Social Christianity in the Orient; the story of a man, a mission and a movement

Front matter

Book rHf C^

Copyright N?

copyRicHT DEPOsrr.

Introduction

This is one of the great stories of modern missions. Numerous short versions of it have for years been circulated. It is here told for the first time in full.

During three decades unusual tidings reached the Christian world from the little Telugu town of Ongole, in southern India. These tidings dealt with events of a religious nature in so dramatic a form that they appealed to the imagination as well as to the faith of men. They were full of the romance of missions : there was prophecy fulfilled, inspiration voiced in song, and there was manifestation of a simple faith in Jesus, the Christ, by such numbers that it approached the miraculous. In an out-of-the-way place of the world striking phenomena of a spiritual nature occurred, which most of the followers of Jesus had begun to believe impossible.

The facts were simple, and distinctly human, nevertheless most unusual. The mass baptism of nearly nine thousand persons in six weeks received its appealingly picturesque setting in a huge famine camp, where the starving were brought together. Yet not the pangs of hunger, nor the hope of help could wholly explain how the religious impulse could move thousands to awaken out of the apathy of their ignorant, downtrodden lives, and walk long distances to give expression to the newlyborn faith within them, and to demand the Christian rite of baptism.

It all sounded strangely like the early centuries of the Christian era. Men marveled at it, and felt their

VI INTRODUCTION

faith refreshed. They pointed to that mass movement in the far-off Telugu country when they looked for tests on which to stake their trust in the power of the Christ to touch the hearts of men in large numbers even to-day.

The story was repeated hundreds of times the world over. Among all the links that were then being forged to bind the West to the East, in the beginnings of the racial contact which is now assuming such vast proportions, that story played a part. It forced a host of Christians who seldom thought beyond their own country and their own race to ask. Who are those people whose faith in our Master, Jesus, is so simple and so strong? They thus took the first step in the direction of that larger sense of brotherhood which enfolds all races.

At the time when this story begins, in the middle of the last century, India was not yet awake as she is to-day. That interchange of thought had only just begun, between East and West, which led the thinkers of the West to the fountain of the ancient wisdom of India, and gave in turn to the Hindu some access to the mental striving which marks the Anglo-Saxon race. England had but just become the reigning political power. Religious liberty had been proclaimed, but had yet to be taught to intolerant village officials. The caste system as an arrangement of the social order had become a species of tyranny to hold the people down. At the bottom round of the social ladder, in a position almost of serfdom, were the tribes of Pariahs. The ancient communal village system, though even then beginning to disintegrate under English rule, was still intact and pressed the Pariahs sorely. It came to pass that among one of these outcaste tribes there was a mass movement toward Christianity. Of that movement this is the story.

INTRODUCTION Vll

When John E. Clough went to India in 1864, the project of foreign missions was in its early vigorous youth. There was opportunity for heroism. It was a time of the free reaching out of missionary pioneers, scattered here and there, the propaganda spirit strong upon them, their methods yet in the making, and their problems slowly taking shape. Some of them developed into men of striking personality — into men who were a pronounced embodiment of the white man's way of taking life and its resources. By their dwelling among them, these men made available to Asiatics to some extent the heritage of Western thought and motive.

Like their great Master, these early missionaries had the tendency to address themselves to the poor and lowly. Though seldom received by the higher classes of the Indian population, they found that the outcaste tribes received them gladly. They took upon themselves the burdens of the heavy laden, and as time passed identified themselves more and more with the interests of the Pariah classes. Ready to second the efforts of enlightened English government officials, they labored for the uplifting of the submerged tenth of the population.

To-day the Hindus realize that they missed an important opportunity while they held aloof from the Pariahs, and allowed them to reach out after better social conditions under the tutelage of the foreign religion. They have reason to fear that the organic connection between high and low has thereby been weakened, and they are now beginning to cope with the problem on lines distinctly oriental. This marks a phase of the onward tread of a nation. But the fact remains that here the missionaries were the pathfinders. And Dr. Clough stands out among his fellow pioneers in the front rank, second to none. In so far as he became the leader of several hundred thousand Pariahs in a

Viii INTRODUCTION

movement toward adequate recognition in the social organism, he took part in the reconstruction of modern India on lines indicated by the progressive Christian nations of the West.

