Reginald Heber
“Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King.”
Tue Hebers are an English family of ancient lineage and high standing. Their ancestral estate is Hodnet in Shropshire, and not far off is the parish of Malpas in the rectory of which on 21st April 1783, Reginald Heber was born.
The first fourteen years of his life were spent “under the hourly influence of parents and teachers, whose wisdom and culture were directed by the love of God.” And in this he was peculiarly happy; for not only the Church of England, but the Christian Church everywhere was at that time in much spiritual torpor: not yet had she listened to the call ‘Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion: put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem the holy city ;’ but the era of revival and benevolence to the outcast and the heathen, though not yet come, was close at hand. That era was almost synchronous with the French Revolution: the new beginning of Protestant foreign missions was made in 1793, when Carey sailed for India.
The beginnings of Christian life in Heber are dated from his infancy: his mother’s living piety influenced her son from his cradle. From a child he knew the Holy Scriptures, and could read them with ease before he was five years old. So free was he from outbursts of temper, that the servants used to say, “Master Reginald never was in a passion.” In his boyhood, as in after life he was distinguished for unselfishness and sympathy. Books he not only read but devoured, and that in an omnivorous manner.
At fifteen he left home for Neasden, then near London but now part of the mighty city, where for the next five years he was under the tuition and training of a clergyman, Dr Bristow. He excelled in Latin and Greek, drawing was a favourite pastime, and natural history gave scope to his power of observation. Already there appeared the poetic faculty which was afterwards so marked; and Spenser, along with the Bible, was his vade mecum.
In his eighteenth year he went to Oxford. Sir Charles Grey, afterwards Chief Justice in Calcutta, then one of Heber’s fellow-students, has recorded that he was “beyond all question or comparison the most distinguished student of his time. The name of Reginald Heber was in every mouth ; his REGINALD IEBER, 143
society was courted by young and old; he lived in an atmosphere of favour, admiration, and regard, from which I have never known any one but himself who would not have derived, and for life, an unsalutary influence.”
In 1803 he wrote his University prize poem Palestine. Sir Walter Scott gives us these reminiscences of Heber and Palestine. “I spent some merry days with him at Oxford when he was writing his prize poem. He was then a gay young fellow, a wit and a satirist and burning for literary fame. My laurels were beginning to bloom, and we were both madcaps. Who would have foretold our future lot?” His wit had no malice in it, nor was his humour tinged with grossness.
At a breakfast party in Heber’s room Sir Walter was present. Palestine was the subject of conversation, and it was produced and read. Sir Walter said, “You have omitted one striking circumstance in your account of the building of the temple, that no tools were used in its erection.” Reginald retired from the breakfast table to a corner of the room, and before the party separated produced the lines which now form part of the poem :—
“No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung,
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. Majestic silence !”
Christopher North, another of his contemporaries, wrote in regard to Heber’s recitation of the poem before the University, “As his voice grew bolder and more sonorous in the hush, the audience felt that this was not the mere display of the skill and ingenuity of a clever youth, the accidental triumph of an accomplished versifier over his compeers in the dexterity of scholarship, which is all that can generally be truly said of such exhibitions—but that here was a poet indeed not only of bright promise but of high achievement—one whose name was already written in the roll of the immortals. And that feeling, whatever might have been the share of the boundless enthusiasm with which the poem was listened to, attributable to the genius loct, has been since sanctioned by the judgment of the world that has placed Palestine at the very head of the poetry on divine subjects of this age. It is now incorporated for ever with the poetry of England.”
From this scene of literary triumph Heber at once retired to the privacy of his own room where his mother found him giving thanks to God.
Having taken his B.A. degree, and having gained the University Bachelor’s prize for the English prose essay on A sense of Honour, he completed his University course by being elected one of the fifty Fellows of All Souls College. All grades of society were then permeated by a code of honour which was far from being that of the New Testament ; and Reginald Heber in this as in many other matters was in advance of his time. One who knew him well used to say that “if his heart had no other covering than a glass, its thoughts were so pure that no one need fear to read them.”
He left Oxford “the first man in the University in personal influence and popularity, in literature and in scholarship.” His purpose now was to make such a tour of the continent and of the East as was possible at that time of European war and commotion. In this tour in which he visited the countries of Europe from Norway to the Crimea, he spent nearly the whole of his twenty-second year.
On his return to England he went into residence at All Souls and prepared for ordination. In the summer of 1807 he was ordained and was immediately presented by his elder brother Richard to the rectory of Hodnet. Here he lived and worked in the ministry for fifteen years.
