CHAPTER X.
OUR CHRISTIAN ORPHANAGES IN ROHILCUND.
THE preceding facts and doctrines will lead to an appreciation of the efforts made by the mission to educate and train some of the youth of India, so that we could present before the heathen the examples of Christian manhood and womanhood, and also have native helpers of both sexes on whose intelligence we could more fully rely than we could upon our adult converts. Our Boys' Orphanage was originated by the suggestion and liberality of the devoted Englishman mentioned on page 436. We present a woodcut of the present building, close to the city of Shahjehanpore.
Boys' Orphanage, School-house, and Chapel, at Lodipore, India. From a Photograph.
In this institution one hundred and forty-eight boys are now receiving a good Christian education, under the direction of Dr. and Mrs. Johnson, whose devotion and ability, by God's blessing, have made that school the power for good which it is fast becoming.
The origin of this noble charity may be briefly given here, as it is one of the results of the Great Sepoy Rebellion, and intimately connected with the facts which have been stated.
The wages of a laboring man in India is two annas per day—the anna is three cents—so that millions of men in that land toil all day for six cents, and are grateful if they can only, even at that rate, obtain regular employment. This is their whole compensation, for they find themselves—as they would not, on account of their caste prejudices, touch our food—so the six cents have to pay rent, and clothe and feed them and their families! Of course, they could not live at all if their habits were not very simple, and the means of life very cheap. They eat only twice a day, rice and coarse flour, alternated, being their chief food, with a seasoning of curry; and they drink only water.
The result is, that these millions of toiling men are always on the very verge of want, living “from hand to mouth.”
Occasionally, two or three times in a score of years, there will occur a deficient rain-fall. This involves a scanty harvest and a pressure on the labor market, under which thousands are thrown out of employment for a period more or less protracted. They cannot be “forehanded,” by savings from six cents a day, to meet these dreadful emergencies, and the result is, if relief does not soon come, hundreds of them are liable to starve to death.
One of these fearful experiences occurred in Rohilcund during the year 1860. So decided and quick was the calamity, that before the English Government ascertained its extent, and could originate public works to arrest its severity, large numbers of the people had died of want. The poor children were the last to succumb, for nature would lead the dying father or mother, heathen though they were, to give the final morsel to the child or children, in hope of saving them. The Government hurried on the measures of relief, and also sent around its police to give immediate succor to the living and to bury the dead.
From wretched homes, where a father or a mother, or both, lay dead, the surviving children were carried out and collected together. The orphan boys were assembled in one town, and the girls in another. There were hundreds of each. The Government could extend only temporary relief, and what was to be the fate of the rescued children became a painful consideration. The pressure was too great for friends of the dead to come forward and receive the bereaved and destitute, and the poor children thus lay between hope and despair. No Mohammedan or Hindoo hand was extended to save them. There was, however, one class of persons who were ready to receive a number of the elder and most likely girls, but they knew well that their proposal would be met with indignation by the English magistrates, and that they durst not make it. They had to deal with men who understood that there was something worse for a girl than even starvation and death. So the government waited, day after day, in hope that relief for these orphans would arise from some quarter.
Amid this fearful state of things, where Christian philanthropy
was so much called for, the idea came to us that this emergency might be turned to good account, by our Mission seizing on the opportunity then presented, not only to save those ready to perish, but also to do a great work for the women of India and for Christianity, by taking up a number of these destitute children, particularly the girls, and training them for Christ and for usefulness.
We took the case to God, and laid it all before him. The more we prayed and thought over it, the more intense our zeal in the project became, till at length we could think of nothing else but those wretched children, and the way to save them, and what we might make of them in a few years by good care, and education, and Christianizing—and how much they would be to us in return as Christian women, Christian wives and mothers, meeting fully all this special want of our new Mission, and opening up in the future just such an agency as we required to reach the women of India.
The importance, also, of having a number of boys of our own, whom we could train up for God as Christian lads, free from the contamination of Hindoo homes, also commended itself to our best judgment and feelings as every way desirable. Yet still the girls seemed beyond all measure the more important proposition. But as the subject was considered and prayed over, it seemed essential that we should have both, and both in good numbers. So “a score” of each was given up, as far below the opportunity and the needs of our work, and at length our heart set its hopes upon the proposal of taking as many as would raise our number to one hundred boys and one hundred and fifty girls. It was a bold adventure to propose. We had no means in hand to provide for them; no shelter or support. But our feelings and judgment clung to the conviction that it was right and necessary to do this thing; and that the good of our Mission and the glory of God would be promoted by it; and that, somehow or other, the Lord and his Church would find the means to do it, and would sustain our effort, while the good results would justify it in the years to come.