A peculiar condition of preparedness was waiting for the contact with him. The man seldom creates the situation; the two must find each other. In this case a nucleus of spiritual force of a distinctly oriental type had been engendered, with which he came in touch soon after his arrival in Ongole, and the birth of that mass movement toward Christianity took place then and there. A close relation existed between several preceding Hindu religious movements and the Christian movement which spread over the same area. Indian religious reformers had prepared the way. Through them most of the men and women who became leaders in the Christian movement had come under Yoga teaching. The Christian propaganda inherited the religious fervor fostered in Indian mysticism.

In more ways than he realized. Dr. Clough worked on the lines of primitive Christianity. Like the Christians of apostolic times, he and his staff of preachers simply told and retold the story of the life and death of Jesus, the Christ, with a tireless zeal, and around the personality of Jesus as a living, loving reality men gathered in thousands. Dr. Clough had a singular conviction that he was acting as his ambassador. He was often spoken of as the "Apostle to the Telugus." In so far as the movement was a revival of primitive Christianity it was successful.

From the beginning of his career, Dr Clough's strength lay in the fact that he so thoroughly wrought out his own methods. He had the typical American capacity of seeing a need clearly and meeting it promptly. There was a boldness in his methods that led him to

INTRODUCTION IX

hew a fresh track off the beaten highroad. Other men, consciously or unconsciously, followed him. Students of missions believe that he inaugurated a new era in modern foreign missions. There were controversies over his methods all through the years, yet he and his mission stood unmoved. He felt the pressure of destiny which used him as a part in some great design, and often he forged ahead fearlessly when he scarcely knew where the path was leading him.

The old missionary aim had been to seek the conversion of individuals; to get them detached from their previous life, one by one, and gathered into churches. Dr. Clough did not discard this aim; he added to it his faculty of getting hold of men. Early in his career he recognized the importance of the social group; he left men in it and Christianized the group. Family cohesion and tribal characteristics were factors with which he reckoned. And when, with the gregarious instincts that dominate an eastern tribe, they came over to Christianity in families, in villages, in crowds, he was not afraid of them; he had become an expert on their social organization, and could handle the crisis.

It had been a method much used by the older missionaries, to go to annual temple festivals, and to use occasions of religious excitement to bring to the minds of the gathered crowds the teachings of the new religion. This he discarded wholly. He preferred to take men in their own home environment, not as detached units away from home. From the first he went straight into Indian village life and planted centers of Christian activity there that grew and flourished with evident life.

He believed in a large use of native agency in evangelization. In a masterly fashion he picked out the men who rose above the rest and drew out the best that was in them. He let his preachers stay as close to the

X INTRODUCTION

model of the Hindu Guru — the spiritual teacher whom they had known in the old regime — as was possible. Always ready to heed the opinions of his staff of workers, they taught him to see with their eyes. On the basis of the primitive system of self-government existing in the Indian village, he built up a rudimentary church government. Leaving the people in their own grooves, respecting their old customs wherever principle was not at stake, he inspired the social organization with the Christian spirit. Therein lay the cause for the stability of the movement : the foundations were oriental and therefore permanent.

That mass movement toward Christianity in the Orient has already receded sufficiently far into the past to permit a historical estimate of its value. The thousands who participated in it have mostly passed away; they lived in the faith and died in it. There has not been a single break in the continuity. The Telugu Mission of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society has a staff of more than one hundred missionaries, sixty thousand communicant members, two hundred thousand adherents, and schools by the hundred. The "wholesale baptisms" of thirty years ago were not followed by wholesale apostasy. There was no lamentable diminishing of religious fervor. As Dr. Clough used to say, "Jesus kept them all faithful to the end." It therefore appears that this movement toward Christianity within a primitive outcaste Asiatic tribe will have to be marked in the history of missions as a success, and will have to go down in church history as such.

It remains for me to state the manner in which my husband and I cooperated in producing this book. The story is his; the writing is mine. When we began this book in the summer of 1908, he was already past writing anything himself, and he was almost past dictating.

INTRODUCTION XI

His memory for facts and dates was nearly gone, but that was unessential: I had gathered the facts.

My material was abundant. There were his diaries for forty years, printed reports and newspaper cuttings for all those years, and many packages of old letters. He had dictated to me, ten years before, much pertaining to his early life, previous to going to India. All the old stories which I used to hear him tell in the course of years, if not in my notebook, were stored in my memory. I put them all into the book, nor did I let them lose that slight touch of boast fulness that generally characterizes a masterful man's reminiscences.

