CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
THE EVANGELIZATION OF INDIA
In his Mission and Expansion of Christianity Harnack has traced from early Christian writings the factors that operated for the spread of the Christian religion during the first three centuries of its history. At the very outset of his investigation he makes this significant remark.
"'It was by preaching to the poor, the burdened, the outcaste, by the preaching and practice of love, that Christianity turned the stony, sterile world into a fruitful field for the Church."
History repeats itself and this same experience is again being reproduced in India. A brief review of Harnack's points will show how far conditions in India to-day are similar to those in the Roman
Empire.
1. The first factor in the successful issue of the Christian propaganda, says Harnack, was the varied character of the Mission-preaching.
It was not the preaching or understanding of Christian dogma in any complete sense that was effective.
"In countless instances it was but one ray of light that wrought the change." "One person," he goes on to say, "" would be brought over by means of the Old 'Testament, another by the exorcising of demons,
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a third by the purity of Christian life; others again by the monotheism of Christianity, above all by the prospect of complete expiation or by the prospect which it held out of immortality or by the social standing which it conferred. As long as Christianity did not yet propagate itself naturally, one believer may well have produced another."
Very similar are the causes that lead to the expansion of Christianity in rural India. Here, too, the causes are varied.
Different aspects of the Gospel appeal to different people. The fact that it has been preached to and accepted by the poor outcastes of Hindu society compels many to give their serious consideration to those elements in this religion that produce such a striking change in its followers.
The monotheistic ideal in contrast to the village gods of the Hindu polytheism; the high ethical demands made upon the followers of Christ, the promise of salvation or deliverance, not from re-births but from sin, the teaching of immortality and resurrection; the doctrine of the Cross, the knowledge that the supernatural Ruler of all things is a Father of Love—these are the elements that compel attention from the Hindu observer.
All these have in one form or another appealed to the outsider.
What, however, has made that appeal effective is, not the statement of abstract doctrine, philosophically demonstrated, but the doctrine clothed with flesh and blood in the lives of the poor and illiterate villagers.
1 See The Influence of Christ in the Ancient World, pp. 96-98 By T. R. Glover.
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The immediate causes that lead to the conversion of villagers are various.
One caste convert confessed that what first appealed to him was the joy and happiness of the Christian people as evidenced by their songs, praises and thanksgivings. Another high-caste man became a Christian attracted by the message of the resurrection and the practice of Christians burying their dead. Some caste people are drawn to Christianity by the fact that Christian worship consists, not only of worship without the aid of images, but also of instruction in godliness and morality. But the divine message makes its most irresistible appeal when it is incarnated in experience.
Incarnation is God's method of saving the world.
2. Another factor in the spread of Christianity in the early centuries was the proclamation of the Gospel as a gospel of redemption. Celsus declared as lucidly as one could desire the cardinal difference between Christianity and the ancient religions.
Christianity, he said, offered the Kingdom of God to anyone who was a sinner, a thief, a burglar, a poisoner, or a sacrilegious man.
" Why!" he said, "'if you wanted an assembly of robbers these are just the sort of people you would summon!"
That is exactly what is sometimes cast in our teeth in India; but that was the glory of Christianity in the Roman Empire, and it is its glory in India to-day.
Repeatedly converts say in effect what Clement is said to have written: "He bestowed on us the light, he spoke to us as a father to his
1 Harnack, p. 104.
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sons, he saved us in our lost estate.
Blind were we in understanding, worshipping stones and wood and gold and silver and brass, nor was our whole life aught but death."
The foregoing chapters afford illustrations that the Gospel of Christ is still the gospel of redemption.
These transformations are the living forces of the Gospel of the Saviour: these miracles of grace are the divinely appointed signs to India.
3. A third cause of the expansion of the religion of Christ in the first three centuries is said by Harnack to be the character of Christianity as "the religion of the spirit and of power; of moral earnestness and holiness."
In the first sixty years of the history of the Church, the outward and visible manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit were most conspicuous, and they existed all through the second century though in a diminished volume.
During the third century, however, these ceased almost entirely; though this cessation hardly inflicted any injury upon the mission of Christianity.
The evidence of power then as in the days of St Paul was " that God had not called many wise after the flesh, nor many noble, but poor and weak men whom he had transformed into morally robust and intelligent natures."
"The entire labour of the Christian mission," continues Harnack, " might be described as a moral enterprise, as the awakening and strengthening of the moral sense.
The conflict undertaken by Christianity was one against the sins 1 2 Clement. 1. ig
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of the flesh, such as fornication, adultery, and unnatural vices, and it exhibited to the Roman world a hitherto unknown example of personal purity.
This is abundantly proved by the writings of the Apologists and other early Christian writers.
Aristides asserts most forcibly the high moral life of the Christians.
Diognetus speaks of the love of the Christians to one another in such glowing terms that it puts us to shame.
Athenagoras says:
'Among us are uneducated folk, artisans and old women, who are utterly unable to describe the value of our doctrines in words, but who attest them by their deeds.' "
When Celsus urged that "' Christians must admit that they can only persuade people destitute of sense, position, or intelligence, only slaves, women and children to accept their faith," Tatian replies:
"Not so! Our maidens philosophize and at their distaffs speak of things divine."
