Of a Yorkshire family, where the eldest son was always bred up as the country gentleman, the younger ones usually prepared to hold the family livings, Reginald Heber was born on the 21st of April, 1783, at Malpas, in Cheshire, a rectory held by his father, who was the clerical second son, but soon after became head of the house by the death of his squire-brother. He was twice married, and had a son by his first wife, so that Reginald was born, as it were, to the prospect of taking Holy Orders; and this fact seems to have in a certain degree coloured his whole boyhood, and acted as a consecration, not saddening, but brightening his life.
A happy, eager, docile childhood seems to have been his; so obedient, that when an attack on the lungs necessitated the use of very painful remedies, the physician said that the chances of his recovery turned upon his being the most tractable of children; and with such a love and knowledge of the Bible that, when only five years old, his father could consult him like a little Concordance, and withal full of boyish mirth and daring. When sent to school at Neasdon, he was so excited by the storyof an African traveller overawing a wild bull by the calm defiance of the eye, as to attempt the like process upon one that he found grazing in a field, but without the like success; for he provoked so furious a charge that he was forced to escape ignominiously over a high paling, whence he descended into a muddy pond.
Neasdon was the place of education of his whole boyhood, among twelve other pupils. Mr. John Thornton, the schoolfellow friend and correspondent of his life, describes him as having been much beloved there. He had no scruple as to fighting rather than submitting to tyranny from a bigger boy, but his unfailing good nature and unselfishness generally prevented such collisions; he was full of fun, and excellent at games of all sorts; and though at one time evil talk was prevalent among the boys, his perfect purity of mind and power of creating innocent amusement destroyed the habit, without estranging the other lads from him. He took many of his stories from books not read by them, for he was an omnivorous reader, taking special delight in poetry, loving nothing better than a solitary walk with Spenser’s “Faërie Queen” in his hand, and often himself composing verses above the average for so young a boy.
He was always thoughtful, and there is a letter of his to his friend Thornton, written when only seventeen, which shows that he had begun to think over Church questions, was deeply sensible of the sacredness of the apostolical commission to the ministry, and of the evils of State interference. That same year, 1800, began his University education, at Brasenose College, Oxford. His course there was alike blameless in life and brilliant in scholarship; his talents and industry could not fail to secure him honours in the schools.
Another young man was at the very same time at Oxford, whose course had been steered thither with more difficulties than Reginald Heber’s. Daniel Wilson’s father was a wealthy silk manufacturer, at Spitalfields, where he was born in the year 1778. He was educated at a private school at Hackney, kept by a clergyman named Eyre, who must have had a good deal of discernment of character, for he said, “There is no milk and water in that boy. He will be either something very bad or very good.” One day, when he was in an obstinate and impracticable state of idleness, Mr. Eyre said, “Daniel, you arenot worth flogging, or I would flog you,” which so stung him that he never fell into similar disgrace again; nay, one morning when he had failed in his appointed task, he refused food saying, “No! If my head will not work, my body shall not eat.” He had considerable powers, and when his own theme on a given subject was finished, would find “sense” for all the dull boys—varying the matter but keeping to the point in all: but his education ceased at fourteen, when he was bound apprentice to his uncle, who followed the same trade as his father, and lived in Cheapside. He was a widower with seven children, one of whom in after years became Daniel’s wife. It was a strictly religious household, and whereas Daniel’s parents had been wont to attend church or meeting as suited them best, his uncle was a regular churchman, and took his whole family constantly with him, as decidedly as he kept up discipline in his warehouse, where the young men had so little liberty, that for weeks together they never had occasion to put on their hats except on Sunday.
Daniel was a thoughtless, irreverent lad, full of schoolboy restlessness when first he came; but though he was at first remarkable for his ill-behaviour in church, his attendance insensibly took effect upon him, as it brought his mind under the influence of the two chief powers for good then in London, John Newton and Richard Cecil. The vehement struggle for conversion and sense of individual salvation that their teaching deemed the beginning of grace took place, and he turned for aid to them and to his old schoolmaster, Mr. Eyre. It was from his hands in 1797, at the age of nineteen, that he received his first Communion, with so much emotion and such trembling, that he writes to his mother, “I have no doubt I appeared very foolish to those about me,” but he adds in another letter to a friend that it had been the happiest day of his life. “And to you I confess it,” he says, “(though it ought perhaps to be a cause for shame,) that I have felt great desire to go or do anything for the love ofJesus, and that I have even wished, if it were the Lord’s will, to go as a missionary to foreign lands.”
