Pioneers and Founders Part 14

"Bounding along the obedient surges, Cheerly on her onward way, Her course the gallant vessel urges Across thy stormy gulf, Biscay.

In the sun the bright waves glisten; Rising slow with solemn swell, Hark, hark, what sound unwonted? Listen-- Listen--'tis the Sabbath bell.

It tells of ties which duties sever, Of hearts so fondly knit to thee, Kind hands, kind looks, which, wanderer, never Thy hand shall grasp, thine eye shall see.

It tells of home and all its pleasures, Of scenes where memory loves to dwell, And bids thee count thy heart's best treasures Far, far away, that Sabbath bell.

Listen again! Thy wounded spirit Shall soar from earth and seek above That kingdom which the blest inherit, The mansions of eternal love.

Earth and her lowly cares forsaking, Bemoaned too keenly, loved too well, To faith and hope thy soul awaking, Thou hear'st with joy that Sabbath bell."

By the 28th of September, the vessel was in sight of the Temple of Jaghernauth, and on the 3rd of October was anch.o.r.ed close to the island of Saugor.

All through his voyage and residence in India, the Bishop kept a journal of the doings and scenes of each day, full of interesting sketches, both in pen and pencil. The beauty of the villages on the Hooghly, "the greenhouse-like smell and temperature of the atmosphere," and the gentle countenances and manners of the natives, struck him greatly, as he says, "with a very solemn and earnest wish that I might in some degree, however small, be enabled to conduce to the spiritual advantage of creatures so goodly, so gentle, and now so misled and blinded. '_Angili forent si essent Christiani_.'"

On the 10th of October the Heber family entered their temporary abode in the Fort at Calcutta, and were received by two Sepoy sentries and a long train of servants in cotton dresses and turbans, one of them with a long silver stick, another with a mace. There, too, were a.s.sembled the neighbouring clergy--alas! far too few--and the next day the Bishop was installed in his cathedral.

Then began a life of very severe labour, for not only had the arrears of episcopal business after the interregnum to be made up, but the deficiency of clergy rendered the Sunday duties very heavy; and the Bishop took as full a share of them as any working parish priest; and even though he authorized the Church Missionary Society's teachers to read prayers and to preach, the lack of sufficient ministrations was great. Bishop's College had, however, been completed, and what Middleton had founded was opened by Heber, with the happiest effect, which has lasted to the present time.

The difficulties as to the form of ordination of such as were not British subjects had also been overcome, and Christian David was to be sent up from Ceylon in company with Mr. Armour, who was to receive Priest's orders. The latter excellent man died just before he was to set off, and this delayed David until the next spring, when he came to Calcutta, was lodged in Bishop's College, pa.s.sed an excellent examination, and was ordained deacon on Holy Thursday, 1824, and priest on the ensuing Trinity Sunday. He is memorable as the first man of the dark-skinned races admitted by the Church of England to her ministry. An excellent and well- expressed letter from him, on the difficulties respecting the distinctions of caste, is given in Bishop Heber's Life. This, indeed, was one of the greatest troubles in dealing with converts. The Serampore missionaries had striven to destroy it, but Ziegenbalg, Schwartz, and their elder companions, regarded it as a distinction of society--not religious--and, though discouraging it, had not so opposed it as to insist on high and low castes mingling indiscriminately in church or at meals. The younger men who had since come out had been scandalized, and tried to make a change, which had led to much heartburning.

Next to his hymns, Bishop Heber is best known by the journal he kept of his visitation tour, not intended for publication but containing so much of vivid description of scenery and manners, that it forms a valuable picture of the condition of Hindostan as it then was.

His first stage, in barges along the Ganges, brought him to Dacca, where he was delayed by the illness and death of his much esteemed and beloved chaplain. He then went on to Bhaugulpore, where he was much interested in a wild tribe called the Puharries, who inhabit the Rajmahal hills, remnants of the aborigines of India. They carried bows and arrows, lived by the chase, and were viewed as great marauders; but they had a primitive faith, free from idolatry, hated falsehood, and, having no observance of caste and a great respect for Europeans, seemed promising objects for a mission; but unfortunately the climate of their mountains was so injurious to European life, that the clergyman, Mr. Thomas Christian, a scholar of Bishop's College, whom the Bishop appointed to this mission, was only able to spend three months in the hills in the course of the year, while for the other nine he took the children under his instruction back with him to Bhaugulpore.