To all the labours devolving on a parish clergyman he gave himself without reserve, a guide, philosopher, and friend to all his people, devotedly studying their wants and interests, his time busily occupied in visitation, in care for the sick, in charities, in preparation for the pulpit both of his own congregation and of the various chapels of ease. Yet his sympathies were strongly with “the church” as opposed to Nonconformity. For example, he writes on 7th August 1807, “The Methodists in Hodnet are, thank God, not very numerous, and I hope to diminish them still more: they are, however, sufficiently numerous to serve as a spur to my emulation.” He also writes that his congregation appeared to be thinner since Rowland Hill’s visit to the country: “it has made me really uncomfortable.” Heber was to learn to look upon his brethren in Christ with far more sympathy: and then, “he burned, he preached, he lectured, he wrote, he travelled, he organised, he prayed with the one mission to bring to Christ the Crucified every sinner of mankind.”
In 1809 he was happily married to Amelia, the youngest daughter of Dr Shipley, Dean of St Asaph.
In 1814 he was appointed Bampton Lecturer. The subject which he chose was “The Personality and Office of the Christian Comforter.” In these sermons he both critically exposed the Arian and other opposing systems, and also gave a positive treatment of the subject. Of the work of the Holy Spirit he says: “It is this which gives life and vigour to every religious truth which we hear; this which imprints on our soul and recalls to our attention those sacred principles to which our reason has already assented. Distinct from conscience, but the vital spark by which our natural conscience is sanctified, it both enables us to choose the paths of life, and to persist in those paths when chosen; and though, like the free and viewless air, it is only by its effects that we discern it, it is the principle of our moral as the air is of our natural health, the soul of our soul, and the shechinah of our bodily temple. It prepares our hearts for the word of life and engrafts the word in our hearts thus opened ; it preserves and refreshes in our memory those principles of action of which we have already perceived the force, for it is the blessing of God and His pervading energy which prospers to our salvation what we learn and what we have learned.”
In 1818 he was select preacher to the University of Oxford. The last of these sermons was “On the Atonement,” from Romans vi. 3, 4; and in it he says—“ Our salvation is then of grace alone, inasmuch as our admission into the covenant of peace is without any previous virtue and in spite of many previous sins; it is of grace inasmuch as the services which are afterwards required from us have no aptitude in themselves to call down reward from the Most High; it is of grace since to the performance of these very services the strength is furnished from above by Him who not only calls on us to hope, but bestows on us the spiritual gifts by which that hope is sealed and perfected. It is of free grace above all, because we are not only first freely called and afterwards freely strengthened to perform. the obligations of our calling, but even where we have neglected our duty, the repentance and faith which were at first our only passports to Christianity, are still suffered to attend us and plead for us, and by the same merits of the Redeemer through which we are justified and sanctified, we are accepted and glorified.”
In 1814 he had declined the offer of a prebend of Durham; but in 1817, when Dr Luxmore offered him a stall in St Asaph’s Cathedral he accepted it. Some of his hymns were composed and committed to memory to beguile his way to St Asaph while making the necessary and frequent journeys to Wales on horseback.
In 1819 he became a candidate for a vacancy in the preachership of Lincoln’s Inn, but was not elected. Another vacancy occurring in 1822 he was chosen to this office. The position was most agreeable to him, “and the more so as it does not take me away from Hodnet more than three months in the year.”
Heber’s hymns were mainly due to the desire which he felt to improve the service of praise in his own congregation. His first attempt to reform the psalmody was by means of a selection of hymns which he culled from various sources, but this was not immediately successful. He therefore attempted to meet the difficulty by writing hymns for his people, and by requesting the help of his friends, Milman and Southey. He began by publishing a few in 1811 and 1812. These he intended as part of a series or collection for use in public worship, not only in his own congregation but generally.
Bishop Middleton had issued an appeal for funds to found and endow a Mission College in Calcutta. A hearty response was made in England, and of sixty thousand pounds contributed for this purpose, forty-five thousand were the result of a royal letter written in 1819, authorizing collections in every church and chapel in England.
Heber all unconsciously was brought into close contact with Indian missions, and on this wise.
On the Saturday before Whitsunday on which the appointed collection was to be made in the parish church of Wrexham—his father-in-law’s congregation—he was asked by Dr Shipley to write “something for them to sing in the morning.” He retired to a corner of the room, and at once wrote the first three verses of “From Greenland’s icy mountains.” The Dean asked—‘ What have you written?” Heber read the three verses, and they were met with the approving words—“ There, there, that will do very well.” “No,” replied the Poet,“ the sense is not complete,” and then added the fourth verse, and wished to add a fifth; but to this his father-in-law would not consent ; and the hymn, as we have it, was sung next morning in Wrexham Church. Such was the occasion of one of the greatest missionary hymns in the language, being composed as if by inspiration. Many years afterwards, Dr Raffles of Liverpool found the original MS. of this poem on the printer’s file at Wrexham.