It is very remarkable that this thought should have occurred at such a moment to one who only became a missionary thirty-five years later, at a summons from without, not from within. The distinct mission impulse passed away, but a strong desireremained to devote himself to the ministry of the Church. He tried to stifle it at first, lest it should be a form of conceit or pride; but it only grew upon him, and at last he spoke to Mr. Eyre, who promised to broach the subject to his parents.
His father was strongly averse to it, as an overthrow to all his plans, and Mr. Eyre, after hearing both sides, said that he should give no opinion for a year; it would not hurt Daniel to remain another year in the warehouse, to fulfil the term of his apprenticeship, and it would then be proper time to decide whether to press his father to change his mind. It was a very sore trial to the young man, who had many reasons for deeming this sheer waste of time, though he owned he had not lost much of his school learning, having always loved it so much as to read as much Latin as he could in his leisure hours. He submitted at first, but was uneasy under his submission, and asked counsel from all the clergymen he revered, who seem all to have advisedhimto be patient, but to have urged his father to yield, which he finally did before the year was out; so that Daniel Wilson was entered at St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, on the 1st of May, 1798. He struggled with the eagerness of one whose desire had grown by meeting with obstacles. In order to acquire a good Latin style, he translated all Cicero’s letters into English, and then back into Latin; and when he went up for his degree, he took, besides his Latin and Greek books, the whole Hebrew Bible, but was only examined in the Psalms. He gained a triumphant first-class, and the next year, 1803, he carried off the English prose essay prize. The theme was “Common Sense.” He had not in the least expected to gain the prize, and had not even mentioned the competition to his friends, so that their delight and surprise were equal. That same year, Reginald Heber was happy in the subject for Sir Roger Newdegate’s prize for English verse, namely, “Palestine,” which in this case had fallen to a poet too real to be crushed by the greatness of his subject.
Reginald Heber was used to society of high talent and cultivation. His elder brother, Richard, was an elegant scholar and antiquary, and was intimate with Mr. Marriott, of Rokeby; with Mr. Surtees, the beauty of whose forged ballads almost makes us forgive him for having palmed them off as genuine; and with Walter Scott, then chiefly known as “the compiler of the ‘Border Minstrelsy,’” but who a few years later immortalized hisfriendship for Richard Heber by the sixth of his introductions to “Marmion,”—the best known, as it contains the description of the Christmas of the olden time. It concludes with the wish—
“Adieu, dear Heber, life and health!And store of literary wealth.”
“Adieu, dear Heber, life and health!And store of literary wealth.”
Just as Reginald was finishing his prize poem, Scott was on a tour through England, and breakfasted at Richard Heber’s rooms at Oxford, when on the way to lionize Blenheim. The young brother’s poem was brought forward and read aloud, and Scott’s opinion was anxiously looked for. It was thoroughly favourable, “but,” said Scott, “you have missed one striking circumstance in your account of the building of the Temple, that no tools were used in its erection.”
Before the party broke up the lines had been added:
“No workman’s steel, no ponderous axes rung;Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung;Majestic silence—”
“No workman’s steel, no ponderous axes rung;Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung;Majestic silence—”
The prose essay on “Common Sense” was first recited from the rostrum in the Sheldonian theatre, and Wilson always remembered the hearty applause of the young man who sat waiting his turn. But the effect of the recitation of “Palestine” was entirely unrivalled on that as on any other occasion. Reginald Heber,—a graceful, fine-looking, rather pale young man of twenty,—with his younger brother Thomas beside him as prompter, stood in the rostrum, and commenced in a clear, beautiful, melancholy voice, with perfect declamation, which overcame all the stir and tumultuous restlessness of the audience by the power and sweetness of words and action:
“Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn,Mourn, widow’d queen; forgotten Zion, mourn.Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne,Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone;While suns unblest their angry lustre fling,And wayworn pilgrims seek the scanty spring?”
“Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn,Mourn, widow’d queen; forgotten Zion, mourn.Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne,Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone;While suns unblest their angry lustre fling,And wayworn pilgrims seek the scanty spring?”