I had drawn upon other sources also. I knew personally nearly all the men and women mentioned in this story, and with many of them I had had long talks, all with a view to obtaining the information which I knew would be needed for this book. My notebook was full of the stories which the old preachers of the mission told me. I went over many of them with my husband; and he asked me to put them all in. He had a great love for those men, his faithful staff of workers through all the years, and wanted their stories to form a part of his own.

It often encouraged us both to find how old friends were willing to take hold and help, so that there might be neither errors nor lack of information. It is for me now to tender our grateful thanks to them, especially to those who went over the manuscript with me, thus making less the responsibility which had fallen upon me alone.

We were always glad that we decided to give the book the form of an autobiography. He trusted me by giving me the utmost freedom as his biographer, and in return for this trust I eliminated myself, and made it my sole aim to give him opportunity to tell his story in his own

XI 1 INTRODUCTION

way. I had to think with him, to use his manner of speech, to voice his opinions, and to Hve his Hfe over again with him. It was intimate mental partnership, in which he found expression, whereas it was for me to practice literary renunciation.

He looked upon the telling of this story as a last duty which he must perform. The close of his life had come. Silence reigned where there had been strenuous activity. Losing his grip on the present, his soul was wandering in the past. The lesser values of his life were receding; the mountain peaks of the larger, wider life were coming into view., I found that while his memory for definite actions had become faint, the motives for them stood out luminous. I drew on him for the results of his days and nights of retrospect. They will be found all through the book. Very willingly he went with me whenever he saw me depart from the lines of the ordinary missionary story, and with a deep insight he helped me find the application in his own story to that larger design in foreign missions which must yet work itself out.

When we were nearing the end of our work, I said to him, "Your readers will wonder how it was that wherever you went among your Telugus, and preached, they straightway opened their hearts and believed your message." He replied, "One thing I know : I loved the people. And when I told them in the simplest words that I could use about Jesus Christ and his love for them, they somehow believed me. Whether my listeners were a few, or whether they were a crowd, by the time I was done telling them of Jesus' love, they believed in it and wanted it."

I said, "The most thoughtful of your readers will wish you had said something as to whether you felt aware of being the medium between the Master Jesus and

INTRODUCTION Xlll

those people, — whether any power of believing was transmitted through you." He thought a few moments and then replied, "I think I had better keep still about that." I had come to his Holy of Holies, and he refused to lift the curtain. I said nothing more, and saw that he was deep in thought, wrapped in the mysteries which perhaps have been revealed to him since then.

To me — ^the comrade of ten hard, crippled years — he left the task of completing his book. I stayed a year in the room adjoining the one in which he closed his eyes, first in my greatly needed convalescence, then at work. I never lost sight of his point of view, always eliminating myself, always letting memory reproduce even the words he was wont to use. On the spiritual aspects throughout the story I dwelt with all the reverence which we human beings feel for that in each other which binds us to God.

Contents

PAGB

Introduction v

CHAPTER

II

Early in 1853, when I was nearly seventeen years old, I came home one evening from the plow, after breaking new land all day, and saw covered wagons and some mules near the house. Evidently strangers had come. This was nothing new. No traveler was turned hungry from my father's door. His was squatter hospitality, with the latch-string out.

Our guest this time was Mr. W. I. Anderson, a United States surveyor. When on our way to Iowa, two years before, we had stayed at his home in Dubuque. He, with his surveying party, now came to us. They were going to northern Minnesota to survey a tract of land under contract with the government.

Mr. Anderson had a talk with my father. He told him that he had his company made up, but still lacked a man who could turn his hand to anything. This post he now offered to me. My father was slow to consent. His family was yet together, and he was not willing to let his son go into the wilds of Minnesota without some guarantee for his safety. Mr. Anderson promised to pay me twenty-five dollars in gold per month, furnish everything, and see that no harm came to me. It was a fabulous price to offer an inexperienced boy. I wanted to go in order to get into something new, and to make money. Cyrus put in a word at this juncture. He re-

STAKING OUT THE YOUNG WEST IQ

membered what the wife of Judge Farwell said in his hearing about the work in the world which she expected me to do. He thought this post with the surveyors might lead to something else for me. He spoke in favor of my going, and my parents yielded. My mother packed my supply of clothes into a two-bushel bag; it was put on the wagon, and off we started early the following morning for Minnesota, then an almost unknown land.