Thinking that it might be advantageous to his hymnal to obtain ecclesiastical sanction for its use, he wrote in 1820 to Dr Howley, Bishop of London, requesting his advice as to publishing the hymns by authority, and with the same REGINALD HEBER. 15!
approval as had been given to the version of the Psalms by Tate and Brady. He asked Dr Howley if the hymns could receive the “sanction of the Archbishop of Canterbury for general use in churches.” But Dr Howley, while replying in the kindest and most encouraging terms, did not think it advisable that such ecclesiastical sanction should be given, but advised him to publish the hymns on their merits.
The collection was proceeded with, and among the contributors were Southey, who was then Poet Laureate, Milman, and Sir Walter Scott. Fiftyseven of the hymns were written by Heber himself, the remaining twenty-nine were by these contributors and from other sources, but the volume was not published till 1827, after Heber’s death.
The charm and melody of his hymns are to be partly accounted for by the fact that he composed many of them to Welsh and Scottish airs which he had heard and admired. He was the first English hymn writer to add the lyric spirit in sacred poetry to the great objective truths on which hymns must be based; and hence the easily flowing measures in which he writes. Scottish airs seem to have peculiarly delighted him. “ Brightest and best of the sons of the morning” was written to the air of “Here awa, there awa, wandering
Willie.”
“ Auld
It is believed that “ Ye banks and braes,” «John Anderson my Jo,” “ Logie o’ Buchan,” and Robin Gray” were some of the airs to
which others of his hymns were composed.
Dr George Smith gives the following list of Heber’s hymns which still hold a place in the front rank of popular approval and use, beginning with “ Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty,” a hymn of which Tennyson expressed such warm
approval and which was sung at his funeral.
PEI AMNPwWD =
Io,
19. 20.
21.
Other literary labours occupied the intervals of
. Holy, Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty. . From Greenland’s icy mountains,
. The Lord of might from Sinai’s brow.
. The Son of God goes forth to war.
Hosanna to the living Lord. O Saviour is Thy promise fled ? O King of earth and air and sea.
. Forth from the dark and stormy sky. . O Lord, turn not Thy face away.
O most merciful, O most bountiful.
. God that madest earth and heaven. . Thou art gone to the grave.
The winds were howling o’er the deep. I praised the earth in beauty seen.
. Brightest and best of the sons of the morning. . By cool Siloam’s shady rill.
. Incarnate Word, who wont to dwell.
. The God of glory walks His round.
The Lord will come, the earth shall quake. O Saviour, whom this holy morn. Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! enthroned once on high.
a busy life. Among these were articles written for the Quarterly Review: but the principal works of this kind were a Dictionary of the Bible designed to supply the defects of Calmet, but left unfinished owing to his early death; and a new edition of the Works of Jeremy Taylor with his life, and critical examination of his writings. Between Jeremy Taylor and Reginald Heber there was close affinity of soul, and the task was congenial. Of Jeremy Taylor he uses words which may well be applied to himself, describing him as a saint and a Christian bishop from our intercourse with whom we rise “impressed and softened, with a sense how much our own practice yet needs amendment, and how mighty has been that faith of which these are the pledges and prehibitions.”
God prepares His workers for the work to which He has called them; and Heber was being gradually trained and prepared for mission work in India. Among those preparatory influences was his enthusiastic advocacy of the claims of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The ministers of the Church of England were at first prejudiced against the Bible Society on the ground that they supposed it to be hostile to the interests of the Established Church. The disappearance of those
i prejudices was partly due to Heber’s defence of the society; and it was in its behalf that he preached at Shrewsbury the first of his missionary sermons from Rev. xiv. 6, “I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation and kindred and tongue and people.”
Another of the influences which prepared him for India was the career of Henry Martyn. Long before he had any idea that he should follow in Martyn’s footsteps, he had watched with interest the journeys and the work described in Martyn’s “Life.” “With Martyn he had, in idea, traversed the sultry regions of India, had shared in his privations, had sympathised in his sufferings, and had exulted in the prospects of success occasionally opened to him.”
His interest in Indian missions was increased when the first Anglican bishop, Dr Middleton, was appointed; but he little thought that he himself should succeed that prelate. When the news of Dr Middleton’s death arrived in England —five months after it had occurred, so slow was communication in those days—many eyes were turned to Hodnet for one fitted to succeed him. The nomination of a new bishop was in the hands of Heber's old college friend, the Right Honourable C. W. Williams Wynn, the President of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India. In December 1822, a letter was written by Mr Wynn to Heber, intimating that the appointment was now offered to him if he chose to accept of it.
In his interim reply, Heber suggested the propriety of dividing India into three dioceses, and of raising the three archdeacons in India to the rank of bishop, one of whom, the Bishop of Calcutta, might then be made the Primate.