On flowed the harmonious lines, looking back to the call of the Chosen, the victory of Joshua, the glory of Solomon, the hidden glory of the Greater than Solomon, the crime of crimes, the destruction, the renewal by the Empress Helena, the Crusades, and after a tribute (excusable at the time of excitement) to SirSidney Smith’s defence of Acre, gradually rising to a magnificent description of the heavenly Jerusalem.
“Ten thousand harps attune the mystic throng,Ten thousand thousand saints the strain prolong.‘Worthy the Lamb, omnipotent to save!Who died, Who lives triumphant o’er the grave.”
“Ten thousand harps attune the mystic throng,Ten thousand thousand saints the strain prolong.‘Worthy the Lamb, omnipotent to save!Who died, Who lives triumphant o’er the grave.”
The enthusiasm, the hush, the feeling, the acclamations have ever since been remembered at Oxford as unequalled. Heber’s parents were both present, and his mother, repairing at once in her joy to his rooms, found him kneeling by his bedside, laying the burthen of honour and success upon his God. His father, recently recovered from illness, was so overcome and shaken by the pressure of the throng and the thunder of applause as never entirely to recover the fatigue, and he died eight months later, early in 1804.
The two youths who were in juxtaposition at the rostrum were not to meet again. Daniel Wilson was ordained to the curacy of Chobham, under Mr. Cecil, an excellent master for impressing hard study on his curates. He writes: “What should a young minister do? His office says, ‘Go to your books, go to retirement, go to prayer.’ ‘No,’ says the enthusiast, ‘go to preach, go and be a witness.’”
“‘A witness of what?’
“‘He don’t know!’”
While Wilson worked under Cecil, Heber, who was still too young for the family living of Hodnet, in Shropshire, after taking his bachelor’s degree, obtaining a fellowship at All Souls College, and gaining the prize for the prose essay, accompanied John Thornton on a tour through northern and eastern Europe, the only portions then accessible to the traveller; and, returning in 1806, was welcomed at home by his brother’s tenants with a banquet, for which three sheep were slaughtered, and at which he appeared in the red coat of the volunteer regiment in which he had taken an eager share during former years.
It was his last appearance in a military character, for in 1807 he was ordained, and entered on his duties as Rector of Hodnet. Two years later he married Amelia Shipley, the daughter of the Dean of St. Asaph. Floating thus easily into preferment, without a shoal or rock in his course, fairly wealthy, and belonging to a well-esteemed county family, connected through his brother with the veryéliteof literary society, it seemed asthough, in the laxity of the early part of the century, Reginald Heber could hardly have helped falling into the indolence of learned ease, the peril of the well-beneficed clergy of his day, especially among those who had not accepted the peculiarities of the awakening school of the period.
But such was not the case. He was at once an earnest parish priest, working hard to win his people, not only to attend at church, but to become regular communicants, and to give up their prevalent evil courses. We find him in one letter mentioning the writing of an article on Pindar in theQuarterly Review, planning for a village-school on the Lancastrian principle, and endeavouring to improve the psalmody. “At least,” he says, “I have a better reason to plead for silence than the Cambridge man who, on being asked in what pursuit he was then engaged, replied that he was diligently employed in suffering his hair to grow.”
These “endeavours to improve the psalmody” were a forestalling of the victory over the version of Tate and Brady. The Olney Hymns, produced by Cowper, under the guidance of John Newton, had been introduced by Heber on his first arrival in the parish, but he felt the lack of something more thoroughly in accordance with the course of the Christian year, less personal and meditative, and more congregational. Therefore he produced by degrees a series of hymns, which he described as designed to be sung between the Nicene Creed and the Sermon, and to be connected in some degree with the Collects and Gospels for the day. Thus he was the real originator in England of the great system of appropriate hymnology, which has become almost universal, and many of his own are among the most beautiful voices of praise our Church possesses. We would instance Nos. 135 and 263 in “Hymns Ancient and Modern,”—that for the 21st Sunday after Trinity, a magnificent Christian battle-song; and that for Innocents’ Day, an imitation of the old Latin hymn “Salvete flores Martyrum.” They were put together, with others by Dean Milman and a few more, into a little volume, which Heber requested Dr. Howley, then Bishop of London, to lay before the Archbishop, that it might be recommended for use in churches, but the timidity of the time prevented this from being carried into effect.