Accordingly, the project was presented to the Mission. As was to be expected, the proposal, especially in its extent, awakened fear
that it could not be done—that it would bankrupt the Mission to attempt it. To the inquiry, “Brother Butler, how are you going to sustain them? how will you feed, or clothe, or shelter, or educate them?” I could only answer in faith, “I cannot tell, but I believe the Lord will provide.” The ladies soon heartily sympathized with the proposition, and encouraged me to go on and trust God, and erelong we were all united in the great and good enterprise.
I wrote to the Government; they were only too glad to consent, and have the children taken off their hands. We might have as many of each sex as we desired, English magistrates, in whose hands they were, were communicated with, and directed to make them over to us.
On going to Moradabad to receive our children, we found that the Mohammedan wretches connected with the magistrates' court, at whose disposal they had been placed, had actually distributed many of them in the houses of infamy in the city, to be brought up to a life of sin and shame! With an earnestness befitting the occasion, I placed the facts at once before the Governor, who acted with noble promptness, and the children were ordered to be immediately recovered and forwarded to us. The enemies of their souls and bodies were defeated, and we had the satisfaction of rescuing them from hands whose “tender mercies were cruel,” and fulfilling in their case the letter and spirit of the divine Word, “Of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” Poor girls! what a different fate did Christianity confer upon them, instead of the “deep damnation” of soul and body to which that vile and cruel Mohammedanism would have surely consigned them for time and eternity! They, and their children, and children's children, will certainly remember with adoring gratitude to God, and thankfulness to his people, the great salvation which was wrought out for them. I bless God, and shall always do so, for the part we took in their rescue.
They were sent on to us to Bareilly in native hackeries, fifteen
or twenty of them to the load, drawn by four bullocks each, and were laid down at our door. I have four large photographs of these children as they now appear—every face of the one hundred and thirty-nine girls is there; and after twelve years' care and training what a contrast do they present! If I only had photographs of them as they were when laid down before us in 1860, in all their weakness and forlorn condition, so naked, filthy, and ignorant, what an eloquent sermon those pictures would silently preach, as they so wonderfully exhibited what Christian mercy and Christian education and grace could do, even for the poor wretched female orphans of an India famine! Can it be that these fine, healthy, hearty, educated girls in these graduating classes, year by year, so bright with intelligence and sanctified by the grace of God, were, only twelve years ago, just like the rest of the sad group in squalor and helplessness? Yes, it is so, and to the holy Trinity be the glory of the blessed change that has thus transformed them!
They were sent to us of all ages, from twelve or thirteen years down to the babe of three months, for whom we had to provide a nurse. Most of them were weak and emaciated, and a few of them dying, whom no care could save, so that we lost, out of the one hundred and fifty, about fifteen, who were too much reduced in strength and vitality to be saved.
What the Boys' Orphanage has become after twelve years may be best intimated by the picture, which presents Dr. Johnson and his theological class of thirteen young men. Educated and converted, they have been for some time seeking a higher preparation for the Christian ministry among their countrymen.
Theological Class in India. From a Photograph.
I have already mentioned the case of Maria, the first native of India who joined our Church in Bareilly, and who became one of the martyrs of Jesus at noon on the 31st of May, 1857. She dearly loved our means of grace, and particularly the class-meeting, where, with artless simplicity, she would tell how the Lord led her to hate sin and love holiness, and how sweetly her soul rested in Christ as her perfect Saviour. Her father was a Eurasian, and she spoke the
English language well. She had an unbounded zeal to do good, and an ardent hope for the elevation of her sex in India, though she knew their deep degradation far better than we did. But it was then a dark day in Bareilly.