After family consultation he wrote declining the appointment; but a fortnight’s further consideration led him to withdraw his refusal, and he “cheerfully and gratefully” accepted the position. In his letter to Mr Wynn, he writes :— “The sacrifice which I would not make for the sake of wealth and dignity, both my wife and myself will cheerfully make in order to prevent any serious inconvenience to a cause of so much importance.”
To the remark of a friend—‘* Yours is the very quixotism of religion. I suppose you are going in search of the lost ten tribes of Israel,” he replied, “I think I can be of use among the natives; such will at least be my earnest endeavour, and I am very zealous in the cause; and if I am permitted to rescue one miserable Brahmin from his wretched superstition, I shall think myself amply rewarded for the sacrifice.”
His leave-taking from home and church and friends showed how deeply he was loved.
His last sermon at Lincoln’s Inn was from Colossians iii. 3—‘“For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” The subject was the Atonement and its place in the Christian religion, “its corner stone and master-key, the vicarious and expiatory nature of the Christian sacrifice.”
On ist June he was consecrated second Bishop of Calcutta. The ceremony took place in the Chapel of Lambeth Palace.
On the 16th of the same month he left England for Calcutta to be, as he declared to the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, the chief missionary of the Society in the East. He was forty years of age, and in the fulness of his strength and manhood.
The ship in which the Bishop and his wife and daughter sailed was the Thomas Grenville; and he kept a very full diary, both of this voyage and of the journeys which he afterwards made in India. These journals were published, and it shows how very full our own day is of travel and adventure when we read with astonishment that Bishop Heber’s Judiax Journal was the most popular work on India published in the first half of the nineteenth century. Lord Jeffrey's criticism of it was in these very high terms—“ Independently of its moral attraction, we are induced to think it the most instructive and important publication that has ever been given to the world on the actual state and conditions of our Indian Empire.”
The old days of general and studied disrespect to missions were passing away, as is seen by contrasting the treatment which Henry Martyn received on shipboard in his endeavour to do good to the passengers and crew with such an entry as this by Bishop Heber :—“ June 22. This day being Sunday, the decks were all beautifully clean, having been well scrubbed on Saturday night. The awning was spread over the quarter deck, and the capstan and sides of the vessel concealed and ornamented with flags of different nations. Chairs were set for the officers and passengers on the poop and round the after part of the deck, and spars laid across the remainder as seats for the sailors who attended church in clean shirts and trousers, and well washed and shaved. In the space between the capstan and half-deck was a small table set for me and the purser, who acted as clerk, and I read prayers and preached one of my Hodnet sermons, slightly altered, to a very attentive and orderly congrega-~ tion of altogether, I should think, one hundred and forty persons. The awning made really a handsome church, and the sight was a very pleasing one.”
During the voyage he spent much time in studying Hindustani and Persian, and to such good purpose that on entering on his work in India he was able at once to use Hindustani in public worship.
On 3rd October the Thomas Grenville anchored in Saugor Roads, and Heber at once plunged into the arrears of ecclesiastical business awaiting him. At Calcutta he received a warm welcome from the Governor, Lord Amherst. The following prayer which he now wrote out shows the spirit in which he entered on his Indian duties :—“ Accept, O Blessed Lord! my heartiest thanks for the protection which Thou hast vouchsafed to me and mine during a long and dangerous voyage, and through many strange and unwholesome climates. Extend to us, I beseech Thee, Thy fatherly protection and love in the land where we now dwell; and among the perils to which we are now liable give us health, strength and peace of mind. Give us friends in a strange land, and favour in the eyes of those around us. Give us so much of the world's good as Thou knowest to be good for us ; and be pleased to give us grace to love Thee truly, and constantly to praise and bless Thee ; through Thy dear Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour. Amen.”
Of Calcutta he gives a most interesting description. “Calcutta, when seen from the south, on which side it is built round three sides of a great open plain, with the Ganges on the west, and Fort William standing in the centre, is a very noble city, with tall and stately houses ornamented with Grecian pillars, and each for the most part surrounded by a little apology for a garden. The churches are not large but very neat and even elegant buildings, and the Government House is, to say the least of it, a more showy place than London has to produce. These are, however, the front lines: behind them ranges the native town, deep, black, and dingy, with narrow, crooked streets, huts of earth baked in the sun or of twisted bamboo, interspersed here and there with curious brick bazaars, pools of dirty water, coco trees, little gardens, and a few very large, very fine and generally very dirty houses of Grecian architecture, the residence of wealthy natives. There are some mosques of pretty architecture very neatly kept, and some pagodas, mostly ruinous and decayed, the religion of the people being most conspicuous in their worship of the Ganges, and in some ugly painted wooden or plaister idols with all manner of heads and hands, which are set up in different parts of the city.