Justin says:
"Among us you can hear and learn these things from people who do not even know the forms of letters, who are uneducated and barbarous in speech, but wise and believing in mind, though some of them are even maimed and blind. From this you may understand that these things are due to no human wisdom but are uttered by the power of God."
These factors that operated so strongly in the early centuries of the Christian era are operating with equal power for the rapid spread of Christianity in India to-day.
One of the most important lessons, therefore,
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that we have learnt from the movement among the outcastes is that by far the most powerful evangelistic agency in India is the witness of the Indian Church itself.
In the preaching of the foreign missionary the Kingdom of God comes in word. In the life of the Christian Church it comes in power. There is no testimony so convincing as the power of transformed lives.
It has been so from the beginning.
A very striking illustration of the evangelistic forces latent in the Christian community in India comes from the Punjab. A splendid work has been carried on among the strong, virile and independent
Moslem tribes of the North-West Frontier for many years by both Anglican and Presbyterian missionaries.
'The chain of mission hospitals on the frontier have done a magnificent work.
But for some time the missionaries were seriously concerned by the lack of success in the matter of converts.
The building of an indigenous Church - had been practically at a standstill for fifty years.
The missionaries, therefore, met together recently and prayed to know what was the reason for this and to find out God's will.
Gradually it became clear that the problem of the evangelization of the Moslems is the preparation of a Church both to win the harvest and to take care of it. The reason for their lack of success had been their neglect of the Indian Church.
So they called the elders together and put before them this duty. The work of preaching was then handed over to the Indian
Church and a yearly campaign was planned lasting
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a week, in which every Christian was to take © art.
5 It was at once discovered that an aggressive, awakened Church was by far the most effective evangelistic agency.
"'In one city where regular bazar preaching had been efficiently carried on by the missionary without the result of even one inquirer, when it was taken over by a band of Indians of the local church, volunteers for the work, inquiries were made after every service.
The Campaign week, with the handing over of definite evangelistic work to the Indian Church, proved successful in bringing in many inquirers all over the Rawal Pindi district, where previously for years there had been no baptisms.
Since then there has not been a single year when some at least of those who came forward did not go on to confession by baptism."
The second discovery was the value of the outcaste Christians for evangelistic work, even among the Moslems.
No one had thought of employing them for-so hard a task.
"' They are a very mixed lot, many of them still ignorant and dirty. .
. The cleaning out of the filthy open drains of an Eastern city does not tend to elevate the mind. .
. Somehow no one had faith to believe that they could be of use to God at all. .
. But gradually in answer to prayer, nothing less than this was borne in on men's minds.
It was to be these Christians from the Mass Movements who were themselves to be the agents used by God to work among the Moslem people; they were to be the aggressive Church.
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It was found that there are thirty-five or more of these groups of humble Christians north of the Jhelum, that is, in the North Punjab and on the North-West Frontier.
Through the foolishness of God, which is wiser than men, they are settled in many places where there is no other Christian witness, and in some cases (such as in the fort of Landi Kotal at the summit of the Khyber Pass, and in Manzai, an armed camp actually in Waziristan), where no other Indian Christians would be able to live. They are sweepers, and theré must be sweepers for the troops.
They are in the most improbable places to find Christians, and actually paid by Government to work there. Government is obliged to forbid proselytizing in Indian regiments, but they must have sweepers; and, if these be Christians, here is at once the only influence that can touch the Indian Army.
"Tn certain schools and colleges where the only religious teaching is Islamic, Christian sweepers are employed. .
. Whether in border cities such as Peshawar and Kohat, or in the peaceful country districts of the Punjab, sweepers are a necessity.
The great advantage is that they are scattered everywhere, and are not confined, like most missionary effort has been, to the school, the college, and the hospital in the larger cities.
"Then, too, they are not sensitive. The sweeper is used to rebuffs and bad treatment at any time.
He carries on.
He is one of the things which are despised, but it appears he is one of those whom
God has chosen to use. They are far from perfect,
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these sweeper Christians; fighting, immorality, and other sins exist among them, yet even a man who is ignorant and not too upright may be used to sell gospels, and we find that these men have, on the whole, sold far more than the educated.
It is worthy of note that almost every convert has originally been drawn through buying a gospel portion.
"* At one place several young Indians of wealth and good birth came as secret inquirers. Through a servant of very humble birth, who could not himself read, they had heard, and bought, and then read for themselves.
In a British regiment the sweeper boot-boys sold about one hundred gospels and testaments to the British soldiers; and a number have been already sold to the Indian troops in the same way by the sweepers." 4
The experience of the Missionaries in the Telugu country has been exactly the same.
They taught the Brahmans and higher castes in school and college and preached to the caste people in town and village for many years with very little result.
Then God called the outcastes. An Indian church came into existence and bore a powerful witness to Christ.
And now through that witness many thousands of the caste people are being brought to faith in Christ.
1 C.M.S. Review, June 1927.
Article on the Afghan Frontier by Mrs Underhill.