A deep student of church history, his letters show him trying every practical question by the tests of ancient authority as well as instructive piety, and, on these principles, already deploringthe undue elevation of the pulpit and debasement of the Altar to which exclusive preference of preaching had led. Missions had, since the days of Carey’s first opening of the subject become so predominant a thought with the Nonconformist bodies, and were often conducted so irregularly, that there was certain dread and distrust of them among the sober-minded and orthodox; but Heber was one of the first English churchmen who perceived that to enlarge her borders and strengthen her stakes was the bounden duty of the living Church. He was a fervent admirer of Henry Martyn, whose biography was published soon after the news of his death reached England, and his feeling found vent in that hymn so familiar to us all—“From Greenland’s icy mountains.”
He was meantime rising in influence and station,—Canon of St. Asaph, Preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, Select Preacher before the University. He was beloved by all ranks: by the poor for his boundless charity and sympathy; and by his equals, not only for these qualities, but for his sunny temper, bright wit, and playfulness, which showed in his conversation, his letters, and in many a droll, elegant, and scholarlyjeu d’esprit, thrown off by a mind that could do nothing without gracefulness. All this prosperity was alloyed only by such domestic sorrow as might be fitly termed gentle chastening. The death of his next brother, Thomas, who had acted as his curate, was a severe loss to him; and in the desire to make every affliction a stepping-stone in Christian progress, he began, from that date, a custom of composing a short collect-like prayer, veiled in Latin, on every marked occurrence in his life. The next occasion was, after several years of marriage, the birth of a little daughter, whom (in his own words) “he had the pleasure of seeing and caressing for six months,” ere she faded away, and died just before the Christmas of 1817. He never could speak of her without tears, and (his wife tells us) ever after added to his private prayers a petition to be worthy to rejoin his “sinless child.” His grief and his faith further found voice in the hymn, each verse of which begins with “Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee,” and which finishes—
“Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee,Whose God was thy ransom, thy Guardian and Guide.He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee,And death has no sting, for the Saviour has died.”
“Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee,Whose God was thy ransom, thy Guardian and Guide.He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee,And death has no sting, for the Saviour has died.”
Such had been the training of Reginald Heber, through the pleasant paths of successful scholarship and literature, and of well-beneficed country pastorship; a life perilous to spirituality and earnestness, but which he kept full of the salt of piety, charity and unwearied activity as parish priest, and as one of the voices of the Church. Such had been his life up to 1822, when, on the tidings of the death of Dr. Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta, his friend Charles Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for the affairs of India, offered him the appointment.
To a man of his present position, talents, and prospects at home, the preferment was not advantageous: the income, with the heavy attendant expenses, would very little increase his means; the promotion threw him out of the chances of the like at home; and the labour and toil of the half-constituted and enormous diocese, the needful struggles with English irreligion and native heathenism, and the perils of climate, offered a trying exchange for all that had made life delightful at Hodnet Rectory. A second little daughter too, whom he could not of course look to educating in India, rendered the decision more trying. But in his own peculiarly calm and simple way, he wrote: “I really should not think myself justified in declining a situation of so great usefulness, and for which, without vanity, I think myself not ill adapted, either from a love for the society and friendship of England, or from a hope, which may never be realized, of being some time or other in a situation of more importance at home.” At first, however, the fear for the child’s health induced him to decline, but only if anyone else equally suitable could be found; and finally he accepted it, with apparent coolness, veiling the deep spirit of zeal and enthusiasm that glowed within. It was not the ardent vehemence that enables some to follow their inward call, overcoming all obstacles, but it was calm obedience to a call from without. “After all,” he wrote, “I hope I am not enthusiastic in thinking that a clergyman is, like a soldier or a sailor, bound to go on any service, however remote or undesirable, where the course of his duty leads him, and my destiny (though there are some circumstances attending it which make my heart ache) has many, very many, advantages in an extended sphere of professional activity, in the indulgence of literary curiosity, and, what to me has many charms, the opportunity of seeing nature in some of its wildest and most majestic features.”