“Fill up this outline with crowds of people in the streets, beyond anything to be seen even in London, some dressed in tawdry silks and brocades, more in white cotton garments; and most of all black and naked, except a scanty covering round the waist; hideous figures of religious mendicants with no clothing but their long hair and beards in elf locks, their faces painted white or yellow, their beads in one ghastly lean hand, and the other stretched out like a bird’s claw to receive donations; marriage processions with the bride in a covered chair, the bridegroom on horseback, and so swathed round with garlands as hardly to be seen; tradesmen sitting on the ground in the midst of their different commodities; and old men, lookers-on, perched naked as monkeys, smoking on the flat roofs of the houses; carts drawn by oxen and driven by wild-looking men with thick sticks so unmercifully used as perfectly to undeceive all our notions of Brahminical humanity; attendants with silver maces peeping through the crowd before the carriage of some great man or other; no woman seen except of the lowest class, yet even these with heavy silver ornaments on their dusky arms and ankles; while coaches covered up close with red cloth are seen conveying the inmates of the neighbouring seraglios to take what is called ‘the air’; a constant creaking of cart wheels which are never greased in India; a constant clamour of voices, and an almost constant thumping and jingling of drums, cymbals, &c., in honour of some one or other of their deities; and add to all, a villainous smell of garlic, rancid coco-nut oil, sour butter, and stagnant ditches, and you will understand the sights, sounds, and smells of what is called ‘the black town’ of Calcutta. The singularity of this spectacle is best and least offensively enjoyed on a noble quay which Lord Hastings built along the shore of the river, where the vessels of all forms and sizes — Arab, Indian, Malay, American, English,—the crowds of Brahmins and other Hindoos washing and saying their prayers, the lighted tapers which toward sunset they throw in, and the broad, bright stream which sweeps them by, guiltless of their impiety and unconscious of their homage, afford a scene such as no European and few Asiatic cities can at all parallel in interest and singularity.”
In the summer of 1824, Christian David, a native of Malabar, was ordained by Heber. This act linked the newly arrived Bishop to Christian Frederick Schwartz and his work in Southern India half a century previously, for Christian David had been one of Schwartz’s pupils: previous to his being ordained, the Governor of Ceylon had appointed him to a colonial chaplaincy.
Although in Tranquebar Christian missions had been begun and had made good progress more than a century before Bishop Heber'’s arrival in India, yet in Bengal it was Carey and his colleagues in the Serampore mission who had made any real attempt to preach the gospel to the natives or to set up schools for their children. It is gratifying, therefore, to find that for two or three years previous to Bishop Heber’s landing in Calcutta, schools for native children had been instituted both by the Church Missionary Society and by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, in addition to similar schools already established by the Baptist missionaries. Speaking of a visit which he paid to some of these schools, he says, “You may guess the feelings with which I have entered these huts, on secing ninety or a hundred poor little naked urchins seated on the ground like tadpoles, writing their letters in the sand or their copies on Banana leaves, one after another stepping out to read either in English or Bengali the history of Joseph or the Good Samaritan,—proud of showing their knowledge to the ‘Lord Padre Sahib’ (as they call me by a strange mixture of English, Portuguese, and Indian titles) and many of them able to render a good account of their studies.”
In his Journal under date December 12th 1823, there is the following entry in connection with an examination of the Native Female Schools instituted by Mrs Wilson. “It was very pretty to see the little swarthy children come forward to repeat their lessons and show their work to Lady Amherst, blushing even through their dark complexions, with their muslin veils thrown carelessly round their slim, half-naked figures, their black hair plaited, their foreheads specked with white or red paint, and their heads, necks, wrists, and ancles loaded with all the little finery they could beg or borrow for the occasion. Their parents made no objection to their learning the catechism or being taught to read the Bible, provided nothing is done which can make them lose caste. And many of the Brahmins themselves, either finding the current of popular opinion too strongly in favour of the measures pursucd for them to struggle with, or really influenced by the beauty of the lessons taught in Scripture, and the advantage of giving useful knowledge and something like a moral sense to the lower ranks of their countrymen and countrywomen, appear to approve of Mrs Wilson’s plan, and attend the examination of her scholars.”
Among the evil customs then prevalent in India were sutteeism and hook-swinging, of both of which he writes; and both are now happily abolished, the former largely through the influence brought to bear on the Government by William Carey.
With the Baptist missionaries Bishop Heber had pleasant intercourse; “January 15th 1824, Dr Marshman the Baptist missionary from Serampore dined with me. Dr Carey is too lame to go out. The talents and learning of these good men are so well known in Europe that I need hardly say that, important as are the points on which we differ, I sincerely admire and respect them and desire their acquaintance.”
