CHAPTER VIII.
RESULTS OF THE REBELLION TO CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION.
FROM Delhi we went on to Meerut, where we remained two months, while the troops were clearing the country of the scattered bands of Sepoys between that point and Cawnpore, and restoring order, so that mails and passengers might once more move up and down to Calcutta. More British troops had arrived, and the Commander-in-chief was directing the movements of the five columns into which the army was divided, our position at Meerut being about central to all the operations, and about forty miles from the nearest of them.
Here I had the joy of again meeting our dear friend Lieutenant (now Colonel) Gowan, who escaped from Bareilly, and had been hidden for so many months in a Hindoo house, as narrated on page 248. He had managed at last to communicate with the English authorities here, and even before a sufficient length of the roads westward was clear, his rescue was attempted. The kind Hindoos who had sheltered him, when all had been arranged, took him by night in a bylee, (a native carriage used by ladies,) with the curtains closed, under pretense of going to the Ganges to bathe. A boat was quietly procured, and they ran him across the river to the other bank, where an elephant and a band of cavalry were awaiting him, and before sunrise he was safe in Meerut. How we rejoiced together! The last time I saw this Christian officer (who used to help us occasionally in conducting our Hindustanee meeting) was in Bareilly on the evening before we left, when I was trying, in our English service, to strengthen our hands in God by preaching from the text, “As thy day, so shall thy strength be.” For nearly seven months, though in jeopardy every hour, did God fulfill to him that precious promise, till he saw fit to
terminate his captivity and bring him forth in safety, and now here we were again together, consulting about God's precious work.
In the course of conversation I happened to remark that I was en route for Calcutta, when he suddenly lifted himself up, and looking me in the face, inquired, “What, are you going to leave the country?” (fearing for the moment that I was discouraged and about to abandon the work.) I looked into his earnest countenance and replied, “Leave the country! No, sir. The devil has done his worst, but he may be assured that we are not going to yield the field to him now that the fight is won. So far from it, I am going down to bring up the first band of my missionary brethren, with whom I expect soon to be preaching Christ through all Rohilcund.”
I shall long remember the immediate effect of my reply. He looked at me for a moment, then paused, and
“Delight o'er all his features stole.”
His very moustache twitched again with pleasure, and, with a smile covering his entire countenance, he turned away, and said not another word.
He made over to me an orphan boy whom he had rescued from danger and misery, to whom he had given his own name, and promised to be responsible for his support and education from that day. This was the origin of our Boy's Orphanage, and its first member, thus received, was the son of a Sepoy officer killed in battle, the poor child being found on the back of an elephant, where his father had left him during the fight. In the midst of his sorrow he fell into the hands of Colonel Gowan, who promised to be a father to him, which pledge he has faithfully redeemed, and the orphanage is to-day its result.
This devoted servant of God encouraged and stood by me in all my future plans for the extension of our mission. No other man in the East or in America has given half as much money to develop our work in India as Colonel Gowan has contributed. He aided me in procuring homes for the missionaries, in establishing
our Orphanage and Training School, and he built and endowed the schools in Khera Bajhera, (the village where he was so long sheltered,) so that his liberality to our mission work, up to the present, cannot be much less than $15,000, and yet this liberal gentleman was a member of another Church—the Church of England; but he is the type of a large and an increasing class of Christian Englishmen in India who prize our work, and are glad to aid it.
Apropos of leaving the country, while in Meerut I received a letter from Brother Wentworth, in China, inviting me to join them in Foochow. He says: “If British predominance is not soon established, get leave of the Board and come on here, where there is as great need of laborers as in India.”
Well, that was all very good; but, on reading further in the Doctor's letter, I was highly amused to find the guarantee of additional security which I was to enjoy by following the course suggested. My good brother added: “Last spring we were fearing the rebels might drive us from this station, and are not now without apprehensions that the war between Canton and England may become a general one, and result in the temporary expulsion of all foreigners from the empire. In case of any sudden outbreak we are in an unfortunate situation for escape, being ten or twelve miles from the foreign shipping, and no vessel of war near. A sudden and decisive outbreak might cost us our lives at any moment.” This for me would have been “out of the frying-pan into the fire” with a vengeance. Indeed, I thought my circumstances were every way preferable to his, so far as British predominance and personal security were concerned, and concluded that I might well return the compliment, and invite my good-natured brother, if driven from his post, to come and join me.
However, it is our privilege to live by faith, and as the Doctor observes, to “feel secure in the protection of Him who guides revolutions among the nations as he does tempests in the sky.”
I did not proceed to Calcutta, because, from the center which I then occupied, I was soon satisfied that the country was fast quieting down, and that my brethren would be able immediately to join
me, when we could afterward proceed to our own field of labor and begin our work.
While at Meerut my aid was requested, as one of “the Rohilcund Refugees,” to help the Postmaster in the melancholy task of looking over the bags of letters, directed to gentlemen in that province by their correspondents at home in England, which had accumulated there for months. I could tell who were dead, and, generally, where the others were scattered, so as to intimate how he should direct them. It was a sad sight to see the pile of letters from anxious friends which had to be returned to England, because those addressed were no longer among the living.
Early in March it seemed practicable to have the two missionaries and their wives join me. The only portion of the way where there was any danger was from Cawnpore to within twenty miles of Agra, from parties of Sepoys crossing the Grand Trunk road. The telegraph had been restored, and the mails were coming twice a day. I went on from Meerut to Agra, to get into direct communication with them. Through the kindness of the Postmaster and the use of the telegraph, I kept myself well acquainted with the condition of the road as they advanced. They had directions to call at every telegraph office which they passed, so that if there had been any danger ahead of them I could at once have stopped them at any station, until it had passed away; but, by the “good hand of God upon them,” they reached me at Agra in perfect safety on the the 11th of March. The destroyed houses of the English were still in ruins, and the people all in the Fort, which was crowded; so that at first I did not know where or how I could prepare for them a night's lodging, ere they resumed their journey on to Meerut. But in these circumstances I thought the magnificent Taj none too good for them. So I arranged all, and on their arrival had them comfortably lodged in this “Wonder of the World.” Ours was a joyful meeting, and the splendid Taj Mahal was worthy to be the scene of it.
Little did Shah Jehan, or his bigoted Moomtaj-i-Mahal, imagine that a day would come when this matchless mausoleum would be
occupied by a party of Christian missionaries, at a time, too, when the last Mogul of their line—after an effort to fulfill the carnelian prohibition upon her cenotaph, and carry out Jehan's fierce order, “Expel those idolaters from my dominions!”—would be himself a prisoner awaiting his doom, in the hands of that very “tribe,” (see page 147;) or that these missionaries would, as we did, promenade in peace, in the delicious moonlight, through that lovely garden which he planted, and sing our Christian doxology, with unction and glowing hearts, standing over their very dust, and in the presence of that powerless and mistaken prohibition!
We left the Taj the following afternoon, by way of Meerut, for Nynee Tal, as we could there best devote ourselves to the acquisition of the language, and be ready to descend to Bareilly and our other stations when God had prepared our way, after the reoccupation of Rohilcund by the English Government. Joel had been directed to join us on the route. Notwithstanding the distance and danger, all was correctly timed and safely accomplished. The day after I received the Missionaries at the Taj Mahal, I joyfully clasped Joel's hand once more, on the road to Meerut. It was to both of us like life from the dead. His devoted wife remained under the care of her mother till Rohilcund and Oude were cleared of the rebels, when she rejoined us at Lucknow, from which place I afterward moved them to Bareilly, where we were again together on the scene of our former sufferings.