In the spring of 1823, he took leave of Hodnet, amid the tears of his parishioners; and on the 18th of May preached his last sermon in Lincoln’s Inn chapel, on the Atonement. On coming out, one of the most leading men among the Wesleyan Methodists could only express his feelings by exclaiming, “Thank God for that man! Thank God for that man!”
It is striking to find him in the full pressure of business, while preparing in London for his consecration and his voyage, making time for a letter to one of the Hodnet farmers, to warn him against habits of drunkenness, hoping that it would dwell with him “as a voice from the dead.” On the 1st of June, 1823, Reginald Heber was consecrated at Lambeth, and on the 10th sailed for India! He made several sketches along the southern coast, under one of which he wrote:—
“And we must have danger, and fever, and pain,Ere we look on the white rocks of Albion again.”
“And we must have danger, and fever, and pain,Ere we look on the white rocks of Albion again.”
A few days later, when passing the western coast of France on a Sunday, the sound of the bells suggested the following meditative verses:—
“Bounding along the obedient surges,Cheerly on her onward way,Her course the gallant vessel urgesAcross 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, neverThy 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 treasuresFar, far away, that Sabbath bell.Listen again! Thy wounded spiritShall soar from earth and seek aboveThat 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.”
“Bounding along the obedient surges,Cheerly on her onward way,Her course the gallant vessel urgesAcross 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, neverThy 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 treasuresFar, far away, that Sabbath bell.
Listen again! Thy wounded spiritShall soar from earth and seek aboveThat 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 anchored 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 assembled 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, passed 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 letterfrom 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 Saturday evening service in the verandah was thronged, the Englishsoldiers 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.
“Chuprassee,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 bea 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 class 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 pagoda, 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 god 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 classes ofapplicants; 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 thesurest 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 depôt 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 witha 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.”
“God bless you, Sir Thomas!” was all the Bishop could utter.
“And God blessyou, my lord!” was the fervent answer.
Before eighteen months had passed the two good men who exchanged this blessing, had met in Paradise!
The Bishop went on from Madras, travelling by dâk, 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 passing the last four days in the society of a Hindoo Prince, the Rajah of Tanjore, who quotes Fourcroy, Lavoilier, Linnæus, 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 celebratedmissionary, 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 nobleman, 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 gratitude, &c. So poor Seroojee must chew betel and sit in the zenana, and pursue the otheramusements 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 principal 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 God’s service on the part of the Company assisted 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 foronesuch 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 restthirty-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 destitution 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 sunshine among the shadows through which most of the labourers had to struggle, either for want ofmeans 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 dwellAbove this earth—so rich a spellFloats 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 unbeguiledTo idolize or wife or child,Such wedded souls our God shall ownFor faultless virgins round His throne.”
“And there are souls that seem to dwellAbove this earth—so rich a spellFloats 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 unbeguiledTo idolize or wife or child,Such wedded souls our God shall ownFor 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 amusement; 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 tutorship 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 tutorship. 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 ofthe 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 atellingforce 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 illustrative 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 inChrist. 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.”
Proprietary chapels have now nearly become extinct. They were an effect of the neglect of the heathenish eighteenth century, and one of the means of providing church room by private speculation; and thus they almost necessarily were liable to the abuses of popularity-hunting and of lack of care for individuals, especially the poor: but a man in thorough earnestness is sure to draw good even out of a defective system; and Daniel Wilson, sitting in his study which was connected with the chapel,became the counsellor of hundreds who sought spiritual advice and assistance, chiefly of the upper and well-to-do classes, but he took care to avoid wasting time over these conferences, and when it came to mere talk would put people’s hats and umbrellas into their hands. There were also large Sunday-schools connected with his chapel, and taught by the members of his congregation, and these led to the first organization of a district visitors’ society, one of the earliest attempts of the slowly reviving English Church to show her laity how to minister to the poor under pastoral direction.