Maria had been led to Christ while on a visit to Calcutta, through the instrumentality of the Baptist missionaries there. Thus, the first Church Member of American Methodism in India was contributed by the English Baptists, while American Presbyterianism donated the first Native Preacher to lay the foundation of our work in that land. No opening then appeared, even to her, by which we could reach and enlighten the daughters of India. Every door seemed shut, and we could not obtain a single female scholar to instruct or save. But Maria believed that the morning light would break soon, and a better day would dawn upon her country, and that it was near at hand. We would sit and converse with her, and then, with our hearts full of mingled hope and anxiety, would kneel down and implore God Almighty to come to our aid, and open a door of faith to those millions of souls so closely shut up. Prayer would give us renewed confidence, and help us to hang upon the naked promise of our God, while we struggled hard to answer the anxiety of our hearts as they would exclaim, “Watchman, what of the night?”
This precious girl, who, of all her race and sex in Bareilly, alone loved us for the Gospel’s sake, seemed raised up to encourage and aid us in our new mission. She was likely to become as faithful a helper to my wife as “Joel” was to me. But the fearful Rebellion broke over the land, and Sepoy bigotry aimed to extinguish every vestige of Gospel light in India. Maria became a martyr for Christianity. Her blood baptized the soil of Bareilly and made it sacred forever for our mission and for Christ. And there, on the very spot where she fell, has sprung up a harvest of good for the daughters of India of the realization of which we had but feeble hope in those dark days before the Mutiny.
The Mission House and Orphanage at Bareilly. From a Photograph.
This wood-cut of the Mission-House and Orphanage at Bareilly represents the first spot in India where the denominational
standard of the Methodist Episcopal Church was planted, in 1857, and from which the founder of the mission, with his wife and children, had to fly for their lives in May of that year. On the very ground now occupied by the house to the left stood the home of “Maria.”
The site of our mission is on the edge of Bareilly, a city of one hundred and twelve thousand souls, hid in the trees of the picture. The Mission-House, where Brother and Sister Thomas and Miss Swain reside, is the tiled building to the left. Just over it is seen the top of the Orphanage, which is a square inclosure; in the foreground is the school-house, with its bell-tower; and in front of the school—house is the public road into the city.
I feel assured, with these reminiscences before my mind, that, were Maria alive to-day to read this account of what God has wrought for her sex in Bareilly since the 31st of May, 1857, and that, too, on the very ground occupied by her own homestead, her simple, gentle heart would thrill with a joy and gratitude for the priceless victories won for woman and Christianity in Rohilcund more intense and appreciative than can be bestowed upon these pages even by those who in this land may read them with the deepest interest. The reason is manifest. She knew the difficulties to be overcome, and the darkness to be illuminated, as none here can ever know it, and as even our missionaries to-day in India, who have “entered into our labors,” cannot adequately realize amid their more hopeful opportunities and wider doors of usefulness. We were then in the valley of vision; around us were the moral skeletons, “very many and very dry”—no life nor sign of life—and, in our sadness and struggling hope in “Him that raises the dead, and calls the things that are not as though they were,” the Divine Master was challenging our faith in his power. “Son of man, can these dry bones live?” All that we could answer was, “O Lord God, thou knowest!”
But a change has come, and by means which we then little anticipated. In that valley of the Ramgunga Maria died for Jesus, and the raging heathen, as they exulted over her lifeless body, concluded that they had killed the last woman of their race who would
ever become a Christian—that with her life would expire the only hope of reaching and ameliorating the lot of her sex in Rohilcund. How little they knew that Jesus is Jehovah! Nor did they imagine how soon He would dash to pieces, like a potter’s vessel, the despotism which they built up that day upon the ruins of his cause. How much less did they anticipate that, on the very spot where they murdered his faithful handmaid, he would found an institution to be a Christian home for their own daughters, taken from their side when famine had laid them low in death, and that thus he would answer, in judgment to them and in mercy to their innocent offspring, their rage against him, and their diabolical efforts to overthrow his holy cause and to bind permanently the fetters of darkness upon the women of India! “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints!”
There stands that Orphanage to-day, one of the brightest hopes that shines for woman in the East; and of it may be said, that the little one has become one hundred and fifty, and the solitary female worshiper an exultant congregation of bright, happy girls, with a future of Christian usefulness before each and all of them. Truly, “Thou makest the wrath of man to praise thee, and the remainder of wrath wilt thou restrain.”