At Bankipore, the Bishop met Padre Giulio Cesare, still a remarkably handsome and intelligent-looking little man, and speaking warmly of Henry Martyn. Dinapore, that first station of Martyn's, had since his time fallen into a very unsatisfactory state, owing to the carelessness of his successor, though it was newly come into better hands.

On the contrary, at Buxar, the Fort-adjutant, Captain Field, had so influenced all around, though without a chaplain, that, though the Bishop could not give the place a Sunday, his Sat.u.r.day evening service in the verandah was thronged, the English soldiers coming with Prayer-books and making the responses, besides numerous Hindoos, many of them the Christian wives and children of the soldiers. There was a boys' school kept by a converted Mahometan, and one for girls by "Mrs. Simpson," a native of Agra, converted by Mr. Corrie, and the widow of a sergeant.

She, however, got no scholars but the half-caste daughters of the soldiers. A little boy of four years old, son to an English sergeant with a native wife, was baptized, and the Bishop was delighted with the reverent devotion of the spectators. Cureem Musseh, once a Sepoy havildar, had his sword and sash hung over the desk, where, in a clean white cotton dress and turban, he presided over his scholars, whom he had taught to read Hindostanee, and to say the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Commandments, with a short exposition of each. The school served them likewise to hold prayer-meetings in, and, on rare occasions, a clergyman visited them.

The Bishop's entrance into the sacred city of Benares he describes to his wife thus: "I will endeavour to give you an account of the concert, vocal and instrumental, which saluted us as we entered the town:--

"_First beggar_.--Agha Sahib! Judge Sahib, Burra Sahib, give me some pice; I am a fakir; I am a priest; I am dying of hunger!

"_Bearers trotting under the tonjon_.--Ugh! ugh!--Ugh! ugh!

"_Musicians_.--Tingle, tangle; tingle, tangle; bray, bray, bray.

"_Chupra.s.see_, _clearing the way with his sheathed sabre_.--Silence! Room for the Lord Judge, the Lord Priest. Get out of the way! Quick! (_Then gently patting and stroking the broad back of a Brahmin bull_.) Oh, good man, move.

"_Bull_, _scarcely moving_.--Bu-u-uh.

"_Second beggar_, _counting his beads_, _rolling his eyes_, _and moving his body backwards and forwards_.--Ram, ram; ram, ram!"

Benares, said to be founded on the point of Siva's trident, as the most sacred city of all Hindostan, swarmed with beggars, fakirs, sacred animals, and idols of every description; but close beside it was a church for consecration and thirty candidates for confirmation, of whom fourteen were natives. The next day the Bishop was taken to see a school founded by a rich Bengalee baboo, whom Mr. Corrie had almost persuaded to be a Christian, but who had settled down into a sort of general admiration for the beauty of the Gospel, and a wish to improve his countrymen. He had made over the house where the school was kept to the Church Missionary Society, and the staff consisted of an English schoolmaster, a Persian moonshee, and two Hindostanee writing masters, the whole presided over by an English catechist, a candidate for Holy Orders. There were several cla.s.s rooms, and a large, lofty hall, supported by pillars, where the Bishop examined the 140, who read Persian and English, answered questions in Hindostanee and English, and showed great proficiency in writing, arithmetic, and geography. No objection was made to their reading the New Testament.

Afterwards, when the Bishop looked into a little paG.o.da, richly carved, and containing an image of Siva, crowned with scarlet flowers, with lamps burning before him, and a painted bull in front, a little boy, one of the brightest scholars in the school, came forward, and showing his Brahminical string, told, in tolerable English, the histories of the deities with which the walls were painted. "This," says the Bishop, "opened my eyes more fully to a danger which had before struck me as possible, that some of the boys brought up in our schools might grow up accomplished hypocrites, playing the part of Christian with us, and with their own people of zealous followers of Brahma, or else that they would settle down in a sort of compromise between the two creeds, allowing that Christianity was the best for us, but that idolatry was necessary and commendable in persons of their own nation." This in fact seems to have been ever since the state of a large proportion of the educated Hindoos.