We reached Nynee Tal in safety, and at once entered upon our mission work, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing a little congregation collected. We also commenced a Christian day-school for the native children in the Bazaar.
I present a rough sketch of our first chapel, drawn by Sister Pierce. Our room having become inconveniently small for the number of natives attending the preaching, we greatly needed some larger place for worship. The only building available then was a sheep-house, which stood on the side of a hill. This, we concluded, could be turned into a chapel. It was done in three or four days. We cleared it out; a quantity of clay was thrown in and leveled,
which, beaten down, made a good floor. I whitewashed it, Brothers Pierce and Humphrey made the benches, and Joel saw to the leveling of the ground outside. When it was finished and swept out, though too humble to have a formal or public “dedication” awarded it, yet I resolved that a hearty consecration to God's service it should not lack; so, shutting the door, and all alone, I kneeled down and offered up to the condescending God of mercy this humblest of all the “places where he records his name,” and earnestly besought him to make it the birthplace of some of those poor, dark souls that, during the ensuing six months, would come to worship there.
The First House of Worship of the Methodist Episcopal Church in India.
When Sunday arrived, the smiles and congratulations of our ladies were really delightful. They could not imagine how we had made such a commodious-looking affair out of such a place as it had been. “Why, it looks almost like a church!” they said. Even the poor natives caught the spirit of the occasion, and, as they came in and seated themselves, looked around smiling and nodding to each other.
The entire cost of fitting up, including the boards and nails for the seats, was four dollars and thirty-six cents. Only missionaries—and missionaries under such circumstances—could adequately appreciate our joy over this humble commencement.
I also present another sketch, (on the top of the next page,) that will give an idea of the appearance of our congregation inside the “Sheep-House” Chapel.
The reader can imagine that he sees Joel preaching, and we sitting around him, the congregation being in front. The women sit on the benches to the right; the men in the center. Two poles, supporting the roof, run up in the center of the house.
We occupied this humble place for some months, when our worthy commandant, Colonel Ramsay, (to whom, next to Colonel Gowan, our mission is most indebted for munificent financial aid,) seeing our earnestness and success, resolved that we should have a house more worthy of our cause. The result was the erection of our Nynee Tal chapel, costing about $2,500, the whole amount
being subscribed by the Colonel and his acquaintances and friends in Nynee Tal and Almorah.
The Sheep-house Congregation.
Lucknow was recaptured, and the English Government restored there, at the close of March. The defeated Sepoys fled into Rohilcund, or across the Grand Trunk Road into Central India, with the columns of British troops in pursuit. Jhansee and Gwalior were recaptured, and Kooer Singh and the Ranee of Jhansee killed. This was followed by the capture and death of Tantia Topee. Most of the other chiefs surrendered, and the columns were at last turned northward for the pacification of Rohilcund. Three of them, including the one led by the Commander-in-chief, were to concentrate on Bareilly, then viewed as “the metropolis of the revolt.” On the 5th of May, within a few hours of each other, and from opposite directions, they approached that city. Sir Colin Campbell led his column by the Futtyghur road, General Penny his by the Allyghur road, through Budaon, and General Jones the third, by way of Moradabad. Here was to be the last great effort, and it was fought, the dispatch says, amid “a mass of one-storied houses in front of the British lines,” that is, it was fought on the very ground where I had lived, our ruined house and garden being by the road-side, between the cantonments and the city, in the very
center of the contest, the walls of the houses giving shelter to the Sepoys as they awaited the onslaught of the Commander-in-chief's forces.
The rebels were headed by the Nana Sahib of Cawnpore, Prince Feroze Shah of Delhi, and Khan Bahadur of Bareilly, and with them was the Begum of Oude and her troops. So here, as it happened, were concentrated for the final effort the living representatives of the four great centers of the Sepoy Rebellion. Their resolve and fighting on that dreadful day were worthy of the desperate cause and the desperate men, who well knew that this was to be their final chance; that here, at last, it was to be for them either death or victory. The 42d and 79th Highlanders bore the brunt of the struggle, which was short and sharp. A body of Ghazees (Mohammedan fanatics of the most desperate character) led the Sepoys. These men, sword in hand, with their bossed bucklers on their left arms, and their characteristic green waistbands, rushed out of their concealment to the attack, brandishing their tulwars over their heads, and shrieking out their favorite cry, “Bismillah Allah! deen! deen!” (“Glory to Allah! the faith! the faith!”) In the confusion they were not recognized as distinguished from the Sikhs, who were fighting with the British, till they came close on the side of the 42d Highlanders. The Commander-in-chief had just time to cry out, “Steady, men, steady! close up; bayonet them;” when the struggle ensued. Russell, the “special correspondent” of the London Times, who was present, gives a vivid picture of this fearful moment. He himself was wounded, as were General Walpole, Colonel Cameron, and others, for the Ghazees seem to have made straight for the officers; but the quick bayonets of the 42d closed around them, and in ten minutes the dead bodies of the devoted band (as their name implies) were lying in the circle. Not a man of the one hundred and thirty-three turned back. They all believed, according to the tenets of their creed, that they were martyrs, and were sure of paradise if they fell.
Nearly twenty of the Highlanders were wounded in the struggle,
the Commander-in-chief having had a narrow escape. A Ghazee, with tulwar in hand, was lying, feigning death, in front of him, and as he approached, the fellow sprang to his feet to kill him, when the quick eye of a mounted Sikh soldier saw the move, and (Russell says) “with a whistling stroke of his saber he cut off the Ghazee's head with one blow, as if it had been the bulb of a poppy!” General Penny was killed near Kukrowlee. The Commander-in-chief had only a skeleton staff. He had completely “used up” more than one set of officers, and on this occasion had only his chief of staff, General Mansfield, with Captain Johnson, to aid him. Under such circumstances the battle of Bareilly was fought and won before the sun went down. Early next morning the city was attacked, but it was found that during the night the Sepoys had fled, with Khan Bahadur and the other rebel leaders. The city surrendered at once, save some Ghazees, whose positions had to be stormed. A timely proclamation of amnesty to all save notorious rebels and murderers, with precautions to prevent any plundering, restored confidence to the terrified inhabitants, and they willingly submitted once more to British rule and protection.
It was at this spot that the Nana Sahib last saw the face, and witnessed the prowess, of the white man; and it was from this battle-field he took that departure for the jungles of Oude mentioned on page 309 of this work. It is some satisfaction to have the assurance from good authority that two, at least, of the companions of his flight, the Begum of Oude and Prince Feroze Shah, denounced his cruel treachery at Cawnpore, as having brought the curse of God upon the native cause. The deadly Terai was but forty-eight miles away. It was the only shelter in all India that was open to receive them. He and his companions, and the remnants of the rebel host, entered its malarious inclosures, and, save Khan Bahadur, who lagged behind in its outskirts, and was captured and brought back to Bareilly, the rest of the unhappy crew found sickness, despair, and death within its gloomy shades. Thus, in the providence of God, ended the great Sepoy Rebellion, and the
twelve months of its Mohammedan misrule and cruelty closed amid the dying groans of its emissaries at the foot of our hills, and almost within sight of our place of refuge.