Our early congregations in India, from 1857 to 1861, had, in one sense, a melancholy aspect. There would be from ten to forty men, chiefly young men, on one side of the room, offset by perhaps one woman or two, the wives of our native helpers, on the other side. No Christian families, no social aspect in our services. It was all a one-sided, unnatural-looking affair, with a certain monkish appearance that seemed dejected and forlorn. Woman was not there. The great want was felt deeply by the missionary as he rose to conduct the services. Nor was there then any way, or hope even, by which this dreary aspect could be relieved by female presence. We felt it the more because in India every young man looks forward to marriage as a duty as well as privilege. These young men, as they became attached to our congregations and converted to our faith, were met at the threshold by the
forbidding and manifest fact that to all the other disadvantages of their position as Christians was added the consideration that only a life of celibacy remained to them. They could not return to heathenism for wives, for their friends would not give them; and, even if they did, our Discipline might put them out of the Church for marrying unconverted women; while, on the other hand, we had no Christian families from which they could be supplied. Such were their circumstances and the cheerless future that lay before them. I used to lie awake at night and groan over this aspect of our work, while the way to reach the minds of the women of the land, for want of a female agency, seemed as dark as did the prospects of our converted young men in reference to marriage.
These disabilities hemmed us in on every side, and made the progress and the future of our mission uncertain and doubtful. It was very discouraging. A Christianity without homes, or female schools, or daughters, without wives for our native teachers or preachers, without female worshipers in our congregations, wanted the first elements of perpetuity and completeness.
Every effort was made by our missionary ladies to obtain even day scholars from among the people, but such was then their bitter prejudice against educating girls that they generally treated the proposal with scorn. The ladies of our Bareilly mission made a vigorous effort in that city to obtain even a few scholars. They went from house to house, hired a suitable place in which to hold a school, bought mats and necessary equipments, offered even to pay the girls some compensation for the time expended if they would only attend; but at the end of three months they had only succeeded in inducing two children to come, and one of these was unreliable. At length, tired out, they had to abandon the effort as hopeless, until some change would come over the minds of the people in favor of female education.
I well remember what joy there was in November, 1858, when Providence put into our hands the first female orphan we ever received. She was a poor, weak little creature, was blind of an eye, and plain-featured—certainly no beauty; but she was a girl,
and she was all our own to rear for Jesus and his Church—one of India's daughters. We rejoiced over her, and felt that she was a precious charge for India's sake. Dear, sainted Mrs. Pierce cherished her with a mother's love. She was baptized Almira Blake. After a while we obtained three or four more, but we were still pained to think how inadequate were these few to meet the great want of our extending mission. The opportunity of Divine mercy was, however, nearer than we then knew. God was about to meet our requirements, and thus lay the foundations of greater and wider usefulness for our mission than we were anticipating.
The kind ladies of our mission took this wretched group of girls in charge, and they were washed and clothed, and cared for and fed. Educational advantages were soon provided. Responses came pouring in from schools and individuals in America, pledging support for one or two, and sending a favorite name to be put upon their protégé at their baptism. Individuals in India also, and the Government itself, came to our help, and soon a comfortable orphanage and a school-house—shown in the picture to the right, with its tower and bell—and all necessary conveniences, were erected. To these have been added library, apparatus, pleasant grounds, and other requisites, until the establishment is acknowledged by all who see it, and by Sir William Muir, the Governor, who lately visited it, to be one of the best-arranged institutions in India, and an honor to the American Methodist Church. It is also a credit to the interest and diligence of Brother and Sister Thomas, who, in their long and devoted connection with it, have, under God's blessing, made it what it is to-day.
The Lord has graciously laid the claims of the Female Orphanage upon the hearts of our ladies. It is now under the special charge of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as a part of their work for women in India.
It is a beautiful sight to see the orphan girls on the Sabbath of God, in His house, so neat, and attentive, and devotional, and to hear them sing the praises of Him to whose mercy they owe so much, and then all bow down to worship in the true Biblical and
Oriental fashion. Their prayer-meetings and class-meetings are times of real interest, and in listening to them you realize that many of them are truly taught of God.
The number of female orphans is now nearly one hundred and fifty, about twenty having been added during the past year. The good fruits of the institution have so won the confidence of all who are acquainted with it that it has conquered prejudice and conciliated the interest and good-will of many even of the native nobility as well as the English magistrates, from whom the institution every year receives additional destitute orphans to be adopted into this Christian home and family, and trained freely upon our own principles.