Ten days later we crossed the Iowa boundary. Now we had no roads before us, not even a wagon track. We picked our way along the banks of the Cedar River, and after a few days reached our camp. Near it a family of squatters had recently settled on a claim. They had built a little blockhouse and called the place Austin — a large town to-day. Work began. My chief gave me a task of a general nature. I carried the surveyor's chain and followed those who marked the lines. The demarcation posts were laid upon mules and brought along. There were miles of walking to do each day, and hard work for me with axe and spade, which I had to carry. The country was wholly uninhabited, except by Sioux Indians and rattlesnakes. Of the latter we killed on the lines about six a day. We saw roving bands of Sioux Indians frequently. They generally appeared friendly, but the half-breeds who passed that way told us stories of their cruel doings.

My new life had pleasant features. The men were kind-hearted, we had a good cook, abundant supplies and enough to eat, and it was a free life out in God's open country. But I was a very homesick boy. I had never been away from home before and there was no way of hearing from my family. If I had known the road, I might have deserted. But the Indian trail used by the surveyors was too winding and intricate for me, — I had to stay. One day the chief sent me to find my way three or four miles, correct several posts and return to camp before dark. I did my work, and then, thinking that I was miles beyond the hearing of any human being, I gave vent to my pent-up homesick feelings by crying aloud. A slight noise aroused me. I looked up, and saw, only a few rods away, partly concealed under the overhanging limbs of a large bur-oak tree, three Sioux Indians on ponies, war-paint and feathers on, with tomahawks and spears all ready for the fray. At the time the Sioux were at war with the Chippewas. They realized that they were seen, gave a whoop and galloped off. I. was so frightened, I ran back to the camp as quick as my legs could carry me. My homesickness was gone. I held out like a man.

After my return home, in the fall of 1853, I heard that a high school had recently been opened at West Union, only thirty miles away, and that two young men whom I knew were there as students. Here now was my opportunity. I had been longing for an education, but in that newly settled state the little district schools were generally second or third rate, and I was unwilling to go to any of them. Higher institutions were opened during those years, but none as yet in that part of Iowa. This high school, however, was within my reach. Cyrus again was on my side; my parents agreed with him. I took some of my newly earned money and walked the thirty miles to West Union.

I did hard work there that winter. Not willing to pay out my money for board, I worked for that. I went to the proprietor of the only good hotel in West Union, a retired Baptist preacher, and asked him whether he had any work for me to do. He said he had, so I agreed to stay. I was to saw wood for the stoves, light the fires, be hostler of stable and barn, and in return for this was to be treated as a regular boarder, eating at the same table with the rest. It meant getting up early in the morning, being on hand at noon and again in the evening. Soon the proprietor expected me to act for him in his absence. This taught me to be mindful of the comfort of strangers. It was useful training, for later, in Ongole, I often had my compound full of hundreds of people to whom I was practically host.

In my studies during those four or five months I had a definite end in view. I had taken my bearings among the surveyors, and knew that if I had technical knowledge I might rise to something higher than hatchetcarrier among them. I went straight into the studies that would supply my need, and obtained what I wanted, though handicapped all the time by lack of adequate preliminary education. It was this circumstance, partly, that led to a remark from the principal of the high school that *'in Clough a good farmer would be spoiled to make a poor lawyer." Somehow my ambition to become a lawyer was always known to those with whom I came in contact. This remark, when I heard it, had a discouraging effect upon me. The wife of my employer, too, heard of it, and was indignant. She told me not to mind it, that she was sure I was going to come out ahead in the end, and that I would some day be a lawyer. I never forgot how I felt when I had to fight the discouragement produced by that remark. Many a Telugu lad, in after years, was given a chance to learn, no matter how unpromising he might seem, if I saw that he had set his heart on rising in life. I could easily put myself in his place, for I had been there myself.

Religious influences still had no hold on me. Revival meetings were held that winter. Far from showing any interest in them, another lad and I decided to have some fun. We went into the meeting house unobserved, took all the candles, tunneled small holes into them at intervals, and filled them with powder. In the evening, during the meeting, as the candles burned, there was a small, sizzling explosion occasionally; the light went out by the force of it. It worried the deacons. No one had any peace that night. Those in power wished they knew who played this trick and regarded us two lads with suspicion. But we took care to look innocent.