In June 1824, Dr Marshman forwarded to the bishop a copy of the report of Serampore College, and the following acknowledgement was sent :—
“T have seldom felt more painfully than while reading your appeal on the subject of Secrampore College the unhappy divisions of those who are servants of the samc Great Master. Would to God, my honoured brethren, the time were arrived, when not only in heart and hope, but visibly, we shall be one fold as well as under one Shepherd. In the meantime I have arrived, after some serious considerations at the conclusion that I shall serve our great cause most effectually by doing all which I can for the rising institutions of those with whom my sentiments agree in all things, rather than by forwarding the labours of those from whom in some important points I am_ conscientiously constrained to differ. After all, why do we differ? Surely the leading points which keep us asunder are capable of explanation or of softening, and I am expressing myself in much sincerity of heart—(though perhaps according to the customs of the world I am taking too great a freedom with men, my superiors both in age and in talent) that I should think myself happy to be permitted to explain, to the best of my power, those objections which keep you and your brethren divided from that form of church government which I believe to have been instituted by the apostles and that admission of infants to the gospel covenants which seems to me to be founded on the expressions and practice of Christ Himself. If I were writing thus to worldly men I know I should expose myself to the imputation of excessive vanity or impertinent intrusion. But of you and Dr Carey I am far from judging as of worldly men, and I therefore say that if we are spared to have any future intercourse, it is my desire, if you permit, to discuss with both of you in the spirit of meekness and conciliation the points which now divide us, convinced that if a reunion of our churches could be effected, the harvest of the heathen would ere long be reaped, and the work of the Lord would advance among them with a
celerity of which we have now no experience. “J trust at all events you will take this hasty note as it is intended, and believe me with much
sincerity,—Your Friend and Servant in Christ,
“REGINALD CALCUTTA.”
“ June 3, 1824.”
In this year, 1824, the Abbe Dubois, a Roman Catholic missionary in the south of India, who had laboured there for twenty years, published a volume on Indian missions, in which he not only asserted the non-success of Protestant missions, but maintained that any Christian mission to the natives of India was a hopeless undertaking. To this strange publication Dr Marshman replied: and Bishop Heber also did not let it pass unnoticed. In his answer to the Abbe’s charges he said, “Though I am far from placing on the same level the Brahminical and the Romish faith; and though as a form—though a corrupt form—of the knowledge whereby men are brought to God I rejoice in every conquest which this latter has made among the heathen, I would rather, should God so far honour me, be the instrument of bringing one idolator to the worship of the one true God and the one Mediator between God and man, than to have persuaded like Xavier my tens of thousands to patter their rosary in Latin instead of Sanskrit, and transfer to the saints the honour which they had paid to the Devtas.”
Bishop Heber had spent some cight months in the multifarious duties of his office in Calcutta ; and he now began the first visitation of his diocese, that is to say of those parts of it in India proper, for he had the official charge of territories so vast that Ceylon, the Mauritius, and even Australasia were within its limits.
Accompanied by his chaplain Mr Stow he left Calcutta on 15th June on his visitation of the Upper Provinces. Mrs Heber and _ their children were not able to accompany him. This tour occupied ten months, and in the course of it he visited, among many other places, Dacca, Ghazepoor, Allahabad, Cawnpoor, Lucknow, Delhi and Agra.
They had not gone far when as the pinnace was nearing Dacca, Stow was taken ill, and though Heber devotedly nursed him, the illness ended fatally. “If,” said the dying man, “if I lose sight of the Cross, though but for a moment, I am ready to despair, but my blessed Lord makes His mercy and His power more and more plain to me.” The Bishop writes, “July 12, I this morning left Dacca after a residence of eighteen days, marked by great and to me most unusual anxiety and sorrow; but during which I, as well as my poor friend, received in our affliction a degree of hospitality, attention, affectionate and delicate kindness from the civil and military officers attached to the station and their families, and most of all from our excellent host, Mr Master, which I shall never forget, and for which I trust I shall be always grateful.”
During this visitation he preached over fifty times and confirmed many hundreds of candidates, and brought strength and cheer to the ministers of the various congregations. All the other duties incumbent on him were also attended to, the visitation of schools, the choosing of sites for churches, the examination of native catechists. In the words of his own hymn, lighted with heavenly wisdom he could not “to men benighted, the lamp of life deny.” “I am often obliged to be bishop, chaplain, and curate all in one; and in India, though there may be pluralities, there is verily no sinecure.”
“Then on! then on! where duty leads My course be onward still,
O’er broad Hindostan’s sultry mead, O’er bleak Almorah’s hill.
That course, nor Delhi’s kingly gates Nor wild Malwah detain,
For sweet the bliss us both awaits By yonder western main.
Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, Across the dark blue sea,
But ne’er were hearts so light and gay As then shall meet in thee !”