Our impatience now to go down to our work in the plains was sorely tried by the refusal of the Commander-in-chief to permit us to do so for some weeks longer—the ladies he would not allow to do so till October, not only because the country needed to be cleared and quieted, but also because houses had first to be built for them. At length the permission came for gentlemen to go down, and taking the road to Moradabad, lest that through the Terai, on the Huldwanee side, might have straggling Sepoys in it, we reached Bareilly on the 28th of August. We found every thing, of course, much changed. The burned houses and bare walls had a look of fearful desolation about them.
On entering Bareilly I went, first of all, to my own residence, (which was so, fifteen months before.) Nothing was standing but the bare walls; the floors were all grown over with deep grass. I called a coolie, and dug up the rubbish in my once comfortable study, and we soon came on the charred remains of my precious books. All had been destroyed by fire! I took up a handful of the burnt paper, and of the melted glass of the book-cases, as a memento, and walked away to the spot where Maria lay buried beside the rose hedge, and then on to where Joel's house stood. What a change from the day I last stood there! But no murmuring thought arose. It was all well: “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” We were to begin again, and that, too, under brighter prospects than India ever knew before. I wandered all over Bareilly. The people were very civil. I knew that I loved them then better than I had ever done, and felt sure that God would yet have mercy upon them, and that we should soon see days of grace in Bareilly.
I then wandered off toward the encampment of the English troops, and one of the first gentlemen whom I met was our dear, good friend Dr. Bowhill, safe from Delhi, and the rest of his campaigns. The warm-hearted Scotchman hugged me up to his heart, and wept for joy that we should meet again, after all we had gone through,
on the same old ground where we first met, and where God had blessed his soul in the dark days before the mutiny.
And then I found kind General Troup, to whose prudence we owed our lives. He was in command of Havelock's Brigade, and worthy of the position. The excellent Magistrate also received us cordially, and advised an immediate commencement of our work, promising to aid us in every way. Before I was twenty-four hours in Bareilly a subscription was started to help us in organizing our missions. That financial liberality has continued, year by year increasing, to this day; those excellent men, in the civil and military service of England, have since furnished the means required to carry on our system of Christian schools and our Orphanages, averaging over $10,000 gold per annum.[1] We promised, as soon as our Mission in Lucknow was commenced, to begin the work at Bareilly. At the latter we could not yet find shelter, but in Lucknow houses could at once be obtained, by the assistance of Sir Robert Montgomery, the successor of Sir Henry Lawrence in the government of Oude. He was kind enough to write to me and advise our immediate occupancy of that city, and we were now en route to do so.
The Sabbath was a blessed day. The troops (two thousand seven hundred men) then stationed in Bareilly were chiefly Scottish regiments. The Chaplain being sick, the General commanding sent to request that I would undertake the chaplain's duties for the Sabbath. Of course I gladly did so. My opportunity was one I shall never forget. Arriving on the parade-ground, I found the troops drawn up. I took my stand; the men were formed in a “hollow square,” the drum of the regiment was placed before me, and a Bible and Psalm Book lay upon it. The General and his officers stood beside me, and the band behind. I gave out the one hundredth Psalm, and the music and voices rose up on the Sabbath air to heaven. I then prayed with an overflowing heart, and stood up to preach “the glorious liberty of the sons of God.”
My emotions almost overwhelmed me when I looked at my audience. For who were the men that stood around me? These were
Havelock's heroes! the illustrious warriors who first relieved the garrison of Lucknow. Yes, these brave men before me had performed one of the greatest military feats known to history, and did it, too, notwithstanding that they lost nearly one half of their number in its execution. I looked at their sun-browned faces, and thought of the manly tears they shed when, covered with dust and smoke, they rushed through the last street and into the “Residency” among the men and women whom they had suffered so much to rescue, and, snatching up the children in their arms, thanked God “that they were in time to save them!”
Noble men! I realized, as I stood before them, that their fame belongs to our nation as much as to their own. And I shall ever esteem it one of the highest privileges of my life that I was permitted to preach, and that, too, on the very ground of their last battle-field, to the men that General Havelock led to the relief of Lucknow!
Though it anticipates the time somewhat, I may here mention that Khan Bahadur was captured and brought into Bareilly. He and four or five others were confined in the little fort, awaiting their trial. Wishing to see my old neighbor, and say a word to him before he died, I obtained permission to do so, accompanied by Rev. Mr. Humphrey. There, in his cell, we found Khan Bahadur, his long white beard hanging down nearly to his waist. It was a trying moment for us both. Here was the man who sent to my house to kill me and my family, who expressed his deep disappointment at our having escaped his hands, and who afterward set a price upon my head! This was the man, too, who had deliberately murdered Judge Robertson, Judge Raikes, Dr. Hay, and many more of my acquaintance!
What a curious thing is human nature! Here was a criminal, of whose deep guilt no one that knew him could have the least doubt; and yet an author like Montgomery Martin, who never saw him, and had no adequate knowledge of his desperate wickedness, half undertakes to whitewash his ensanguined fame! But this is consistent with Mr. Martin's course, in his efforts to find cause of commiseration for the Delhi Emperor, while he seems to exhibit
but scanty sympathy for the victims of the Delhi court—an author who can indulge in cold-hearted and cynical criticism upon such men as Sir R. Montgomery and Sir Henry Lawrence, who went through fiery trials of responsibility of which he, in his comfortable London home, ten thousand miles away from their danger, could have little idea. I am sorry to write these words. But I was there, he was not; and I know whereof I affirm, and can conscientiously say that I consider some of Mr. Martin's representations in his “Indian Empire” to be unworthy of the confidence of the American public. His slurs and innuendoes caused deep feeling in the minds of some of the best men in India, many of whom were not at all his intellectual inferiors, while they were his superiors in opportunities for forming correct opinions. They had not to depend, as he seems to have done for some of his representations, upon hasty and partial statements, or such writers as “Bull-Run Russell!” His glorification of Sir Colin Campbell and Sir James Outram, to the prejudice of General Havelock and Sir John Lawrence, only shows that he had his favorites, and would belittle other men to make them look greater. But we in India knew the difference, and it was the conviction of many there, competent to give an opinion upon such matters, that Sir Colin Campbell was not only slow, but that he did nothing more than what any brave English officer could have done with the same resources. As to Sir James Outram, so far as the establishment of Christianity in the Valley of the Ganges is concerned, I know from my own personal intercourse with both, and their actions, that we may have great reason to be thankful that Sir James Outram was superseded, and the evangelically courageous Sir Robert Montgomery was appointed to be ruler of Oude during the founding of our Mission in that kingdom.
Mr. Martin's peculiar notions on the lawfulness or expediency of capital punishment must have been often offended by the events of the time. It would, however, have been but fair to have extended the benefit of his doctrine as fully to the victims of the Sepoys as to the Sepoys themselves. It may, however, be doubted if his narrative shows this clearly. The consideration he seems so ready to
exhibit for the Sepoys is an anomaly not easily accounted for; but he has found few sympathizers. I would not speak too harshly, even of a criminal; yet I will take the responsibility of saying, that I never saw or heard of men to whom, more appropriately or deservedly than to the Sepoys and their chiefs, could be applied the terrible character given by the Holy Spirit, when he so fully describes those whose profanity, crimes, and riot, exhibit them “as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed.” 2 Peter ii, 12. They were men who neither knew nor showed mercy, any more than would be exhibited by the tigers of their own jungles; and toward whom the most just and saintly magistrate on earth would be guilty, before God and human society, if he should not firmly “bear the sword” until he had, at least, controlled their cruelty, and stopped their power for further mischief.
