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5. Indigenous leadership. 'The National Missionary Council, at its very first session in 1912, emphasized the necessity for the development of Indian leadership. One of its resolutions recorded the conviction "that whenever capable and spiritually minded men and women are discovered, Churches and missions should make a real and unmistakable advance by placing Indians on a footing of complete equality, in status and responsibility, with Europeans and thus open for them the highest and the most responsible positions in every department of missionary activity."
In this connection the conference also emphasized the principle that the work carried on by foreign missionary societies should be gradually transferred, as opportunities offered, to the Indian Church, and that suitable plans and modifications of existing organizations should be adopted, wherever necessary, so that this principle might be carried out by missionary bodies.
The past twenty-five years have seen an enormous development in such Indianization as is contemplated in the resolution. In many areas, charges of mission districts once held by missionaries have now been handed over to suitable Indians. Educational institutions once under the managership of Europeans are now under the managership of Indian Christians. Indian Christian doctors have been placed in charge of hospitals formerly under European doctors. In some areas, the superintending missionary no longer exists, his huge districts have been sub-divided and placed under Indian ministers. Where Indians have been entrusted with such responsibilities, they are to a great extent proving themselves able, efficient, and trustworthy. In handling mission funds and accounts, in keeping the work at an efficient standard and in the exercise of discipline over subordinates, many Indian
Christians have proved themselves worthy of the trust placed in their hands.
We need on the one hand far more Indian leaders of this type than are available at present; and on the other, we desire to see a still bolder policy in all missions and Churches, trusting Indians
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INDIA AND THE CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT
more and more with responsibilities. The carrying of responsibility trains character, develops leadership and drives men to seek divine help to enable them to discharge their duties to the glory of God and for the advancement of the Church in the land. There is need for even greater developments along this line in the future.
At a time when the spirit of nationalism sweeps over the land, and everything un-Indian is looked upon with suspicion, it is a moral and spiritual obligation upon all missionaries and missionary societies from abroad and upon all Churches in India to seek to do everything they possibly can, to make it possible, both in appearance and in reality, to identify the Christian movement with the indigenous Church and indigenous leadership.
6. The evangelistic task. The Indian Church, as is only right, is increasingly becoming a factor in the evangelization of India.
Missionary work in its first stage solely consists of the task of proclaiming the Gospel message. The Word stands then on its own merits. As soon, however, as converts are gathered in and a church of a few believers is formed in a locality, the truth of the Gospel no longer stands by itself, but must depend for its further conquest upon the evidence furnished by that church to the power of the Gospel. The witness of the life of the Christian community thenceforward becomes an important factor in further expansion. Morever, the Church becomes, if it is rightly founded and its members properly instructed and trained, an evangelizing agency additional to the missionary force. The command to preach the Gospel applies as much to the indigenous Church as it is to the older Church, and if this is impressed upon the first believers from the start they in their turn will add to the volume of witness given to the saving power of Jesus Christ.
THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
1. By life. The silent testimony of the Christian individual and the Christian home are most potent factors in this respect.
'The social, economic, intellectual, moral and spiritual progress
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77. and transformation of Christians are after all the most convincing proof of the genuineness of the claims of their religion. Reference has already been made to the mass movements.' The rapid progress of these movements is directly traceable to the living witness of individuals and communities. The religion of Jesus Christ spreads from village to village by the irresistible appeal of the visible transformation effected in families and villages, where it has already had a chance.
In spite of all blemishes and defects seen in individuals and churches, there is no doubt that the witness of the life of the Christians as a whole has not failed to attract the attention of observers and students of sociology.
The Bengalee, the leading Calcutta Hindu daily, said in an editorial note:
Go to South Parganas and the Central Provinces and you will find Christian missionaries literally sacrificing their lives for the amelioration of the condition of the aboriginal population in whose midst they work and live. Go to Southern
India and you will see what missionary effort has achieved in the way of the regeneration of the despised Pariahs.?
Speaking of the work among the Mundas in Chota Nagpur, a Calcutta writer says:
The most careless observer can tell the house of a Christian convert of some years' standing from that of his non-Christian fellow-tribesman by the greater cleanliness of the Christian's house and the general neatness and orderliness of everything about it. The contrast illustrated by the various pictures given in this book of Munda and Oraon Christian men and women, boys and girls on the one hand, and, on the other, of nonChristian Mundas and Oraons at their feasts and elsewhere will, we hope, help the reader towards an appreciation of the brilliant achievements of the Christian missions in their
1 See Chapter VIII.
2 Quoted from The Crown of Hinduism, p. 279.
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noble work of civilizing and educating the aborigines of Chota Nagpur.
The Census Superintendent of the Mysore State, himself a Hindu, says that the missionaries work mainly among the backward classes and that the enlightening influence of Christianity is patent in the higher standard of comfort of the converts, and their sober, disciplined and busy lives. To take education, for instance, we find that among Indian Christians no less than 11,523 persons or twenty-five per cent are returned as literate, while for the total population of the State the percentage is only 6.