May it be only a transition state!

The street preaching employed by the Serampore community had not been resorted to by the Church Missionary Society, and Bishop Heber decided that in the fanatic population, amid the crowds of bulls, beggars, and sacred apes, it was far wiser not to attempt it; but the missionaries were often sent for to private houses to converse with natives of rank, on their doctrine. One notable Hindoo, Amrut Row, who had at one time been Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who had retired to Benares, used on the feast of his patron G.o.d to give a portion of rice and a rupee to every Brahmin and blind or lame person who applied between sunrise and sunset.

He had a large garden with four gates, three of which were set open for the three cla.s.ses of applicants; the fourth served himself and his servants. As each person received his dole, he was shown into the garden, and detained there to prevent his applying twice, but there he enjoyed plenty of shade, water, company, and idols! This day's distribution often amounted to above 50,000 rupees, and his charities altogether were three times as great in the course of every year. He was a good kind man, religious to the best of his knowledge; and just before the Bishop's visit, he had sent a message to Mr. Morris, the clergyman at Sealcote, to call on him in the middle of the next week as he wished to inquire further into Christianity. Alas! before the appointed day Amrut Row was dead, and his ashes were still smoking when the Bishop quitted Benares.

What had become of Henry Martyn's church does not appear, for at Cawnpore he found none, but service was alternately performed in a bungalow and in the riding-school. He went as far north as Oude, and found at Chinear a much larger native congregation than he expected, though the women still retained so much of Eastern customs that they would not even raise their veils when receiving the Holy Communion. Almost all were the converts of the excellent Mr. Corrie, Henry Martyn's friend.

Arriving at Surat, after a journey of ten months, he there embarked for Bombay, where his wife and eldest child came from Calcutta, by sea, to meet him, and thence, after a stay in Ceylon for some weeks, returned to Calcutta, where, in December, he ordained Abdul Messeh, the man who had been won by Henry Martyn's garden preachings. It was a very remarkable ordination, for Father Abraham, the Armenian Suffragan from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, was present, in the black robes of his convent, and laid his hand on the heads of the candidates, and the service was in Hindostanee, whenever Abdul Messeh was individually concerned. Abdul Messeh was a most valuable worker among his countrymen, but he only survived about eighteen months.

In his last letter to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Bishop records the reception into Bishop's College of Mesrop David, the kinsman of the Armenian Bishop and already a deacon; also of two native youths from Ceylon, one Tamul and one Cingalese. This college, though a work which had none of the romance of adventure about it, afforded the surest and most important means of thoroughly implanting the Gospel, and forming a native priesthood fit for the varying needs of the various people. Nor could such a task be committed to any but superior men. Only such as have abilities that would win them distinction in England, are fit to cope with the difficulties of dealing with intellects quite as argumentative as, and even more subtle than, those of the ordinary level of Englishmen.

Soon after writing this letter, Bishop Heber set forth on what was to prove his last visitation. On the voyage to Madras, he spent much time upon some invalid soldiers who were being sent home, and confirmed one of them on board. Also he devoted himself to comforting a poor lady whose baby died on the voyage, not only when with her in her cabin, but Archdeacon Robinson, his chaplain, could hear him weeping and praying for her when alone in his own.