Mr. Martin has not increased his fame by thus obtruding upon his countrymen his mistaken and conceited assumptions of “impartiality” toward bloodthirsty wretches who, as a class, so generally (I might almost say universally) proved themselves ready, from the first hour to the last, to become the destroyers of churches, the murderers of the ministers of God, and the slayers of undefended women and children.
But to return to Khan Bahadur. He asked me how had I escaped? I told him. He seemed uneasy, and evidently thought that my visit was in some way connected with his approaching trial. I assured him that he might dismiss all anxiety upon that point—my testimony was not required. Far worse than I could present had been heaped up by his own fearful actions, and was now ready for his condemnation. I had come, with my brother Missionary, to visit him with a kind intention; that I forgave him all the harm he did me in the destruction of my home and property, and the more serious harm which he intended to do in taking our lives; that our only object in coming was to converse with him about his poor soul, which would so soon have to appear before God, as we felt sure that his days were numbered, and he could not hope for mercy here, in view of the past; and we closed by
entreating him to turn to God in penitence, and seek pardon through the Lord Jesus, who died for him and for all sinners. This was done in a very kind manner by Brother Humphrey, and I hoped the old man would have been impressed by it; but his Mohammedan bigotry rose up bitterly against the Saviour's atonement, and he would not admit his necessity of any such help. The Koran was enough; he wanted nothing more, and wished to hear nothing else.
I saw him tried before two judges. He was defended by a native lawyer, who managed the sad case as well as he could. Mr. Moens, an English magistrate, prosecuted. The old Nawab's policy was to deny every charge, but any number of native witnesses were ready to come forward and prove them. On the afternoon of the second or third day the trial was closed in connection with a singular forgetfulness of his. A witness on the stand was testifying to the color of the robes which Khan Bahadur wore on the day when he witnessed the exposure of the bodies of the murdered English people at the Kotwalie. The old man had denied that he was there at all, but, forgetting himself in his rage against the witness, who swore it was a blue dress he had on, Khan Bahadur turned to him and said, “You lie, you rascal! it was not blue, it was a green dress that I wore.” The look of blank astonishment that came over the face of the native lawyer at his client's acknowledgment was a study, while Mr. Moens turned toward the judges and merely remarked, “Your honors hear the admission of the prisoner.” The trial closed that afternoon. He was condemned to be hanged at the Kotwalie. He passed me on his way to execution in a cart, sitting on his coffin, with a guard of the 42d Highlanders around him, lest the Mohammedans should interpose any trouble; but they attempted none; there seemed to be among the natives a general acquiescence in his doom, as one that had been fully deserved.
A medical friend went down to see him executed. On his return he told me what had occurred, remarking, “I had some sympathy for the old man, but his wicked utterance at the close took it all away.” The facts were these: when Khan Bahadur
mounted the scaffold and stood on the trap, which was about to be drawn from beneath his feet, the rope resting loosely on his shoulders, and the cap ready to be drawn down, Mr. Moens, who had acted as council against him on his trial, and was now acting as sheriff, stepped forward and said, “Khan Bahadur, have you anything to say before you die?” “Yes,” was the prompt reply, “I have two things to say: first, I hate you;” and then added, speaking as an Oriental, and using the certain for the uncertain number, while his face lit up with a glow of awful gratification, “but, Moens, I have had the satisfaction of killing a thousand Christian dogs, and I would kill a thousand more now, if I had the power.”
Ten minutes after, that man stood in the presence of the Judge of all, and he went into eternity with the Mohammedan conviction that, in killing Christians, he had been doing God service, and consequently his crown of martyrdom would be all the brighter for every life which he had sacrificed; hence his confidence and exultation in that fearful moment.
We left Bareilly for Lucknow, attended to Futtyghur (seventy-four miles) by relays of sowars, (native cavalry,) the General considering the precaution still necessary. On reaching Futtyghur we went to the mission premises. But what a ruin! When I was last there, the beloved brethren and sisters of the Presbyterian mission were surrounded by a happy, native Christian community, engaged in supporting themselves by tent-making and other employment, and in the center of the village stood their nice church; but all was destroyed and desecrated now, and these dear Missionaries and their wives were numbered among “the noble army of martyrs.”
We pushed on for Lucknow. It was the month of September. How well we could understand now, what Havelock and his men must have gone through during that month last year! My entry, made at the time, tells of the torrents of rain, of the flooded country, and of having to cross unbridged rivers twenty times in that seventy miles. We were twenty-six hours going about twenty-five of these miles. The rain, the mud, and the slippery way
were very trying; yet Havelock had to take an army over this very ground, and at the same season. Here he had to fight battles, carry his wounded, and sustain his men. The Ganges had so overflowed its banks that it was nearly five miles wide where we crossed it.
At Cawnpore we visited “the Well” of sad memories, and the Shrine, (then being built) and the Intrenchments, and Ghat, and conversed with Private Murphy, the only survivor in India of the terrible massacre.
On reaching Lucknow we were most kindly received at Government House, no longer the Residency, but a building in another part of the city. Mr. (now Sir Robert) Montgomery welcomed us with the cordiality of a Christian, requesting us to consider his house our home till we could obtain a mission residence, and offering to aid us in every way within his power. He believed in Missions, and in the ability of God's truth to reach the hearts even of the turbulent race whom he ruled.
After breakfast next morning I started off to explore Lucknow. Going out of the door, how well I remembered the last time I went through it, starting from the Residency on the back of an elephant, guarded by a Sepoy all day. But Mr. Montgomery did not offer me an elephant on this occasion, and there were no Sepoys to attend me. So I walked off, quite content to have it so, and was not ten minutes in the Bazaar till it was all explained. The change was amazing, even already. Instead of every man being armed with tulwar and shield, nobody bore a weapon, save the native police. Every person seemed to be minding his own business. The shop-keeper's sword was no longer on his counter, yet his goods seemed safe enough. Mr. Montgomery had disarmed the entire population, and taught them that they must no longer fight and wound each other. If they had a quarrel, they must not take the law into their own hands; the courts were open to them, and they must go there and have the magistrate settle it for them. They submitted, and seemed amazed how well the new arrangement worked. Never before had it been so seen in Lucknow. It
was the new and wonderful reign of law and equal justice in the land of the Sepoy,
The public, shameless vice, that so shocked me when I last passed through these streets, was no longer seen. It had been told it must retire, and cease to shock virtue and decency by its hateful presence. The order, the industry, and the propriety of the streets were to me simply marvelous; and the people were so civil—making their salaam as I passed along, much gratified to find that I returned their courtesy. And this was Lucknow, with its hundreds of thousands of people, and I, a white face, alone and unarmed among them! I could hardly believe my own senses. But it was just so; and I felt that we might almost conclude that the city was already about half saved.
Yet there was enough to remind you of the savage and cruel past. The houses were all bullet marked, and some blown to pieces. There still remained the mud walls on the roofs, pierced for musketry, behind which knelt the fierce Sepoy as he so safely poured his deadly bullets on Havelock's men as they fought their way along the streets on which I was then so peacefully walking! I went straight to “The Residency.” No words could do justice to the change from what it was when I stood there eighteen months before! Battered out of all recognition, yet still a glorious monument of what brave men can do and endure in a worthy cause.