Spring came, and again I joined the surveying party on an expedition to Minnesota. Work this year was between Lake Pippin and Cannon River. My chief knew that I had been at school during the winter and lost no time in giving me a chance to apply my knowledge. He brought out a compass, put it into my hands, told me what to do, and ordered men to go with me as chainmen, carrying axe and spade. I accepted the compass with fear and trembling and started out to do as I had been told. On our return to camp in the evening I reported to the chief, and he was pleased. He saw that he could trust me. The camp was divided into two companies; the chief worked with one of them, while he placed me in charge of the other, with about six men under me, all much older than I. We camped together, but every morning we separated and did not meet again till evening. For several weeks I gave a minute account to the chief every evening of what I had done, and showed him my notebook. Then my daily reports became merely nominal and after a time ceased altogether. Thus we worked till winter came and we returned to Iowa.

My family, meanwhile, had made plans for mercantile business. They wanted to open a general merchandise store at Strawberry Point, and I was to be store-keeper. I was sent to Chicago with a team to buy a small stock of goods. Business was fair and the prospects were g-ood. But the supposition was that I would take kindly to work behind the counter. Here my family was mistaken. After roaming over the prairies, the confinement behind that counter was more than I could bear, and I longed to be free. When spring came nothing could hold me. The stock of goods was sold at cost, the partnership dissolved, and I thought I deserved credit because I had stayed behind that counter one winter.

Soon I was on my way again to Minnesota with my former companions and employer. Our field began about fifty miles north of Minneapolis — a village then. Mr. Anderson had decided to place more responsibility upon me. The work of surveying township and meridian lines he kept to himself; the work of dividing into sections he gave to me. This necessitated two camps. Often we did not meet more than once a month. I was only nineteen years old, not eligible to direct appointment under the government. I was sworn in as United States Deputy Surveyor, Mr. Anderson standing between me and the government. My official certificate served me, twenty years later, when I wanted a contract from the Indian Government for digging three miles of canal in the time of famine, to keep starving Christians alive. English officials then respected my United States certificate, and gave me what I wanted.

I was young for so much responsibility, but Mr. Anderson was always ready to help me. Once I found an error in the township lines and could not make my work close. I sent a messenger to him, who had to trace him and find him in that wilderness. He sent back word to stick stakes and wait till he came. Another time a settler, who had a valuable farm site, told me in a persuasive manner that if the lines were made to pass along a certain boundary on his claim, he had one hundred dollars in gold to give me. This to a poor young man was quite a temptation. I knew I could bring the lines to suit him by just shortening and lengthening the chains a little. But though religious convictions had no part in my life at that time, my father's Puritan ideas of honor and integrity served me well. I refused the hundred dollars in gold and laid the lines with mathematical exactness. Winter overtook us in Minnesota. Snow fell as we turned homeward, late in November. There were times when we had to clear the ground before we could pitch our tent, and then, just outside the tent, we built a huge fire of logs and kept it up all night. We reached home in very cold weather.

My chief told me that the work of the following summer would be in Dakota. The government was receiving applications from prospective settlers for claims in that uninhabited portion of the country. Surveyors were being sent there to divide the land into townships and subdivide into sections. We were to go where settlers had not yet penetrated. As there were lakes and watercourses where our work would lie, the chief advised me to get the technical knowledge for this branch of surveying. There was a retired teacher of mathematics settled on a farm not far from my home, and I studied with him that winter.

I knew when I started for the wild west for the fourth time that this would be my last campaign; for I was not willing to look upon surveying as my calling in life — I wanted to become a lawyer. We pushed forward now, beyond the region where we had done our previous surveying, and came to the very confines of civilization. Near St. Cloud — a village then — a squatter had settled who made it his business to keep a depot of all kinds of supplies and articles needed by those going further into the wilderness. We replenished our stock of provisions and were now ready to move on. Just then Mr. Anderson was called home to Dubuque on some business. He left the whole contract in my hands, with all that pertained to it, telling me to report to him by letter whenever we found it necessary to send a man from our camp in the wilderness to the squatter near St. Cloud for fresh supplies.