At Madras, he was lodged in the house of Sir Thomas Munro, the governor, who had done much by the help of his excellent wife to promote all that was good. At Vepery, close at hand, the Bishop found, nearly finished, the first church built in the Gothic style in India. He was greatly delighted with it, and especially that the desk and pulpit had not been allowed to obstruct the view of the altar, which had more dignity than was usual in the churches of 1826. A monstrous pulpit in another little church at Poonamalee, a depot for recruits, and an asylum for pensioners and soldiers' children, he caused to be removed. He had a confirmation at this place, or rather two, for some unexpected candidates presented themselves, and he desired Archdeacon Robinson to examine them, so that they might be confirmed later in the day. Among them was an old pensioner, and a sickly-looking young woman with a little boy, whom the Archdeacon thought too young, and recommended her to keep back for another opportunity. She wept much, and the Bishop said, "Bring them both to me; who knows whether they may live to wish for it again?" The native Christians, poor people employed on the beach, remnants of the old Portuguese Missions, had built a church at their own expense, and, being unable to obtain regular ministrations from their own clergy, begged the Bishop to consecrate their building, and give them a clergyman, and this he hoped to do on his return.

Meantime, he went in his robes to present Lady Munro with a vote of thanks from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for the good works in the schools of her husband's government. "I have seldom witnessed a more interesting or affecting picture," writes Archdeacon Robinson: "the beauty and gracefulness of Lady Munro, the grave and commanding figure of the Governor, the youthful appearance and simple dignity of the dear Bishop, the beloved of all beholders, presented a scene such as few can ever hope to witness." "My lord," said Sir Thomas, with the tears rolling down his cheeks, "it will be vain for me after this to preach humility to Lady Munro; she will be proud of this day to the latest hour she lives."

"G.o.d bless you, Sir Thomas!" was all the Bishop could utter.

"And G.o.d bless _you_, my lord!" was the fervent answer.

Before eighteen months had pa.s.sed the two good men who exchanged this blessing, had met in Paradise!

The Bishop went on from Madras, travelling by dak, and encamping during the heat of the day. He soon came into the field of labour of the Danish Missions, and was disappointed to find how poor and forlorn the Christian converts about Cuddalore were, and the great want of employment for them.

Things were better in the Tanjore territory, where the Bishop was much interested by a visit from the native pastor of one of the villages, a fine, venerable old man. When about to take leave, he lingered, and the Bishop was told that the Tamul Christians never quitted a minister without receiving his blessing. He was greatly touched. "I will bless them all, the good people," he said, after blessing the pastor.

Arriving at Tanjore, the Bishop thus describes Serfojee:--"I have been pa.s.sing the last four days in the society of a Hindoo Prince, the Rajah of Tanjore, who quotes Fourcroy, Lavoilier, Linnaeus, and Buffon fluently; has formed a more accurate judgment of the poetical merits of Shakespeare than that so felicitously expressed by Lord Byron; and has actually emitted English poetry, very superior indeed to Rousseau's epitaph on Shenstone; at the same time that he is much respected by the English officers in his neighbourhood, as a real good judge of a horse, and a cool, bold, and deadly shot at a tiger. The truth is, that he is an extraordinary man, who, having in early youth received such an education as old Schwartz, the celebrated missionary, could give him, has ever since continued, in the midst of many disadvantages, to preserve his taste for, and extend his knowledge of, European literature: while he has never neglected the active exercises and frank, soldierly bearing which become the descendant of the old Mahratta conquerors; and by which only, in the present state of things, he has it in his power to gratify the prejudices of his people, and prolong his popularity among them. Had he lived in the days of Hyder, he would have been a formidable ally or enemy; for he is, by the testimony of all in his neighbourhood, frugal, bold, popular, and insinuating. At present, with less power than an English n.o.bleman, he holds his head high, and appears contented; and the print of Buonaparte, which hangs in his library, is so neutralized by that of Lord Hastings in full costume, that it can do no harm to anybody.