So here we stand, in the capital of the Sepoy, and on the spot where he did his utmost, and found even that no match for Christian heroism. Now let us, in closing this chapter, take our rapid review of results achieved by the valor so gloriously illustrated on this spot. The former and the present are here, and the future opens, while, before our face, old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new. We recognize the blessed changes; changes for which India herself will yet adore the Providence which refused her victory to her own ruin. God has subjected her “in hope” that she “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
And, first, as to the great Sepoy Army. This military monster,
recruited chiefly from the Brahmin class, had, amid all their ignorance and unreasoning bigotry, grown into a full knowledge of its own power. They well knew that they were united in a common class interest, could dictate their own terms, and had the Government at their mercy. They were pampered to the last degree by their timid and politic rulers. The stronger they grew, the more dangerous they became, and sooner or later a fearful conflict with them was inevitable; and the longer it was deferred, the more destructive it must be to the weaker party. Even now it makes one shudder to remember how completely we were in the power of these cruel and wicked men. All this is now changed. That vast combination of brute force, with its ignorance and fanaticism, has melted away. Only two regiments remain, who, I fear, more from peculiar combinations of circumstances than from any special virtue of their own, remained loyal, and wear to-day the title of “Wufadars,” (faithful;) all the rest of the mighty host has vanished away.
Nor did they fall alone—they dragged down into their hideous ruin the whole class from which they were recruited. A large portion of the towns and villages of Oude was a mere Sepoy training ground for the East India Company. Here, for generations, the inhabitants contemplated no other employment save service in the Company's army. At twice the compensation of artisans, with easy times, and decked out in the pomp of military array, these men lived in comparative affluence, and on the expiration of their term of service, they were retired on pensions for life equal to about half their pay. So that there were three generations of Sepoys in these villages in 1857, namely, the serving Sepoys, and as pensioners, their fathers and their grandfathers; and when the active force threw off their allegiance to the Government of Great Britain, and lost their cause, the reaction against them was so great, that, at one swoop, the Government which they had outraged cut off them and theirs from the rolls forever. Pay and pensions ceased, and two hundred thousand Sepoys, invalided and active, were thrown upon their own resources, and reduced to
hopeless poverty. The old fathers and grandfathers were maddened by the result, and when the defeated Sepoys, those of them who escaped death on the field or in the jungle, came slinking, in disgrace and fear, back to their native villages, they soon realized that their bitterest foes were “they of their own household.” They were driven out with taunts and hatred by their own fathers, whom their perfidy had reduced to ruin. The quiet peasantry on whom they had brought the calamities of war had no sympathy to bestow on them. Hooted with curses and contempt from their homes, afraid to associate together save in the jungles, lest the eyes of the Government should see and pursue them, many of these wretched men became fugitives and vagabonds.
Driven to the dire necessity by actual hunger, some of them threw off their lordly Brahminical assumptions, and were glad to go between the handles of a plow, to turn up the soil for an honest living, like common men—a wonderful fact, and one that people did not dream of in 1856. It was one of the most fearful blows that Caste and Brahminism ever received, and has forever lowered the prestige of that proud class in India. A mixed native army, to more limited numbers, formed out of all creeds and parties, has taken their place, while the amount of British soldiers has been more than doubled, and the forts, arsenals, and magazines of India are henceforth in their safe keeping.
Second. Equally marked have been the results of the great Rebellion upon the Mohammedan portion of the population. To conciliate these people is impossible. Nothing less than the conviction and grace that can lead a Romanist to esteem and love evangelical Christians, can ever induce a Mohammedan to become a willing subject of a Christian power. Till then their insolence has to be borne with, and their rage controlled by a firm, but humane, hand. They were in this case the greatest sinners, and they are the greatest sufferers. Their imperial pretensions, with their dynasty, have sunk into the dust forever. Their hopes of supremacy are utterly annihilated; their nobles fill the graves of traitors and murderers. They, themselves, are distrusted by all,
and hated with a double intensity by the Hindoo race, whom they first misled and deceived, and then oppressed, during their brief term of power. The worst that they can do is now well known, and they are well aware that they are no longer feared. An amazing submission has been developed, showing how effectually the proud, imperious conceit has been whipped out of them.
In illustration of this fact, I will ask the reader's indulgence while relating an incident, rather “free and easy” in its character, but one which made a lasting impression upon my mind. It will point its own moral much better perhaps than a dozen sober facts could do.
Three weeks after my arrival in Lucknow, as the result of diligent search, we found premises for sale in the Husseinabad Bazaar, which seemed just what we needed for our Mission establishment. They belonged to a relative of the ex-King, a Nawab, or native nobleman, whose reduced circumstances made him glad to dispose of them. All being ready for payment, I went with this gentleman to the English magistrate's Court, to have the deed recorded and the cash paid, and have the signature and seal of the Court added, to render all safe and valid. The Court, for want of a more suitable place, was then held in the splendid Tomb of Asaf-ud-Doulah, second King of Oude. This was situated in the west end of that great Bazaar; the Fort, occupied by English soldiers, being at the other end; and between these two points, at any business hour of the day, you could find eight or ten thousand men lounging about or engaged in trade. Eighteen months before, such was the turbulence there, that a Mohammedan yell of “Deen, deen!” would have brought a mob of probably five thousand men around you in five minutes, every man armed and used to weapons, for many of them had served as Sepoys—all ready for any deed of violence or blood, in which they had the example of the vile Mohammedan Court then in Lucknow. It may be doubted if there was then a more combustible and fanatical scene any where on earth than that Bazaar held. Mr. Mead's description of it, on page 211, will be remembered by the reader.
Passing through the crowds we reached the Court, which was filled, only the aisle in front of the table, down to the door, being unoccupied. Mr. Wood, the magistrate, was in his place, and we took seats on either side of him, and all business was quietly proceeding, when a tumult outside, in the Bazaar, attracted our attention, and in a few moments in rushed a Jamadar (sergeant) of police, followed by six of his men, all in a wonderful hurry and excitement. The Jamadar was a large, heavy man, rigged out with a red pugree (turban) on his head, and a red kummer-bund around his waist, with his tulwar tucked under his arm, his men being similarly decorated and accoutered. His face was flushed, for he had run hard; and, having for the moment lost his breath, when he drew up in front of the magistrate's table, and joined his hands to address him, the man could not say a word for a few seconds. At length he gasped out, “O Sahib, burra tukleef Bazaar men hai!” (O, sir, there is dreadful trouble in the Bazaar!) When the magistrate had succeeded in quieting the perturbation of the poor Jamadar, he was duly informed that “a gora log [a white soldier] had come out of the Fort into the Bazaar, armed with a stout stick, and that the first man he met he stretched him on the ground, and the rest, seeing what he had received, had retreated, jumping off their stalls and leaving money and goods behind them; and,” continued the distressed and terrified Jamadar, “Sahib, the gora is cutting capers there in the middle of the Bazaar, swinging his stick, and challenging them to come on, and offering to fight them all; but, of course, they wont go near him. They are all here in a heap at the end of the Bazaar, and. Sahib, what am I to do?” “What are you to do ! You gudha, (donkey,) why, go and arrest the man. What else would you do?” The astonished police officer looked at his chief as if he could not believe his own ears, and asked, “What did you say. Sahib?” “I said, go and arrest him.” He looked at Mr. Wood, and in deep distress at the danger of his disobedience, exclaimed with emphasis, “Sahib, it cannot be done. There is not a man in the Bazaar would dare to look him in the face!” Mr. W. insisted that he must “look him in the face,” and
bring him up before him, adding, “If you are afraid, then take your six men,” (who all stood in a row behind their gallant leader, with about as much courage as Falstaff's squad, gazing right into the face of the magistrate;) “surely seven of you, armed with tulwars, are enough to arrest one English soldier with only a stick in his hand.”