The Report of the Travancore Census of 1901, compiled by a Brahman, thus spoke of this work:
To Christian missionaries belongs the credit of having gone to their humble homes, and awakened them to a sense of a better earthly existence. The heroism of raising the low from the slough of degradation and debasement was an element of civilization unknown in ancient India.
This is not only true of the aboriginal peoples and the depressed classes, it is very largely true of the entire community.
Christians as a body are known to be law abiding citizens. An English Judge once remarked that he easily detected Christians when they were put into the witness-box. Either they were truthful and transparently so, or if they gave false evidence they soon betrayed that they were not accustomed to this!
A Hindu gentleman high up in the educational world was for some months living in a vacant mission bungalow where the caretaker was a humble Christian. After six months of observation he remarked that the love that characterized that caretaker's home was something that he scarcely ever saw or expected to see in similar Hindu homes. Testimony like this has been repeatedly given by impartial observers all over the country. The 1 The Mundas, by Batu Sarat Chandra Roy, p. 168.
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upright relations of Christians in business, the purity and love of Christian homes, the high moral achievement of Christian men and women are evidences that cannot be gainsaid. In the early
Christian centuries it was said that "the personal manifestation of the Christian life led to imitation.' "Those who were ignorant, foolish and miserably poor, when once they became Christians," said Origen, "no longer defiled themselves by licentious indulgences or the gratification of shameless passion, but kept themselves in act and in thought in a state of virgin purity." Christians of that age opposed covetousness, greed, and dishonesty in business life; they attacked mammon worship in every shape and form; they combated all double dealing and falsehood. In that age of social corruption and mutual distrust Christians won by their exemplary life of rectitude. So it has been in India, though in a smaller measure. The witness of the Christian life has been a great factor in whatever expansion we have had in India in the past, and it must always be one of the chief factors.
2. By word. If we have in India more than six million Christians we have an army six million strong for winning India to Christ. But alas, all do not realize the duty, and all do not feel that at baptism they were received into the Church of Christ and enrolled as Christ's soldiers and they ought not to be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, but must manfully fight under His banner unto their life's end. If only every Christian were a witness, what might not be accomplished in this land in our own life time?
The emphasis laid in recent years by the National Christian Council on evangelism has had a very cordial response from all
Churches and Missions. The Forward Movement in Evangelism launched in 1935 has placed before all the Churches a definite fiveyear plan. The Week of Witness is also beginning to be widely observed. During that one week it is reported that in one church in the Andhra area, 18,017 men and women were engaged in 1 Harnack's Mission and Expansion of Christianity, vol. i, p. 87.
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Gospel witness; 47,800 handbills were distributed; 20,226 Gospels and tracts were sold and about 300,000 people heard the message.
As a result, 383 villages are reported to have asked for Christian instruction and more than four thousand people enrolled as catechumens.
3. Indigenous Missionary Societies. Equally encouraging is the organized missionary effort of the Indian Church in different parts of the country. Several missions in South India have small home missionary societies of their own, which employ evangelists in their own or neighboring districts. The Home Missionary
Society of the American Madura Mission has taken one of the unoccupied talugs of the district as its special field and is supporting Indian workers in that field. The Home Missionary Society of Telugu Baptist Convention is raising Rs. 660 a year and is supporting nine Indian workers in the Nellore District.
The Indian Missionary Soctety of Tinnevelly, organized in 1903, now supports three Indian missionaries in Dornakal in the Nizam's Dominions, at a distance of more than eight hundred miles from the home base. Besides supporting the missionaries, this society is maintaining fifty-three Telugu teachers, two boarding schools and an industrial school teaching carpentry and weaving. There were in the year 1935 as the fruit of the mission about 5,800 baptized Christians and more than 2,500 catechumens scattered in one hundred and fifty villages in the field. The headquarters of the mission is at Dornakal, which has given its name to the Diocese of Dornakal. The society raises about $8,400 a year.
In 1905, The National Missionary Society of India was organized at Serampore by representatives from all parts of India. It aims at uniting all the Christian bodies in all the provinces into one great society for the evangelization of India and adjacent lands. It stands for the principle: Indian men, Indian money, and Indian management.
The society's work is carried on from fifty centers in nine prov-
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SI inces. It has on its roll 27 missionaries and 88 other workers. Affiliated with it are the Ashram at Tirupattur in South India, St.
Andrew's Mission, Bengal, and the foreign mission work of the Diocese of Travancore and Cochin. It has also taken over the Christian college at Gorakpur in the United Provinces and a high school and other institutions in North Kanara. The total number of workers supported by the society in 1934 was 160, and of Christians it had gathered in 9,500. Its total income was Rs.
78,000. It publishes an English journal, called The National Misstonary Intelligencer.
The society works in the Montgomery district, Punjab; Allahabad and Fatehpur districts in the United Provinces; Sambalpur district in Bihar and Orissa; Bilaspur district in the Central
Provinces; Ahmednagar and Sholapur districts in Bombay. The Diocese of Travancore works in the Parkal Talug, Warangal district, Nizam's Dominions.