At length the wishes which he had woven in these verses were realised, when he reached Bombay on 20th April 1825, and in a few days he
M was rejoined by his wife and family who had travelled by sea from Calcutta.
In a letter written to his friend Horton on the races and social customs of Northern India, he says, “Of all idolatries which I have ever read or heard of, the religion of the Hindoos, in which I have taken some pains to inform myself, really appears to me the worst, both in the degrading notions which it gives of the Deity; in the endless round of its burdensome ceremonies which occupy the time and distract the thoughts without either instructing or interesting its votaries; in the filthy acts of uncleanness not only permitted but enjoined and inseparably interwoven with those ceremonies ; in the system of castes, a system which tends more than anything else the devil has yet invented to destroy the feelings of general benevolence, and to make nine-tenths of mankind the hopeless slaves of the remainder; and in the total absence of any popular system of morals, or any single lesson which the people at large ever hear, to live virtuously and do good to each other. I do not say, indeed, that there are not some scattered lessons of this kind to be found in their ancient books, but those books are neither accessible to the people at large, nor are these last permitted to read them; and in general, all the sins that a Soodra is taught to fear are, killing a cow, offending a Brahmin, or neglecting one of the many frivolous rites by which their deities are supposed to be conciliated.
“Accordingly, though the general sobriety of the Hindoos (a virtue which they possess in common with most inhabitants of warm climates) affords a very great facility to the maintenance of public order and decorum, I really never have met with a race of men whose standard of morality is so low, who feel so little apparent shame in being detected in a falsehood, or so little interest in the sufferings of a neighbour, not being of their own caste or family; whose ordinary and familiar conversation is so licentious ; or, in the wilder and more lawless districts, who shed blood with so little repugnance. The good qualities which there are among them (and, thank God, there is a great deal of good among them still) are, in no instance that I am aware of, connected with or arising out of their religion, since it is in no instance to good deeds or virtuous habits of life that the future rewards in which they believe are promised. Their bravery, their fidelity to their employers, their temperance, and (wherever they are found) their humanity and gentleness of disposition appear to arise ex- clusively from a naturally happy temperament, from an honourable pride in their own renown and the renown of their ancestors, and from the goodness of God who seems unwilling that His image should be entirely defaced even in the midst of the grossest error. The Musalmans have a far better creed, and though they seldom either like the English or are liked by them, I am inclined to think are, on the whole, a better people. Yet even with them the forms of their worship have a natural tendency to make men hypocrites, and the overweening contempt with which they are inspired for all the world beside, the degradation of their women by the system of polygamy, and the detestable crimes which, owing to this degradation, are almost universal, are such as even if I had no ulterior hope, would make me anxious to attract them to a better or more harmless system.
“In this work, thank God, in those parts of India which I have visited, a beginning has been made, and a degree of success obtained at least commensurate to the few years during which our missionaries have laboured.”
In Bombay and Poona he remained for four months, It was with regret he left Bombay: “We had met with much and marked kindness and hospitality, we had enjoyed the society of several men of distinguished talent, and all my views for the regulation and advantage of the clergy and for the gradual advancement of Christianity had met with a support beyond my hopes and unequalled in any other part of India.”
In August he sailed for Ceylon where he spent some time “confirming the Churches.” He was much impressed with the progress which the gospel had made in that island, and he specially notices the marked change to be seen in Kandy, where the palace of the late king was. “We went up with the Governor, Sir Edward Barnes, who, as well as Lady Barnes, has shown us much attention and kindness, to Kandy, where I preached, administered the sacrament and confirmed twentysix young people in the audience-hall of the late King of Kandy, which now serves as a church, Here, twelve years ago, this man, who was a dreadful tyrant and lost his throne in consequence of a large party of his subjects applying to General Brownrigge for protection, used, as we were told, to sit in state to see those whom he had condemned, trodden to death and tortured by elephants trained for the purpose. Here he actually compelled by torments the wife of one of his prime ministers, whom he suspected of plotting against him, to bruise with her own hands two of her children to death with a pestle and large mortar before he put her to death also: and here at that time no Englishman or Christian could have appeared except as a slave or at the risk of being murdered with every circumstance of cruelty. And now, in this very place, an English Governor and an English congregation, besides many converted natives of the island, were sitting peaceably to hear an English bishop preach.”
From Ceylon he returned to Calcutta after an absence of sixteen months. His residence ‘in Calcutta for the next few months was marked as usual with much labour, and by friendly intercourse with the Armenians and with missionaries of other denominations.