It was all of no use; go they would not, and much as they loved livery, and power, and pay, they were, to a man, ready to resign the service sooner than execute the commission; so that Mr. W. had no alternative but to write a line to the English sergeant of the guard at the Fort, directing him to send a couple of soldiers to arrest the man and bring him up. A swift messenger, by a back road, soon delivered the chittee, and we sat still to see the result. In a short time a military tread was heard, the road clearing as they came, and the disturber of the peace, with the stick in his hand, was walked in between two of his brethren right up to the magistrate's table. He looked around at the crowd, and at us, and at the magistrate, in astonishment, every glance seeming to say, “What in the world have I been brought here for?”
Mr. W. broke the silence with, “Well, sir, I am given to understand that you have been disturbing my people in the Bazaar.” Steadying himself for a reply, (the first word he uttered showing that he was an Irishman, and half drunk at that,) he said, with a significant twirl of the stick, “Yis, yer Honor, I've been stirring them up a little;” looking very merry over it, as if he had been “doing the State some service,” which ought to be recognized. It rather sobered him down, however, to hear the magistrate's prompt and stern reply, “Then, sir, I wish you to understand that I don't want them ‘stirred up.’ ” The soldier was incredulous. He evidently thought the magistrate was only joking. “Ah now, yer Honor, you don't mean that at all, at all!” His Honor said he did mean it, and, trying to look as severe as he could, he added, “And more than that, I want to know what brought you into my Bazaar at all?” This question, and its manner, roused the soldier, his rollicking aspect became serious, as, bringing down the end of his
stick with a sharp ring on the floor beside him, and the tears springing to his eyes, he stretched out his hand, and for a few moments he seemed to me the most eloquent speaker I had ever heard: “Ah, yer Honor, listen to me. If yer Honor only knew the races I have had after these rascally Pandies, in rain, and hunger, and mud, and how many noble comrades have fallen by this side,” (striking his thigh,) “and on this!” (repeating the action there.) Here his feelings seemed to overcome him. He paused, and then added, “Yer Honor, the spirit was up in me a little this mornin' and I thought I'd just come out and have a little bit of a fight on my own private account; but, yer Honor, I could not get a single one of the spalpeens to face me, and what was I to do, yer Honor?” His Honor's calm rejoinder was, “You were to let them alone.” But the poor fellow could not see it. A happy thought seemed then to strike him, and the spirit of fun was once more in full possession of him. Stretching out his stick toward Mr. Wood, he exclaimed, “Now, yer Honor, what's the use of talkin'; just do you say the word, and I'll lick out every mother sowl of them for you in five minutes!” By this time he was in an attitude, and looked the fighting Irishman all over.
Mr. Wood, I suppose, made about the best effort of his life to keep his countenance and seem serious; he could not afford to give way before his Court. How he ever did it I cannot imagine. Being under no such restriction, I shook with laughing till I nearly fell off the chair, and all the more, when I saw the effect of the attitude and the stick on the great fat Nawab on the other side of the table. With his hands on his knees, and evidently alarmed, he watched every movement of the soldier, and not knowing a word of English, he seemed to realize the fellow's antics boded no good to him personally, and looked as if he was ready to bolt. It was useless for Mr. Wood to rejoin, as he did, that he “did not want them licked out,” for the Irishman proceeded, quite in a confidential way, blandly to assure him, “Yer Honor, you wont have the least trouble; you will only just have to say the word, and I'll do the business for you!”
Things were going from bad to worse, and the magistrate saw he must lose no time in getting rid of the fellow; so, with a threat that, if ever he found him in his Bazaar again he would hand him up for court martial, he said to the guard, “Take him away!” and off he was walked, to the great relief of the Nawab, and the Jamadar, and all the natives present, and I suppose to Mr. Wood as well. And this was in Lucknow, and only ten months after its recapture!
Solomon says, “There is a time to laugh.” I have found in my life few occasions more appropriate for that exercise than the one here given, which I have faithfully described as it occurred. It is allowable occasionally to pass
“From grave to gay,
From lively to severe.”
My book has more than enough of the grave and the sad; let this, then, have a place here, for here it belongs, and has a lesson far beyond what appears on the surface of this ludicrous scene. I have introduced it, not for the sake of its levity, though it was rich and almost inimitable, but for the sake of its lesson. One can read that lesson, and even laugh over it, as I did, near the graves of Havelock and Henry Lawrence. Laughter may be religious. It was so here. To adequately appreciate the enlargement of heart, or even the hilarity of that occasion, one would need to have experimentally known our previous conditions there—to have ridden on an elephant's back, with a Sepoy guard, through those very Bazaars of vice and danger—should have been, as we were, acquainted with those who endured there that long agony of the defense—must have stood with us for seven months on the summit of Nynee Tal, with the fear that you were the last of the Christian life left in India, and that our fate, at the hands of these bloody men, might be but a question of time, while our only hope, under God, were these very red-coated soldiers whom we feared might yet be ten thousand miles away from us. A “dying hope,” no relief, and hardly expecting deliverance, and then to drop right out of those circumstances into a scene like this! The blessed God himself would
sanction laughter here. For, when He “turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing.” For, it was literally true in the Bazaars of Lucknow, that “They said among the heathen, God has done great things for them.” He did—here was a striking evidence of it—and “we were glad!”
Even as I looked and laughed at this half-drunken creature, how vividly did God's holy Word come to my mind, as I saw him in his whimsical resolution and proposal, exulting in his ability, and so eager for its display, offering to fulfill, to the letter, those words of Holy Writ, so true then to the race whom he, even in his unworthiness and unconsciousness, there represented, that “One should chase a thousand;” nay, even more than that, for he alone offered to do the work of the “two” to whom a covenant God had engaged, that they should “put ten thousand to flight!” And why? Because “their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up;” while Christendom was, at that very time, mingling their congratulations with England for this wondrous divine deliverance, and obeying the command of the Lord Jehovah, “Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people; for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.” Deut. xxxii, 43.
Third. The results upon the Hindoo race are equally marked. They, too, have lost their Peishwa and their prestige; they have become deeply convinced of the impotence of their idols to aid them in any great emergency; they have learned an additional lesson of Mohammedan perfidy and bitterness, which can never be forgotten by them, and which forbids the possibility of any future combination with their cruel antagonists. Their most intelligent men are fully satisfied that, till the time comes when they shall be fit for self-government, their best interests are bound up with their allegiance to the English Government. Under the security and peace which it gives them they are now, as never before, devoting their energies to material and educational improvement.