The Brotherhood of St. Andrew, one of the societies affiliated to the N.M.S. deserves an honorable place among the missionary enterprises of the Indian Church. This mission was organized by the Rev. M. N. Chuckerbutty in 1911 and owes a great deal of its inspiration to the Oxford Mission, Calcutta. The mission is conducted on the principles of Indian men, Indian money, and Indian management. It works quite independently of any other body or mission, and depends for all its income on the gifts of the Indian Church. The mission is conducted on thoroughly indigenous lines. The workers live in the Indian way. They receive no salaries and in this respect they are keeping up the national traditions of the religious life." The work is done at Haluaghat in the Mymensingh district, Bengal. Three of the members are ordained priests of the Church of India.
The field of the Diocese of Travancore and Cochin lies in an unoccupied taluq in the eastern portion of the Nizam's Dominions. The work is under two Indian missionaries from Travan1 Extract from the Report for 1913.
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core, of whom one is already ordained. The society has more than three hundred baptized converts as the fruit of its labors.
The Mar Thoma Syrian Christian Evangelical Association, also, affiliated with the National Missionary Society, supports 250 evangelists and priests among the depressed classes in 'Tranvacore, and carries on missionary work in Cochin and Palghat and in three centers in North Kanara. This church in 1934 raised $9,600.
The National Missionary Society of Ceylon was organized in 1913 and carries on missionary work in four centers in that island.
It raises Rs. 6,000 for the support of the work in these fields.
The Diocese of Dornakal has work in two hitherto unevangelized taluqgs of the Nizam's Dominions, supported by the gifts of the people. The work in Mulag is under the leadership of an Indian priest; the converts numbered 683 in 1934.
The total gain to the Christian enterprise in India through all these and other indigenous agencies may not appear to be very large. But these are so many evidences that the Indian Churches are realizing their responsibility for the evangelization of their country and are making their little contribution to the Christian movement. Even in volume, the work may not be despised, as in every case these agencies are evangelizing areas hitherto unoccupied by any foreign missionary society and constitute wherever they are, the only witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But apart from this, there are also so many indications of new life that is springing up in the Indian Church and are of great inspirational value to all.
Preblens of the Puts HE problems of the future of the Christian movement in India are of three kinds, one relating to the Indian Church, a second relating to the Missions operating in India, and the third to the as yet unevangelized millions.
THE PROBLEMS OF THE INDIAN CHURCH
Quickening the Church to increase of spiritual life is in the forefront of the problems of the Churches in India, as on its solution ultimately depends the winning of India to Christ. Encouraging features of Church life observable in many Churches in various regions were discussed in the previous chapter; but unless the Churches watch to keep fresh and at a high level the spiritual life of the community, its witness is sure to lack in vitality and fruitfulness.
The converts of the first generation usually exhibit all the glow and warmth of their new experience. They have probably made some great sacrifices for the sake of Christ, and they have their reward in the rich enjoyment of fellowship with God and fellowship with those who have similarly given up their all for Christ. The Christians of the second and third generations, however, cannot be expected to be born into such an inheritance of religious experience. Very often they need conversion themselves, and though, by Christian upbringing, they may outwardly conform themselves to religious observances, they may possibly lack the vigor of a live religion. Great care therefore has to be taken to lead the youth of the Churches to a living experience in Christ.
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The Indian religious instinct is a great asset to the indigenous Christians, and they are known to be very religious, as far as outward conformity goes. They may be regular in attending
Church services and the sacraments. They may invite the ministers to go and pray in their homes at all domestic occurrences. They may give generously to the support of the Church. These religious practices on the part of the people, however, should not deceive the leaders of the Church to think that everything is all right.
Personal faith in the living God and in Jesus Christ, the joy of sonship to the Father resulting in trust and reliance upon Him under all circumstances, the practice of daily prayer and meditation, a separation from all that is evil and a hindrance to others, and the acceptance of Christ as Lord and Master of all departments of life—of the business, of the home, of social relationships, of marriage, and of public and civil life—these alone should satisfy ministers that their congregation has life and is having it more abundantly.
We are today face to face with the appalling sight of a nation usually described as "incorrigibly religious" drifting away from all religion and God. Nationalism, politics, and social service are the only shrines at which many of the educated thinkers worship today. Secularism under these forms is usurping the place religion once had in the hearts of many a Hindu. God as an effective factor in national and individual life is in danger of being altogether forgotten by a large section of the people. Such a time as this demands on the part of Christians a loud proclamation by word and life that we believe in God—a living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and that this belief is at the very core of all our external activities. The call must be sounded in all Churches: Draw nearer to God! Get closer to Jesus Christ!
Be filled with the Holy Ghost!
Stirring up the zeal for evangelism. Lethargy in personal religion may be the cause of indifference to the duty of witnessbearing; and vice versa, indifference to the evangelistic duty