From six to nine girls finish their studies and graduate each year. I here present, from a photograph, the last class that graduated, from which the reader will have a correct idea of their persons, style of dress, etc.
Graduating Class. From a Photograph.
The girl on the left hand, standing up, is Julia Pybah, the middle one Mary Cocker, and the right hand one is Elizabeth Husk The first one sitting, left hand side, is Clementina Butler; the next, Rebecca Pettis; the next to her is Josephine, and the fourth is Grace Anable.
During a revival of religion, with which God was pleased recently to visit the Orphanage, over forty of these girls were soundly converted.
Thus God has justified our confidence when we first took these girls to train them up for him; all our hopes have been fulfilled. They have done well intellectually and religiously. More than twenty-five of them have already been married to our native preachers, teachers, and converts, and are now happy wives and mothers in their own homes, exhibiting before their heathen sisters what a Christian wife and mother is. Others of them have become efficient teachers and helpers in the work of visiting and instructing their countrywomen, as the columns of the “Heathen Woman's Friend” show. Probably the highest work which God had in view for these girls is that now in progress under the training of
Miss Swain, M. D., who has a large class of the elder girls under instruction in the theory and practice of medicine, to fit them to go into the houses of the suffering ones around them as medical Bible women, healing the sick while they preach the Gospel. No words can be too ardent to express the importance of such an agency; and as to the view which is taken of its value by the people of the land, it is enough to mention the fact that the Nawab of Rampore, a Mohammedan sovereign in the vicinity, who lately visited the Orphanage, was so pleased with Miss Swain's medical class and its object, that his highness expressed himself greatly gratified, and asked their acceptance of a donation of a thousand rupees to aid their work. He has since conferred upon them his residence and grounds at Bareilly to become a Christian Hospital for the native women of Rohilcund.
The Ladies' Missionary Society of our Church has done well in taking this institution under its charge. It has elements of power, as thus directed, the value of which cannot be over-estimated. They will generously support it and develop its ability for good; and I doubt not it will justify all their confidence and expectations in its future history and success. From it must continually go forth influences which will mitigate the prejudices of the women of India, for they can understand the disinterested benevolence that thus seeks their own relief and welfare; and gratitude must surely incline them to examine into the truth and virtue of that religion whose mercy and good fruits will be so manifest in the benighted and suffering homes to which the graduates of the Bareilly Orphanage, and their devoted instructress, will bring help and healing in the days to come.
Earnest may be the prayers and strong the confidence of the ladies of Methodism in the Christ-like agency which they have thus made their own, and which, under their fostering care, will develop into a permanent power of Christian womanly goodness for long-neglected heathen women, the value of which they can never fully know till they find it in eternity, when they stand in the glorious presence of Him who, before his Father and the holy
angels, will remember it all, and, acknowledging that each of them “hath done what she could”—to the body as to the soul, after his own blessed example—will tell it then “as a memorial of her.”
The organization of the Missions into an Annual Conference, at the close of 1864, terminated my superintendency, while the toil and care to which body and mind were subject during these scenes, and in such a climate, were so exhausting, that release from further service there became indispensable. This release was kindly granted by the Bishop and the Missionary Board.
The progress of the Indian Church to-day is an encouraging contrast to the weakness and obstructions of sixteen years ago. Already some of our native Christian brethren are rising to positions of great trust and responsibility in the Church, the State, and the learned professions. We name but a few:—
Krishna Mohun Banerjea, Pundit Nilakantha Gore, John Devasagyam, and Goloknath Chattergi, not to mention others, are among the ornaments of its native ministry. Gunga Ram and Professor Ramchunder, show what Hindoos can become as cultured Christian teachers, as does Kalee Mohun Banerjea, among University graduates, and others equally worthy; while Government officers, like Behari Lal Singh, and Deputy Magistrates, like Tarini Churn Mitter, prove how worthily public positions can be filled by the followers of that faith: and their descendants shall yet occupy every office of their Government in the glad day when their Ganges shall flow only through Christian realms, and their fertile lands shall be cultured by a happy Christian population, whose redeemed country, no longer the Land of the Veda, “shall be called by a NEW NAME which the mouth of the Lord shall name.”
India Theological Seminary at Bareilly.
The middle building is Remington Hall, the one to the left is Butler Hall, and that to the right is Ernest Kiplinger Hall.