CHAPTER XVIII.SEEKING THE LOST.
One peculiar and sadly interesting feature of mission work in a new country is the duty of seeking the lost. Whenever a new country is opened, it not only offers a sphere for steady young men seeking one, but it always attracts also many adventurers, wanderers and prodigals from the more settled communities, and they come in considerable numbers. The annexation of Upper Burma was a case of this kind, and the hope of employment brought over persons, some of whom were to be found serving in positions very different from what they or their friends ever expected them to occupy. I remember one day, whilst visiting Kyaukse on mission business, meeting casually a man of this kind. I heard there was an Englishman lying ill in a certain rest-house. I found the man all alone and very ill, suffering apparently from cholera, which was then very prevalent. He was quite deserted and destitute, unable to attend to himself, and in a very neglected condition. The building was the usual Burmesezayat, built of teak, without any furniture whatever, nothing but the man’s mattress and pillow spread on the floor. I sent for the Government apothecary, and in the meantime got him some chicken broth made, for he had no food, sponged him, and made him as comfortable as I could. He told me something of his history. He was an Englishman, and had been brought up respectably, and was a near relation of a minister of the Gospel in England. He was a ne’er-do-weel, and had been in many employments in different parts of the world; at one timeat sea in a whaling ship, and at that time driving a locomotive engine, with ballast trains, on the new Mandalay railway, then under construction. His failing, and the cause of all his misery and degradation, was drink. The apothecary gave him medicine, and he recovered, and seemed very grateful to me for the attentions I had shown him. He admitted his faults very candidly, and we had, before I left the next day, a long and serious talk, with prayer. I saw him once afterwards at our service on a Sunday evening in Mandalay, and he seemed altogether brighter and better. Shortly afterwards he left the neighbourhood, stating he wished to break off from his bad companions and start life anew, and I saw him no more.
Another was a very different case. A Brahmin young man was missing from a highly respectable native family in Negapatam. He was a former pupil in our high school there, and had left home in consequence of some dispute with his friends, and was supposed to have come to Mandalay, in search of employment. I did not hear of any lapse of character or misconduct of any kind, but with Brahmins, the mere leaving home and crossing the sea amounts to such a breach of caste, and contamination with others, as to be worse in their eyes than many a deadly sin, and they weep for such a one as over a prodigal. I inquired for him in the public offices where he was likely to be found, but I could find no trace of him.
I received from time to time a number of letters from a young woman belonging to the Eurasian community in Ceylon, asking in great distress for news of her husband, whom she had not seen for seven years. It was a sad story, and the poor woman seemed almost to have lost her senses through grief. Differences had arisen between her husband and his relatives, after the marriage, and he had left home and gone to India, and afterwards to Burma, and had given way to drink. I found traces of him. The missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Rangoon had known him as one of the intemperate characters loafing about the town, whom he had often tried to help, and raise out of the gutter. At last he had suddenly lost sight of him, and could not tell me what had become of him. Throughthe Superintendent of Police in Rangoon I found what appeared to be the last trace of this unfortunate man. The police records stated that a man, answering to his description, was found drowned one morning, in the lake near Rangoon, and he was supposed to have wandered there, either whilst helpless in liquor, or with the intention of ending his unhappy career. Which it was there was no evidence to show. It was never fully proved that this was the same man, but as he was nowhere to be found, it seemed very probable that it was he, and the poor soul had to content herself, as best she could, with this sad and uncertain information.
A widow of the Eurasian community, whom I had been acquainted with during my residence in Ceylon, years before, wrote to ask if I could hear any tidings of her younger son, who at the time I knew him was a schoolboy, but by that time a young man. He had left home to seek employment, and had learnt the business of a mechanic, but, like too many, had ceased to write to his mother, who, of course, in the absence of any knowledge of him, feared the worst. What a cruel thing to leave a widowed mother in ignorance of his whereabouts! I made all possible inquiries, but with no result. He had not come to Mandalay.