. . . To finish the portrait of Maha Raja Sarbojee, I should tell you that he is a strong-built and very handsome middle-aged man, with eyes and nose like a fine hawk, and very bushy grey mustachios, generally splendidly dressed, but with no effeminacy of ornament, and looking and talking more like a favourable specimen of a French general officer than any other object of comparison which occurs to me. His son, Raja Seroojee (so named after their great ancestor), is a pale, sickly-looking lad of seventeen, who also speaks English, but imperfectly, and on whose account his father lamented, with much apparent concern, the impossibility which he found of obtaining any tolerable instruction in Tanjore. I was moved at this, and offered to take him on my tour, and afterwards to Calcutta, where he might have apartments in my house, and be introduced into good English society; at the same time that I would superintend his studies, and procure for him the best masters which India affords. The father and son, in different ways,--the one catching at the idea with great eagerness, the other as if he were afraid to say all he wished,--seemed both well pleased with the proposal. Both, however, on consulting together, expressed a doubt of the mother's concurrence; and, accordingly, next day I had a very civil message, through the Resident, that the Rannee had already lost two sons; that this survivor was a sickly boy; that she was sure he would not come back alive, and it would kill her to part with him; but that all the family joined in grat.i.tude, &c. So poor Seroojee must chew betel and sit in the zenana, and pursue the other amus.e.m.e.nts of the common race of Hindoo princes, till he is gathered to those heroic forms who, girded with long swords with hawks on their wrists, and garments like those of the king of spades (whose portrait-painter, as I guess, has been retained by this family), adorn the princ.i.p.al room in the palace."

To the Bishop's great indignation, he found that whereas while the Rajah had retained his dominions, Christians had been eligible to all the different offices of State, there was now an order from the Company's Government against their admission to any employment. "Surely," he says, "we are, in matters of religion, the most lukewarm and cowardly people on the face of the earth. I mean to make this and some other things I have seen a matter of formal representation to all the three Governments of India, and to the Board of Control."

It is highly probable that this systematic dread of encouraging G.o.d's service on the part of the Company a.s.sisted in keeping Serfojee a heathen, in spite of the many prayers offered up for him. Almost the last in Heber's book of private devotions was for the Rajah; and he drew up one, to be translated into Tamul, for use in all the churches in his territory; this last not directly for his conversion, but for his temporal and spiritual welfare.

It is pleasant to know that the last Easter of Heber's life was made joyful by ministering to Schwartz's spiritual children. He preached in that church which Schwartz had raised, and where his monument stood. His text was, "I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore." Many English-speaking natives went there, and others besides; and at the Holy Eucharist that followed there were thirty English and fifty-seven native communicants. The delight and admiration of the Bishop were speedily apparent. In the evening he attended a Tamul service, where the prayers were said by a Hindoo, the sermon preached by a Dane, and the blessing delivered by the Bishop in Tamul, to the surprise and pleasure of the congregation, which numbered no less than 1,300, all reverent, all making the responses, joining in the Easter hymn, and in the 100th Psalm. Never had the Bishop been happier! As he was taking off his robes, he exclaimed, "Gladly would I exchange years of common life for _one_ such day as this!" Even at night he could not help coming back to Archdeacon Robinson's room to rejoice, discuss, and finally pray over this blessed fruit of the toils of a holy man, who had been at rest thirty-eight years, yet whose work still increased. The next day he confirmed a large number; and Kohloff, a contemporary missionary of Schwartz, preached in Tamul.

After this happy Easter, the Bishop continued his route to Trichinopoly, where he preached and confirmed on the Sunday, but complained of a slight headache, and allowed himself to be persuaded not to go to the native service in the evening, though he spent a good deal of time conversing with Mr. Robinson, who was unwell enough to be lying in bed.

On Monday, the 3rd of April, he went at daybreak to hold a Tamul confirmation at the poor little neglected native church; then looked at the schools, but found that the want of ventilation rendered them too oppressive for him to remain; and afterwards received and graciously answered an address from the poor Christians, praying him to send them a pastor, for they had been without one for two years. He came back, still in his robes, to Mr. Robinson's bedroom, and, with great eagerness, talked over what he had seen and heard; speaking of the dest.i.tution of this poor church, and of the needfulness that a Bishop should receive regular reports of every station; also mentioning a Danish missionary whom he intended to appoint. He then went to his own room, and, according to Indian habit after exertion, went out in order to bathe. The bath was in a separate building. It was fifteen feet long, eight broad, and with stone steps descending into it to a depth of seven feet, and it was perfectly full of water. The servant sitting outside wondered at the length of time and unbroken silence, and at last looked in; but Reginald Heber had, by that time, long been lifeless in the cold bath!