His father-in-law, Mr. William Wilson, had purchased the advowson of the living of Islington, and, when it became vacant in 1824, presented it to him, when he carried thither all his vigour and thoroughness. Church building was his first necessity, and he absolutely prevailed on his parish to rate themselves for the purpose, so that three churches were begun almost at once, and by the time his Life was written in 1860 the great suburb had multiplied its single church in thirty-six years into fifteen. At Islington the chief sorrows of his life befel him. He had had six children, of whom one died an infant and two more in early childhood. The second son, John, after a boyhood of great promise, fell into temptation at the University and led a wild and degrading course; ending by his retirement to the Continent, where he died in 1833, after a very painful illness, in which he had evinced great agony of mind, which softened at length into repentance and hope. The eldest son, Daniel, who attended him on his death-bed, had taken holy orders and succeeded to his father’s former living of Warton; and one daughter, Eliza, born in 1814, survived to cheer his home when his wife, after some years of invalidism, died in 1827. Zealous, resolute, and hardworking, he never allowed sorrow to interfere with his work, and was soon in the midst of his confirmation classes, and of a scheme for educating young tradespeople on a more thorough and religious system.
In the meantime he had always loved and urged the missionary cause, and had consulted with Bishop Turner before he went out. When the news of his decease was received (the fourth Bishop to die at his post within nine years), the appointment began to be looked on as a sentence of death, and it was declined in succession by several eminent clergymen. Daniel Wilson had anxiously watched for the answer in each case, andwas suggesting several persons to Mr. Charles Grant, when the thought struck him, “Here I am, send me.” A widower of fifty-four years old, of much strength, and with no young children, seemed to him the fit person to volunteer to fill the breach; and he wrote stating, that if no one else could be found for the post, he was willing to offer himself. The appointment was accordingly given to him, after an interval of nine months since the see had become vacant, and an infinity of toil and arrangements crowded on him. Islington was resigned to his son Daniel, and he was consecrated by Archbishop Howley on the 29th of April, 1832, “the day of my espousals toChristmy Saviour,” as he wrote in his journal; and on the ensuing 18th of June he sailed with his daughter for Calcutta. The ship touched at the Cape, which under the government of Sir Lowry Cole was by no means in the same hopeless state of neglect as when Martyn had visited it. Bishop Wilson there held an ordination and a confirmation, the first for himself as well as for South Africa, whose Episcopate was not founded till twenty-three years later.
He landed at Calcutta on the 5th of November, 1832, and took possession of the large unfurnished house that had at last been wrung out of Government. He found only just enough chairs and tables, placed there by the Archdeacon, to suffice for immediate use; and was answered, when he asked why his orders that the place should be completely fitted up had not been attended to, “I thought this would be enough to last for six months,”—this being the term for which a Bishop of Calcutta was thought likely to need earthly furniture. But Bishop Wilson was resolved to take reasonable precaution, and not to be daunted, or to act as if he were afraid. He furnished the place, and rented a pleasant country-house, called the Hive, at Tittaghur, where he spent a few days of every week; and, having been told that much danger was incurred by the exertion of visitation tours before the constitution had become accustomed to the climate, he resolved to wait for two years before making any long journey; and, in the meantime, he was able to collect a great amount of information, as well as attending to the regulation of matters at head-quarters. He kept up more formality and state than Bishop Heber had done; and, of course, as the one had been censured for his simplicity, so the other was found fault with for pomp and stiffness. But thesewere minor points, chiefly belonging to the character of the two men, whose whole natures were in curious accordance with their prize performances at Oxford,—the one with all the warmth, fire, and animation of the poet of Palestine, sensitive to every impression, and making all serve to light his altar-flame; the other all common-sense, sincere, deep, and laborious, but with a narrower range of sympathies, and afraid of all that might distract attention from the one great subject. General literature had no charms for Wilson. He is believed never to have read one of Scott’s poems or novels; and the playful mirth that enlivened all Heber’s paths was not with him, though he had the equable cheerfulness of a faithful servant doing his Lord’s work. His daughter, soon after his arrival, married her cousin, Josiah Bateman, his chaplain (and biographer), and thus continued to be the mistress of her father’s house.