Another very sad case was that of a young Englishman in Mandalay, in Government service, and in a respectable position. Disappointed apparently at not getting promotion as rapidly as he had hoped, late one night he committed suicide by drowning himself. Morally he had drifted far away from the teachings of home and childhood, and he had formally renounced the Christian religion, declared himself a Buddhist, and had even left instructions in his will, that in the event of his death he should be interred as a Buddhist. Though no one appears to have suspected it before the sad event, it was, after his death, the opinion of many who knew him, that his reason must have lost its balance. There was evidence of great deliberation in the carrying out of the deed. His duties in the public service had occupied him until a late hour, and had all been performed in his usual careful manner. He had then dismissed his native attendant and gone on to a large pool of water, and had taken care to make his body sink and ensure his death. I received a letterfrom his mother in England, written after the sad intelligence reached her, asking for further information, and in great trouble. From this letter it appeared that he had, in his youth, been well and religiously brought up, but long residence abroad had blunted those early impressions. Our countrymen abroad need more than all the attention we can give them, and we often wish we could do more. But the working hours of the day are limited; many duties press upon us, and the Europeans are widely scattered over all the country, and it is impossible to reach them all.
One day I received a letter from a respectable Eurasian gentleman, a Christian man in Calcutta, requesting me to seek his son, a young man of twenty-two. He seemed in great trouble about him, and stated that his son had “rejected a life provision, with every comfort of home and family.” This was not the only trouble in the family. His elder brother, who had been in Burma also, and had prospered in money matters, had fallen a victim to drink, and had died by his own act, having, under the influence of liquor, thrown himself overboard from a steamer, whilst on the way from Rangoon to Calcutta. The father seemed dreadfully crushed at the thought of the unfortunate end of the elder brother, and the prodigal career of the younger, and wrote to ask if I could learn any tidings of him. After some searching, I found him in, I think, the filthiest house I ever stepped inside of, and consorting with some low Burmans. He was working at his trade pretty regularly, and was earning good wages; but he was so hemmed in by his bad habits, and bad companions, and he seemed to be of such an easy, yielding nature, and so infirm of purpose, that it seemed very difficult, if not impossible, to do anything to help him. As I visited him repeatedly, he expressed from time to time a feeble desire to do better; but he admitted to me that the domestic ties he had formed in Mandalay prevented his leaving the place, and quitting the place was the only chance he could see of getting into a better way of life. It was the usual case—a Burmese wife, and yet not a wife.
And here I must utter a strong protest against those illicit connections which so many of our countrymen, of almost every degree,form in Burma. It seems to many of them that because the marriage bond amongst the Burmans themselves is lax, and more or less of the nature of a temporary arrangement, and because the standard of social morality is low, it gives them the licence to make it still lower, and the union still looser, by forming still more temporary companionships with Burmese women. In the case of the Englishman I saystill looser, for there is this difference between the Burman and the Englishman—that in the former case it is to all intents and purposes a marriage, and is not unlikely to prove lifelong, though it may terminate earlier, whereas the Englishman would scornfully refuse the title of wife for his native companion, or “housekeeper,” as he is pleased sometimes to call her, and he never intends the union to be anything but temporary. It is vain therefore to defend this practice from the standpoint of Burmese custom. It is mere concubinage, and in the name of the Christian religion, to which they nominally belong, I protest that no man has the right to inflict such a degrading position upon the mother of his children.
As regards the children of such unions, the result is still more cruel. They find themselves in a most invidious position. Of mixed descent, they belong neither to the English nor the Burmese race, and they suffer serious disadvantages accordingly. Moreover, the English are never permanently resident in Burma, and when the father is tired of the girl, his companion, or when his work, or his official duty, calls him to leave and go to a distant station, or when he goes “home” on furlough, or retires altogether from Burma, or when he marries an English wife in proper legal form, it ends in his paying off the mother and the children, if indeed he prove sufficiently honourable to do that. If she takes all this with a light heart, as she probably may, Burman-like, that does not lessen the guilt and the cruelty involved in such base desertion of his own helpless offspring. That such children are very often left in this way by their fathers, and that they become a charge on missionary bodies for their education, out of sheer pity for their English descent, and that these individuals often go eventually to swell the community of “Poor Whites,” a class very difficult to provide for—all theseare facts too well known in Burma, and in India, to be disputed. These facts should make the young Englishman pause before he follows this evil but prevalent example, surrenders himself to his appetites, and foolishly surrounds himself with ties which are degrading and unworthy, and which he cannot fairly justify or defend, and which he would never think of acknowledging to his mother and sisters “at home.” These considerations ought to make him consider whether he had not better, by early frugality, save his funds, so that he may the sooner be in a position to woo and provide for a wife of his own nation and people, who can be a true companion for him. This evil is one of considerable dimensions in Burma, and holding up social evils to the light of day is one means of seeking their removal.