In the end of January 1826 he left Calcutta for the Southern Provinces on his second tour of visitation. The vessel arrived at Madras on 25th February, and next day, Sunday, he preached in the Residency church from the words “To die is gain:” it was prophetic. Before leaving Calcutta he had been very ill with fever, and during those days in Madras he describes himself as “almost worn out.” “I do not eat the bread of idleness in this country. Since my arrival at Madras little more than three weeks ago, I have preached eleven times (including my visitation charge), have held four public and one private confirmation, visited five schools, attended one public mecting, travelled sixty miles in a palanquin, and one hundred and forty on horseback, besides a pretty voluminous correspondence with Government, different missionaries and chaplains, and my Syrian brother Mar Athanasius, and the thermometer this day stands at ninety-eight in the shade. However I continue, thank God, on the whole to enjoy as good health as I ever did in England. Busy as I am, my business is mostly of a kind which I like and which accords with my previous studies.”
The districts south from Madras are those in which Ziegenbalg and Schwartz lived and which they consecrated by their work, About the middle of March he left Madras for the south and visited Pondicherry, Cuddalor, and other places. Arriving in Tanjore he visited Schwartz’s Chapel, in which that apostolic man lies buried. On 26th March, Easter Day, he preached in the Mission Church in the fort from Rev. i. 18. This church had been built by Schwartz and contains his monument, erected by the Rajah. “The group in white marble by Flaxmann represents the good man on his death-bed, Gerické standing behind him, the Rajah at his side, two native attendants and three children of his school around his bed.”
In the evening he attended a Tamil service in the same church, when more than thirteen hundred native Christians were present. After this service with full heart he exclaimed, “Gladly would I exchange years of common life for one such day as this.”
From what he saw in Tanjore and in the adjacent cities and towns, his conviction was, that too little had been said of the work which the gospel had accomplished in the South of India, that the strength of the Christian cause in India lay in those missions, and that it would be a grievous and heavy sin, if the native churches in those parts were not nourished and protected. Comparing Southern India with the other parts of India which he had visited, and with Ceylon, he had seen nothing like the missions of the South, and these, he concluded, were the fields most ripe for the harvest. Time has shown that he was correct. The ingathering of the natives to the Christian Church in Southern India has been on a scale to rebuke our apathy and indiffer- ence, In the Madras Province alone, the forty thousand native Christians of Heber’s day are now increased to some six hundred thousand, with eight hundred native pastors, in addition to two hundred and seventy foreign ordained missionaries.
The Bishop, accompanied by the President, called on the Rajah, Serfojee, who received him in state, and though himself a heathen, talked much “of his dear father,’ Schwartz, and also said he hoped Bishop Heber would resemble Schwartz and stand in his room.
From Tanjore he proceeded to Trichinopoly, so well known in connection with Schwartz's work there. His intention was to visit Travancore, to act, as he had been requested to do, as a peacemaker or arbiter among the Syrian Christians, and then to return to Madras.
On Sunday 2nd April he preached in Trichinopoly what proved to be his last sermon. The text was I John v. 6-8. “This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ:” and from these words he enforced the meaning of the Atonement by the blood of Christ, and of Regeneration by the Spirit, and of the new power and duty to live as children of God.
Next morning he attended the Tamil church
N in the Fort, and then visited the English and Tamil schools. Bidding farewell to the aged missionary Kohlhoff, he returned and visited his chaplain, who was then lying sick. These duties had occupied four hours in the Indian heat of that April morning. Then he retired to bathe before the usual late breakfast. Half an hour later his native servant, alarmed that his master had not reappeared, found the lifeless body in the water. Every effort was immediately used to restore animation, but in vain. Kohlhoff, from whom he had parted only an hour before, exclaimed with tears, “We have lost our second Schwartz, who loved our mission and laboured for it: he had all the energy and benevolence of Schwartz, and more than his condescension,”
The bath at Trichinopoly has been restored, and a slab has been erected on the side wall with this inscription, “In memory of the devoted, accomplished and universally honoured servant of God, Reginald Heber, second Bishop of Calcutta, and one of India’s truest and most loving benefactors, this stone was erected in the year 1882, at the expense of Government, on the margin of the bath in which he was drowned while bathing, April 3rd 1826. His body was laid under the Chancel of the Church of St John, Trichinopoly, in the hope of the Resurrection of the just, to Eternal Life through Jesus Christ.”
Dr George Smith in his “Bishop Heber, poet and chief missionary to the East,” writes, “In India, like Henry Martyn, Heber’s aspirations went out after the Hindoos and Mohammedans, while he was full of care for the East India Company’s servants and troops, and for the chaplains. Every week he lived, every mile he travelled, caused the missionary fire to burn within him. He combined, as no other foreigner has done, the personal fascination, the influence of a high office and broad culture, the zeal of an evangelical in the best sense, true to the commission of his Master, and the high faculty of organisation directed by business habits and common sense. All this made him the true founder of the Church of England Missions in India and the East.”
“ How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!”
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