Fourth. The abolition of the East India Company is another of
the merciful results of the Rebellion. This proud and powerful body of commercial men rose, in two hundred years, from the humble position of a mere trading company, through a series of events the most wonderful in modern history, till they came at last to sway their scepter over an empire six times more populous than that of their own Queen, and twice as populous as that of Augustan Rome, and separated, till recently, from them by a voyage of four or five months. But this vast opportunity, the greatest that Christian rulers ever possessed, was not improved to the intellectual or moral good of the vast multitudes whom they governed. What they chiefly considered was large dividends, and every thing had to bow to that. As a corporation, they had no soul that would feel for the guilt and danger of perishing men, or make any effort to redeem them, but, on the contrary, they tried to discourage all such efforts. To this unworthy and unchristian policy they held on to the last, and would have held on probably for ages if God and the English public had not abolished their rule on the 1st of November, 1858. Even in the terrible lessons of the first outbreak, instead of relenting and turning from their course, they clung all the more tenaciously to it. In evidence of this, the fact can be referred to, that in the first panic caused by the news which reached England in July, 1857, informing all classes of the terrible events which had taken place on the 31st of May, and that British supremacy seemed to hang in the balance, one of their kind in London, well acquainted with the East, and from whose military character, if nothing more, utterances of another sort would have been consistent—this man, the editor of “The United Service Magazine” in his leading article for his August number, was so carried away by his fears and by false and godless theories, that he deliberately proposed to sacrifice the claims of his faith, and the moral hopes of India, and surrender all to heathenism at the first blow, and without a struggle, in language which his descendants can never peruse without a blush for the cowardly “Christian” who wrote it. Speaking of the measures to be henceforth employed in India for the pacification of the country, and the retention of British supremacy,
he says: “Missionaries must be sent away about their business, and the practice of attempting conversions be put immediate stop to. If a black individual express a sincere desire to become a Christian, by all means let his wishes be instantly attended to by the ministers of the Gospel, [the Episcopalian chaplains of the troops and civilians.] By the substitution of this arrangement we are certain that there would be no material diminution of the number of real converts per annum, for at present the interior of a Cremorne omnibus would afford them ample accommodation.”—United Service Magazine, 1857, p. 480.
In that “omnibus” I would have claimed at least three seats—one each for Joel and Emma, and one for Peggy, Emma's mother, and would have felt satisfied, as I handed them in, that the youngest and weakest of their number had a courage and constancy for Jesus and his cause which might well put to shame—as it will yet in the presence of “the worthy Judge eternal”—the cowardice and sarcasm of this unworthy Briton, who thus dared to offset the policy and claims of the East India Company against the present and final salvation of two hundred millions of benighted men.
I am thankful that this despicable and wicked utterance expressed the feelings of a very small fraction of English society—smaller to-day than ever, and growing “beautifully less”—while the “Company” whose policy and practices it pronounced, within twelve months of the day when these words were printed, was forever extinguished, as a governing body, by the Parliament of England, which resolved to sustain British Christianity, while they vindicated British supremacy, in India. The clique who could thus insult God and his ministers, and wish to hinder the conversion of India's millions, were regarded as henceforth unworthy to administer the political affairs of that great empire; and this very utterance was the knell of their doom, as it was also of the Sepoy power on which they so vainly and madly leaned for support. Natives and Christians alike celebrated with gladness the day that saw the country pass under the control of the Queen of England, to be henceforth ruled by the Parliamentary Government of Great Britain.
Fifth. The Government of India to-day, in its freedom from the policy and traditions of the Company, its separation from idolatrous administrations, its strength and justice, its outspoken interest in the intellectual and moral well-being of the people, its humane and impartial administration, is a wonderful improvement upon the former things that have passed away. At length the oft-repeated assertion, that “India is the noblest trust ever committed to a Christian nation,” seems to have taken possession of the minds who guide her destiny.
The moral impression made by English prowess over Asiatic combination and purpose has been immense, and has affected other lands far beyond the bounds of India. It has convinced the Asiatic nations of the superiority of Christian civilization beyond any other event that has transpired on that hemisphere. The result in India itself is, that England is considered to hold the land by a stronger right than ever; her laws are more respected, her magistrates more implicitly obeyed, her roads are safer, her peace is more profound. What her Government know to be right can now be attempted and carried out free from the temporizing of the past, so that legislation is more decided, and radical, and beneficent. A magnanimity that before was not dreamed of guides British policy. Native gentlemen of education are now invested with Commissions of the Peace. The native element is introduced into legislative halls, and connected with the government of their country. Already they sit on the bench of the High Court, and hold honorary positions in Council, as the colleagues of the Governor General. Public education is encouraged and pushed forward, the admission of ladies into general society commended, female education among all classes encouraged to the utmost, and extravagant costs of weddings and funerals discountenanced. The legislation, the principles, and the personal influence of the Government, are all thus bearing upon the repression of what is wrong in Hindoo society, and the encouragement of all that is right and good.
None but those who have lived in India can adequately appreciate the difficulty or the delicacy of the great task which England
is trying to fulfill there to-day. One feature of the structure of society there will sufficiently intimate this fact. There are in all one hundred and fifty-three Hindoo and Mussulman Princes, governing semi-independent States, under the protection of the paramount power. These communities are less affected by intelligence, and more liable to caste notions and time-honored observances, than the territories directly governed by the British, and their influence has to be considered; then there are as many more Princes, (retired from business,) some of them still bearing royal titles, and drawing royal revenues from the treasury—any number of Maharajahs, Nawabs, and Kings—within the British territories. These have courts, ceremonials, and claims, which are all maintained with a tenacity that, to us of the West, seems simply ridiculous, and which are, and must be, to India's rulers, matters of worry and difficulty; but they have to deal gently with them, and work on in hope that, in the progress of the country toward popular government, these “royal” folk (including the Nawab Nazim of Bengal, the King of Oude, and others) or their descendants will become content, in the interest of the unity of their magnificent land, and its preparation for the popular native government which will one day direct its destinies, to sink title and claim, and accept a position in native society analogous to that of the Peerage of England. The day is past for the continued existence of “three hundred and seventy-four States” in a country that can be but one nation. As Noblemen around their strong Government, these representatives of dead or dying dynasties might do much for their country, as well as opening a way for their own children to be trained and educated for employment in positions of trust and usefulness.
These are but a mere intimation of the peculiar circumstances which English administrators in India have to deal with as they try to guide the interests of that country. The rebellion broke down many of these difficulties, and simplified their task to a great extent, making them more fully the masters of the situation; time, education, and Christianity will do the rest.
Meanwhile the country is progressing rapidly in the right
direction, its own people testify to their contentment and hopes of its bright future, while travelers from other lands add their evidence to the peace and prosperity which have followed the sorrowful chapters which we have traced. The appreciatory words lately uttered by the Hon. W. H. Seward, after having traveled through India, will be in the remembrance of the reader. Mr. Seward's opinion is well sustained by another American gentleman, Dr. Prime, of the Observer, just returned from a visit to India. With a candid appreciation of the present, as compared with the past, he uses the following language:
“I have spoken of the complete change which has come over the government of India in its being made directly responsible to, and dependent on, the British Crown. A still greater change has taken place in the objects for which the government is administered. For two centuries and a half India was ruled for the benefit of the East India Company. . . .
“But that is all changed, or, if not all, the purpose of the Government is changed. It is ruled now for the good of India, for the sake of the people of India. I take the greatest pleasure in bearing testimony to the high character of those who have the administration of affairs in that empire, and to the aspect of the country in its material, educational, social, and religious interests, as being full of promise. I doubt if any country has more conscientious and intelligent public officers controlling its destinies than has India. There are reforms yet to be consummated. The extreme caution of rulers prevents them from entirely giving up a sort of complicity with idolatry; the great work of education which the Government is carrying on, to which I shall again allude, is confined too much to a privileged class; but it has been a great pleasure to me to find this land making such rapid progress in all that is calculated to promote the highest good of the people who dwell in it, to whatever race they belong. Overlooking all the past, I heartily rejoice that India is to-day under British rule. Long may that rule be undisturbed! May it not be broken until the tribes of the land shall be able, intelligently and wisely, to govern
themselves. The effect of the present system will be to develop their powers of self-government. In addition to the native princes, who are still recognized as the heads of their limited territories, natives are admitted as members to the Supreme and Provincial Councils. The Government is doing nothing directly to advance the Christian religion, (though as much as our own Government is doing,) and many evils growing out of the peculiarities of the people, the varieties of races, the inveterate nature of hoary prejudices, yet remain to be removed or remedied; but, judging from the promise of the present, India bids fair to become again a mighty empire in the East, and to outshine in its glory the splendor of the old Moguls.”
