery, Western Women in Eastern Lands, pp. 11, 12.

New York, Macmillan Company, 1911.

BURMA

SIIOWIXO

STATIONS

or THE

A3IKRICAN BAPTIST FORKKiN MISSION 80CIETT

SOLE OF MIL68

B Um^ltude V6 But from C Orccnwlob 08

Chapter II Beginnings In Burma

Beginning of the Moral Awakening. As the

Reformation of the thirteenth century began with a young man, St. Francis of Assisi, and his twelve disciples, and the arousing of the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century, with Ignatius Loyola and his six disciples, so the missionary awakening of the Protestant church of America, about a hundred years ago, began with a group of five young college students. Their story is the richly illuminated border wrought by God's providence to embellish the text of the apostle, " The foolishness of God is wiser than man ; the weakness of God is stronger than man ; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty."

The Haystack Prayer-Meeting. When in the summer of 1806, a thunder-shower drove to the shelter of a haystack five students in Williams College, nothing was more improbable than that anything they could do or say should have echoes heard around the world. They had been talking of the spiritual darkness of so large a portion of the world and had been debating the bearing of Christ's last command on their own lives. As they waited for the shower to end, Samuel J. Mills proposed that they devote themselves to sending the gospel to the heathen. In response to the objections of his comrades that this was too great an enterprise for them to undertake, he said, in words which will never die, " We can do it if we will." Then they knelt down and prayed, and, the shower being over, went quietly home. The people whom they passed were as unaware that a crisis hour in the history of the world had come as were those others who thronged the Master on his way to Calvary, long ago.

Obstacles in the Way. Nothing could be more quixotic, more impossible to the eye of calculating diplomacy than the undertaking to which they had devoted themselves. In 1806 not a denomination in the United States had a purely foreign missionary organization, and the English Baptist Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society had been organized scarcely more than a decade. The sentiment of the vast majority of Christians was actively opposed to such an organization. Money was not abundant. There were almost no avenues of publicity through which to reach the churches, and the avenues of approach to the non-Christian world were for the most part tightly closed. But God could use these men, and he did.

Recruits at Andover. These five young men, Samuel J. Mills, James Richards, Francis L. Robbins, Harvey Loomis, and Byram Green, with other students of like mind, formed a brotherhood, which met regularly to pray for the salvation of the heathen world. Later, when three of these young men entered

Andover Theological Seminary, they met with another group of students whom God had led to a similar devotion of their lives: Samuel Nott, Samuel Newell, and Adoniram Judson. These men joined the brotherhood, and all continued to meet and to plan ways in which they might realize their common purpose. Judson became the recognized leader of the group.

Organization of the American Board. Their first idea was to write to one of the English missionary societies for appointment, but through the good advice of Prof. Moses Stuart they were induced to lay their hopes before the general association of the Congregational churches. As a result of their solemn and moving appeal, the first denominational society in America for the promotion of foreign missions was organized September 5, 1810. This was the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions representing a group of Congregational churches. But even then the faith of the directors was too weak to undertake full financial responsibility for the enterprise ; and correspondence was entered into with the London Missionary Society, proposing joint support. This proposition was declined, and it was a year before the American Board plucked up courage to appoint Adoniram Judson, Samuel Newell, Samuel Nott, Gordon Hall, and later, Luther Rice, as its first missionaries. During this year missionary enthusiasm received a strong impetus from the visit of William Johns in the interest of the Serampore mission of the English Baptists. His appeals throughout New England had no small part in securing the support of the people for the projected mission of the American Board.