One day I received a letter from a godly man in Ireland, who wrote asking me to go and see his son, a sergeant in the regiment then stationed in Mandalay. He was under an assumed name, a thing not unusual in the army. His father had not heard from him for ten years, but had just received a letter. It was a sad case—the old story—formerly in a very good position in the Excise in Ireland; drink his ruin. He lost his position, and finding himself at length in distress, enlisted. Being well educated he was soon promoted, but again and again got into trouble through drinking. This went on for years, until at last by sheer desperate effort he managed to pull himself together, feeling sure that if he went on much longer at the rate he was going, he would soon be in his grave. He admitted to me that though he had not, when I saw him, tasted liquor for over a year, the craving that came upon him sometimes was almost insupportable. I urged him to seek the converting grace of God, and get Divine help, which alone could keep straight one in his dangerous position, but he could not see it. I sat with him over an hour that afternoon, and he wept freely; we wept together as we talked about his home, his father, and the days of childhood and innocence, and as he recounted to me the story of his life. Soldiers and sailors are amongst the most candid and approachable of men with the chaplain, and I never find the least difficulty in getting at their hearts. But there was a peculiar difficulty inhis case in another respect. He believed in his father, and there was much tenderness in his mind with regard to sacred things, but he seemed to be utterly sceptical as to Divine grace ever reachinghim; and it was only with the utmost difficulty that I could get him to kneel in prayer. There seemed to be some hindrance that I could not remove. He came by invitation to my house, and spent an evening with us, but with a like result, and he steadily refrained from attending any of our services. Very shortly after I became acquainted with him, his regiment left for England, and I saw him no more. Let us hope that the scenes of home life once more, and other kindred influences, led to the completion of that work of grace and reformation, the beginning of which was evidenced by his long abstinence from liquor, his writing once more to his father, and the evident feeling he manifested when conversing about home and sacred things.
Where the habit of drinking has become confirmed it is often very difficult to effect a radical cure; consequently looking after such cases as I am describing, where the drink appetite and other gross sins have complicated the situation, is never so hopeful and encouraging. Nevertheless we have no reason to lose hope of any; and cases occur sometimes of the complete reformation of persons who have sunk very low indeed, and long seemed hopeless. In this connection I should like to acknowledge the very satisfactory results that have attended the universal establishment, throughout the British Army in our Indian Empire, of that society known as the Army Temperance Association. This society owes its origin to the efforts of a Baptist missionary in India, the Rev. Gelson Gregson, who started the movement some few years ago. Its working is similar to other temperance organisations, with the exception that it is purposely and specially adapted to the idiosyncrasies and the peculiar circumstances of Thomas Atkins in a tropical climate, far away from “home,” and with much spare time on his hands. The great reason why it flourishes is that it really offers counter attractions, such as a soldier can appreciate, to the canteen as a place of resort, with its hilarity and good fellowship, and without any temptation to intoxication.
Chief among these attractions isa room set apart for the purpose, where the members of the Army Temperance Association can resort when off duty; a small concession, one would have thought, that might long ago have been less grudgingly and more frequently made to temperance, but really a great matter to the soldier. This, with the necessary refreshment bar for the sale of food, tea and cooling drinks, with a few games to occupy their spare time, and a supply of newspapers and books, forms a basis. The organisation itself is fitted to meet the case of soldiers. A small monthly fee is paid for membership; they elect their own officials from amongst themselves, there is a periodical published by the Secretary at headquarters as the organ of the association, there is a bestowal of medals and decorations, in tangible recognition of abstinence on the part of members, for given lengths of time, and the surplus funds are expended in little entertainments such as they like. It is a matter of much gratification to us in the Burma mission, that the chaplain selected by the military authorities at present, to fill the post of Secretary of the Army Temperance Association, is our former comrade and colleague, the Rev. J. H. Bateson, who in 1887-8 was with us as Wesleyan Chaplain to the Upper Burma Field Force, and we heartily wish him success in the work for which he is so well fitted.
It is a matter of great thankfulness that the Army Temperance Association is not only fully recognised in our Indian army, but that it is a standing order that a branch of it has to be maintained in every regiment and battery. Joining is optional on the part of the men. This wise course has been amply justified by the results. Sixteen thousand out of a total of nearly seventy thousand men are enrolled. It is now found that in proportion as the Army Temperance Association flourishes, both crime and sickness in the army diminish; and so far from soldiers needing liquor to sustain them, they are found far better without it, both in cantonments and in the field. In fact, it is calculated that every five thousand men in the association means a battalion of men less in prison and in hospital, and fit for duty. The wonder is not that such should be found to be the case, but that it should have taken so many years to find it out. In the mission we tookour stand, of course, on the side of total abstinence, and embraced every opportunity of advocating this movement, in military and civil life, both amongst men and amongst women.