Sixth. The improved condition and prospects of Christianity and of native Christians, as the result of the rebellion, is most marked and important.
The position of Christianity in India, and its disabilities, will be well understood from what has been already advanced. The condition of the native Christian before the Rebellion was a most trying one. He was cut off and proscribed by his heathen friends, looked down upon too often by European officials, refused all employment under Government, with no one to sympathize with him except a few pious persons and the missionary, the latter very often unable to help him, though his heart was distressed for him. Short as the time was that I had then been in India, I learned some most distressing cases of this kind.
The very last letter that I had from the martyred Missionary, Brother Campbell, of Futtyghur, was on this subject. He writes, “Poor Saul, whom you saw when at my house, is still without employment. I sent him to Cawnpore and Futtypore, but those places were full; had more help and native Christians than could be well provided for. He is now at home near Agra, and writes to me that he is in a sad condition. Christians will not receive him, though he is willing to do any kind of work; and his relations say, that if he remains with them in his native village he must become one of them, that is, a heathen. Poor fellow, I pity him, for I think him a good man; weak, perhaps, but still, I trust, a
‘chosen vessel.’ O that God in his good providence would open up some way for these poor fettered souls (not a few) who wish to renounce heathenism and cast in their lot with the people of God, and cannot! For want of employment, we are obliged to turn off numbers who would gladly come, bringing their families with them, even very hopeful cases. O that the day may soon come when caste will be broken up! Then our converts will stand some chance.”
That letter was written on the 15th of April. Eight weeks after the writer was “before the throne,” and God in his mysterious ways was beginning to answer the martyr's prayer for the native Christians. Little did he imagine, when writing that letter, how soon and how fully Providence would “open up a way for those fettered souls!” The Christian public and the Government, immediately after the Rebellion, wanted them for situations of trust in far greater numbers than could be supplied. The Rebellion had tested and brought out the value of native Christians in a manner that admitted of no cavil or mistake.
Not one native Christian in India joined the mutineers, though their education would have made them valuable to them. It was also known that some conspiracies had been discovered and prevented by timely information furnished by native Christians. Notwithstanding the sufferings to which they were reduced during the Rebellion, as a body they stood nobly for Christianity and the British Government, though that Government had neglected and despised them. Many of them laid down their lives for their religion. Even under that fiery trial, it is asserted (see “Liverpool Missionary Conference,” page 249) that only two of their number are known to have apostatized. At length the Government itself began to appreciate them, so that the Rebellion had hardly closed ere Sir John Lawrence, as Governor of the Punjab, and who soon after became Viceroy of all India, used the following language in one of his government orders: “The sufferings and trials which the Almighty has permitted to come upon his people in this land during the past few months, though dark and mysterious to us,
will assuredly end in his glory. The followers of Christ will now, I believe, be induced to come forward and advance the interests of his kingdom. The system of caste can no longer be permitted to rule in our service. Soldiers, and government servants of every class, must be entertained for their merits, irrespective of creeds, class, or caste.
“The native Christians, as a body, have, with rare exceptions, been set aside. I know not one in the Punjab, to our disgrace be it said, in any employment under Government. A proposition to employ them in the public service six months ago assuredly would not have been complied with; but a change has come, and I believe there are few who will not eagerly employ those native Christians competent to fill appointments.
“I consider I should be wanting in my duty, in this crisis, if I did not endeavor to secure a portion of the numerous appointments in the judicial departments for native Christians; and I shall be happy, as far as I can, to advance their interests equally with those of the Mohammedan and Hindoo candidates. Their future promotion must depend upon their own merits.”
His Excellency then added suggestions to guide the Missionaries in selecting suitable persons to be presented for the purpose. Shortly after this Sir Robert Montgomery, the ruler of Oude, issued a similar paper. Other officials did the same. Merchants and traders also sought them, for they saw they could be trusted. Their value rose at once. Employment was thrown open to them, giving them a fair chance with other men, which was all we desired for them. The native Christian, who before the Rebellion could not obtain five dollars per month for his services, though an educated man and a faithful member of Christ's Church, within little more than a year from the date of martyr Campbell's letter, could command five or ten times that amount of salary. Missionary societies had, consequently, twice within five years, to raise the wages of their teachers and helpers in order to retain them, so great was the competition by other parties to engage them. The effect of this change upon their standing in society, the comfort of
their families, and their own self-respect, as well as Christian usefulness, will be apparent. It was for them a great salvation, and most wonderfully wrought out.
The rapid growth of the Christian Church in India since that time, and especially of the native ministry, will be fully exhibited in the Statistical Tables which will follow the next chapter. To them the reader's attention is earnestly requested, that he may gratefully contemplate
“The silver lining to this cloud of grief”
with which a merciful God compensated the sufferings of his servants. What a change for the better, in the very respect which they so much desired, would Brothers Freeman and Campbell witness, could they rise from the dead and revisit the scenes where they suffered and died to bring about this result! What a justification, too, of dear Mrs. Freeman's words, in her last letter to her sister, when she said: “I sometimes think our deaths would do more good than we would do in all our lives; if so. His will be done !”
How intense the interest which that Rebellion awoke all through Christendom! how earnest the prayers which then went up to God for India! and how liberal the efforts since made to claim the land for Christ! All has been overruled for good. The vastness of India, the value of her evangelization as the heart of Asia, and the influence of her position, as the key to the salvation of the nations with which she has commercial relations—Affghanistan, Beloochistan, Eastern Persia, Bokhara, Herat, Thibet, Ladak, Nepaul, Western China, and others—all these must feel the effects of the mighty change which India is yet to undergo, and for which this Rebellion did so much to prepare her.
The hour had come when the inevitable conflict between human barbarism and divine civilization was to take place, and the words of Christ were to be realized in India—“I am not come to send peace, but a sword.” Ere that sword could conquer the peace of righteous law and order, and place that great land in subjection to the influences which are all the more certainly and speedily to work out her redemption—as they are doing at this hour—the words of
Simeon to the Virgin Mother of the great Peace-maker might have been addressed to the Futtyghur martyrs, and the victims of Cawnpore and Bareilly, as well as to those who lived to see the great victory of deliverance, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” They did not suffer nor die in vain. Their endurance unto blood, and the valor of those who, against such odds, fought their way to their rescue, have taught the men of Hindustan a lesson that can never be forgotten. They have been whipped into the alarming consciousness that their colossal and venerable systems of religion, in which they trusted, are utterly powerless; that with civilization is strength; and that Christianity is both invincible and inevitable. They have lost confidence and hope in their own systems, and the “thoughts of their hearts” are “revealed” in the candid and singular remark made to us one day by an aged native, when we pressed him upon this subject, as with a sigh he exclaimed, “It is so, Sahib; for some reason that we don't understand God has left us and gone over to the Christian side! I suppose what you say is true. My children, or grandchildren, will probably be of your way of thinking. But I'm too old to change; I want to die in the faith of my fathers!” The tears flowed as he closed his remarks. They were shed because he felt that Hindooism is dying! And so it is; for already, thank God! the blood even of the Sepoy race flows in the veins of the Methodist ministry in Oude and Rohilcund, while their children are singing in our Christian schools and churches, “Hosannah to the Son of David!”
- ↑ See statistical table, p. 557.