He was only in his forty-fourth year; but medical opinion declared that there had been, unsuspected, the seeds of fatal disease, accelerated by climate, exertion, and excitement, and such as would probably have caused long helplessness and inaction, unless thus suddenly developed.

He was buried the next day at Trichinopoly church, where the mural tablet, with most touching and appropriate simplicity, bears no inscription in laudation, but merely the holy words, "Be ye also ready."

Thus ended a life of inward and outward brightness, which comes like a stream of suns.h.i.+ne among the shadows through which most of the labourers had to struggle, either for want of means of education, or from poverty or melancholy, and yet as true and as exhilarating a course as was ever one of theirs. May we not read his description in the verse:--

"And there are souls that seem to dwell Above this earth--so rich a spell Floats round their steps where'er they move, Of hopes fulfilled, and mutual love: Such, if on high their hopes are set, Nor in the stream the source forget; If, prompt to quit the bliss they know, Following the Lamb where'er He go, By purest pleasures unbeguiled To idolize or wife or child, Such wedded souls our G.o.d shall own For faultless virgins round His throne."

Mrs. Heber published soon after her return her husband's journals, and these, bearing the impress of his graceful, scholarly hand, attracted many readers who care merely for information and amus.e.m.e.nt; and thus, by their mere mundane qualities, his writings did much to spread knowledge of, and therefore interest in, the field of labour in which he died.

Large subscriptions came into the societies, and in a few years a church and three schools for the natives, with the pastor he had indicated, served as the best monument of that Low Sunday at Trichinopoly.

His successor was John Thomas James: the most memorable event in whose life was a halt at the Cape of Good Hope. This was the first time that colony had ever been visited by a Bishop, and there was no church, though a piece of land had been newly granted for one, which he consecrated before proceeding on his voyage. He arrived in 1828, but the climate of Calcutta struck him for death almost immediately. He was only able to perform one ordination, one confirmation, and one charge to the Calcutta clergy, then was forced to embark, and died at sea within a few months of his arrival.

During this time Daniel Wilson had been working under Mr. Cecil at Chobham, where he remained for three years, when a tutors.h.i.+p at St.

Edmund's Hall was offered to him, which enabled him to marry his cousin Ann, combining the small living of Warton with his tutors.h.i.+p. On the death of the Rev. Richard Cecil he took, by his especial wish, his proprietary chapel in Bloomsbury, and there continued till 1824 as one of the most marked London clergy, keeping up the earnestness that Newton and Cecil had been noted for, with quite as much energy; and though without the same originality, there was a _telling_ force about his sermons which made a young man exclaim the first time he heard him, "I will never hear Daniel Wilson again," but something led him happily to infringe the resolution, and then it became, "I will always, if possible, hear Daniel Wilson." Sentences of his were very memorable; for instance, "Nineteen- twentieths of sanctification consist in holy tempers," and, besides exhibiting a pithy force of language, his sermons were prepared with infinite care and labour. When at St. John's, where he had no parochial charge, he selected his text on Monday and carried it about with him, so to speak, all the week, chewing the cud of it as it were, looking it up in every authority, ancient or modern, within his reach, and conversing on the subject with any one whom he thought likely to give him a hint.

The sermons were written in a large legible shorthand, only on one side of the paper, and on the opposite page were copied out extracts of translations from ill.u.s.trative authors, often as many as eight to a single sermon, so that he had in fact a huge secretion of stores, which he could adapt according to the needs of his congregation, and he made notes of what he found fall flat and incomprehensible, or what he felt was stirring the souls of his audience; and this time was most profitably spent, not only for his immediate congregation, but in laying up a provision for the busier days of after-life, when the same amount of study was out of his power. And the benefit of such painstaking may be estimated by the words of a gentleman when introduced to a relative of his in after-years, "I am only one of very many who do not know and never spoke to Mr. Wilson, but to whom he has been a father in CHRIST. He never will know, and he never ought to know, the good that he has been the means of doing, for no man could bear it."