We met from time to time with cases of genuine conversion that gave us great joy. Our Sunday evening English service was always followed by an after meeting for prayer and exhortation, and made an opportunity, for any who wished to lead a new life, to give their hearts to the Saviour. Again and again it was our delight to guide those who were seeking to do so, at first in Buddhist monasteries, and pagodas, and anywhere that we could find for the meetings, often with images of Gautama, and other accessories of Buddhist worship around, and later on in our own mission school-chapel. I remember one Sunday evening in particular, the Word came home to many hearts, and that evening, and in the course of the week, I had the privilege of close conversation with several, and some of our Christian members spoke with others who had been awakened by the influence of the Spirit. Amongst the rest I had a request, through a soldier, to the effect that Corporal S. would like to talk with me. I went and met him, and conversed for half an hour in the barrack yard answering his question, “What must I do to be saved?” The circumstances of his awakening were peculiar. A certain passage of Scripture had followed him wherever he had gone. The last Sunday, just before sailing for India, his mother had requested him to go with her to the service, and that had been the text. At Malta he had heard another sermon from the same text. The first time he attended service after he landed in India it had been the same. And a fourth time had he heard it preached from at Shwebo in Upper Burma. This had naturally produced a considerable impression on his mind, which the sermon of the previous Sunday evening had developed into decision to serve the Lord. With a little instruction and prayer he was soon hopefully converted, and happy in the Lord.
It is sometimes urged, as an objection against earnest efforts for the conversion of sinners, that the results attending such efforts are not always abiding; but surely no objection could be more illogical or more ungenerous. If it applies at all, it applieswith equal force against any and every attempt to save men. It may just as well be alleged against the most formal and perfunctory of ministrations as against the more direct and strenuous efforts to pluck men out of the fire. The proper logical outcome of that objection is, “Do nothing at all.” We might just as well do nothing as make the Gospel a mere “light to sink by.” A chaplain amongst soldiers must often feel a painful sense of disappointment at some results of his work, which are evanescent. The life of the barrack-room necessarily produces, especially in India, such an artificial condition of things, and involves such a departure from the Divine ordinance, which isthe family, that it must needs bring with it special trials and stress of temptation to any of the dwellers there who desire to lead a godly life. Hence every chaplain has his disappointments over those who grow weary in well-doing. And yet, on the other hand, such is the principle of compensation running through the kingdom of grace, that although barrack-room discipline is bad for the weak Christian, it strengthens the man of determination, and I question whether there are to be found anywhere triumphs of saving grace more marvellous than we find in the army, or more touching examples of humble, sincere and consistent piety.
We had in the battery of Royal Artillery stationed in Mandalay a man whose career had been a peculiarly rough one, but who is now a very bright Christian. He had led a wild life. He was a blacksmith by trade, and, from his youth up, had been in the habit of spending all he possibly could in beer, and, as is usually the case, the beer often made a mere brute and vagabond of him. He first enlisted in a cavalry regiment, from which, after being often in trouble, he deserted. For a time he got work, but he still betook himself to the beer, and the beer made him talk, and let out his former connection with the army, so that he frequently had to disappear hurriedly, lest he should be arrested as a deserter. Finding himself in want, he enlisted again, this time in the Royal Engineers. From this corps he received his discharge in consequence of an illness. Recovering, and entering once more on a course of dissipation, he enlisted athird time, in the Royal Artillery. The Jubilee year gave him the opportunity to confess his former desertion, and to secure his share in the general pardon, extended by the Queen to all such cases that year; and it was not long before the King of kings granted him His pardon also. Whilst stationed at Woolwich, he happened one evening, when feeling extremely dejected, to enter the Soldiers’ Home. The Wesleyan chaplain met him there, spoke to him kindly, and invited him to a meeting. He went. It was a fellowship meeting. He heard a number of his comrades speak, but so dark was his mind in reference to religion, that he could not understand them in the least. However, he gathered that they possessed some source of comfort and joy within, of which he knew nothing. He followed it up, became truly converted, and whilst with us in Mandalay lived a most exemplary life, and exerted a very gracious influence amongst his comrades. Religion had quickened, as it often does, that once darkened and besotted nature; and I have seldom met with a better example of the transforming, elevating power of the Gospel, the power to keep and sanctify, as well as save.
Another very satisfactory instance of true conversion, mainly owing to impressions produced at the parade services, several Sunday mornings in succession, was that of a pay-sergeant in the regiment then stationed in Mandalay, a married man living with his wife and family in the married quarters, a steady, quiet Scotchman, always well disposed, and of strictly moral life. Parade services are not always thought to be very good opportunities for getting at the hearts of soldiers, seeing that they are marched there by compulsion, not always in the best mood, and with their arms and accoutrements (in India), which is a different thing from going to a voluntary service off parade. But does not this fact challenge, as it were, the chaplain to give them of his brightest and best? It must, before all, be very short, or he will ruin everything, and send them away worse than they came; something short, lively and heart-stirring, full of Christ, full of apt illustration, and full of sympathy with souls, so that he may capture these soldier lads in spite of themselves. Well, it was at these parade services that Sergeant C. felt his mind awakenedto new views of truth and duty and Christian privilege. Being aroused about the matter he attended also the evening services, and the devotional meetings on the week-nights, and soon got the light he required, and found himself a new man in Christ Jesus. Well conducted and steady as he had been before, his conversion nevertheless made a great difference to him, giving clearness and brightness to his religious character, and kindling in him a new zeal for the conversion of others.
We found drink to be a fearful curse, not only amongst the English residents, but amongst the natives also. I had a servant, a native of India. He was a great gambler, and very lazy, dishonest and troublesome altogether. Bad as he was, we bore with him over two years, fearing that if we discharged him we might have to put up with somebody worse. Just before we left Burma we dismissed him, because he had sent away his wife and taken up with another. Since coming to England, I learn that this man, in a fit of drunkenness, murdered this woman, with circumstances of unusual atrocity, and that he had to suffer the extreme penalty of the law.
But this drink monster is no respecter of persons, and makes no distinction of race, sweeping down all before it without any discrimination. An English soldier in Mandalay, who had been an abstainer for a considerable period, suddenly took to liquor again one day, and got drunk. That evening he took out his rifle, put in a cartridge, walked down out of the bungalow, and took the direction that the seven devils within him pointed out. This happened to be towards the sergeants’ mess, a separate building a stone’s-throw away. That evening, a party of sergeants were enjoying a festive gathering, in honour of the seventeenth anniversary of the enlistment of one of their number. His health had just been proposed, and he stood up to reply, when at that very moment the poor crazed drunkard outside fired, and shot the sergeant dead. There had been no provocation, and no reason could be assigned for the rash act. It was merely “the drink.” In the distant future, when the temperance reform shall have won its way, and the customs of English society shall have undergone a great change, people will greatlywonder that their forefathers took so long to discover that liquor was their enemy, and not their friend.
Another example, and I bring these reminiscences to a close. It is the case of a soldier, who formerly belonged to a cavalry regiment, stationed at the time I speak of at one of the principal military stations in the south of India. He had plunged into drinking and vice, until at last he was told by the doctor that he had gone as far as his constitution would allow him, and that if he went any further it would be the end of him. This weighed upon his mind, and a deep sense of his sinfulness and a desire for better things resulted. He felt he needed Divine help, and he thought he had better begin again to pray, a thing he had long ceased to do. But how to begin in a barrack-room, where many pairs of eyes would see him, and misunderstand, and ridicule him? Well, he would wait until all was quiet, and then kneel down by his cot and pray. He waited, but as he was musing the fire kindled, and when he did begin to pray, so urgent was his pleading with God for mercy, that his voice rang through the barrack-room, and all his comrades were aroused by it. They thought he was mad. He was removed to the guard-room, and put under restraint. There, in the quietude of that solitary place, he found pardon, and his soul was filled with peace. Next day the medical officer saw him; he could not quite make out the case, but adopted the safe course of keeping him still under restraint. He told the doctor what it was that had caused the trouble of his mind, and how he had gained deliverance, adding that if they had said he was mad before, it would have been quite true, but that now he had come to his right mind. This explanation only induced the man of science dubiously to elevate his eyebrows. It was a kind of case he was not familiar with. Though perfectly sane, and calm and happy, he was kept under restraint for a month, and he was accustomed to say that that month, almost entirely alone with God and his Bible, was the happiest period of his life.
That work of grace, so strangely begun, was thorough and abiding. It was well known in the station, and produced a great impression for good, supported as it was by his subsequent consistentconduct. It was years after his conversion that I knew him intimately in Burma as a non-commissioned officer, serving in an important and responsible military position, for which he had been specially selected; and I knew him for several years as a consistent Christian, whose firm example—and happy, cheerful character made him a blessing to others, and who was never backward in quietly and judiciously speaking for the Master.