On the Whitsunday of 1833 the Bishop baptized one of those Hindoo gentlemen who are among the most satisfactory of Christian converts; they are free from the suspicion of interested motives which has always attached to the pariahs and low-caste people who hung about Serampore and its dependent stations, and, justly or unjustly, were accused of turning Christians when they had exhausted other resources of idleness and knavery. A curious instance of a thorough conversion happened the same year. A lad, educated like most other well-to-do Hindoos in the schools of the Church Missionary at Mirzampore, when about fifteen, became persuaded of the saving grace of Christianity, and determined to be baptized and openly forsake his idols. His parents persecuted him, and he fled to a friend, a Hindoo convert; but he was seized by his relations, and the case was referred to the Supreme Court, who decided that the father’s power over the son must not be interfered with; and the poor boy was dragged away, clinging to the barrister’s table, amid the shouts of the heathen and the tears of the Christians. The boy remained staunch, and three years later came again and received baptism; but his sufferings had injured his health, both of mind and body, and his promise of superior intelligence was blighted.
In 1834, the Bishop set off on his first long journey, which included Penang and Moulmein, where the Judsons had taken refuge after the Burmese war, and where he found, in the midst of half-cleared jungle and Buddhist temples full ofenormous idols, a school kept by an American master, so full of notions of equality, that, at the examination, he expected the Bishop to go to each class, not the class to the Bishop.
The Commissioner had built a church, the walls of teak slabs, and the pillars each a single teak-tree, and it was ready for consecration. After this and a confirmation, the Bishop went on his way to Ceylon, and then to the Madras Presidency, where he had already had a long correspondence with the pastors of the Christian congregations on the question of caste. Things had not prospered of late; and, to the dismay of the Bishop, he found that, in the course of the last year, 168 Christians had fallen back to heathenism, where, not having broken their caste, they could still be received and find a place. The truth was that, though caste might appear only a distinction of mere social rank, it was derived from a pagan superstition, and was a stronghold of heathenism. Schwartz was all his life trying to make it wear and die out, lest the violent renunciation should be too much for his converts’ faith. But his successors had allowed the feeling to retrograde; and Bishop Wilson found separate services, sides of the church allotted to the high and low castes, and the most unchristian distinctions made between them. He decided that toleration of the prejudice was only doing harm, and issued orders that henceforth catechumens preparing for baptism, confirmation, or communion, should be called on to renounce caste as a condition of admittance; and that, though the adult communicants should be gently dealt with, there should be no recognition of the distinction in the places in church, in the order of administering the Holy Communion, in marriages or processions, and that differences of food or dress, or marks on the forehead, should be discontinued. The clergy were in consternation, and made an appeal before they published the Bishop’s letter to their flocks; but they found his mind made up, and yielded. The lesser stations complied without much difficulty; but at Trichinopoly, Vepery, and Tanjore, there were many Soodras, the soldier-caste, professing to have come from Brahma’s shoulders, and second only to the Brahmins. They were desperately offended. At Trichinopoly, only seven Soodra families continued to attend the services, although the seceders behaved quietly, and offered no insults either to the clergy or the pariahs. At Vepery, on thereading of the Bishop’s letter, the whole Soodra population walked outen masse, except one catechist, who joined them afterwards. They then drew up a paper, declaring that they would not yield, and would neither come to church nor send their children to school, unless they continued to be distinguished; and they set up a service of their own in a chapel lent them by a missionary belonging to the London Society. He was, however, reprimanded for this by the committee which employed him at Madras, and the chapel was withdrawn; upon which the Soodras remained without any public worship whatever for five months, when the catechists and schoolmasters came forward and acknowledged their pride and contumacy, the children dropped into the schools, and the grown-up people, one by one, returned to church, but in their own way.
At Tanjore, the contest was a much harder one. Serfojee had died in 1834, and the son whom Bishop Heber had vainly tried to obtain for education was one of the ordinary specimens of indolent, useless rajahs, enjoying ease and display under British protection; but the Mission had gone on thriving as to numbers, though scarcely as to earnestness or energy; and the Christians numbered 7,000, with 107 catechists and four native clergy, under the management of Mr. Kohloff, almost the last of Schwartz’s fellow-workers. The Bishop’s letter was read aloud by him, after the sermon, on the 10th of November, 1833. There was an immediate clamour of all the Soodras, who would not be hushed by being reminded that they were in church, and, while Mr. Kohloff was being assisted from the pulpit, gathered round his wife and insulted her.
Letters passed between the Soodras and the missionaries. There was no denial that the Bishop’s command was right in itself; but an immense variety of excuses were offered for not complying with it, and only one of the four priests consented,—Nyanapracasem, an old man of eighty, who may be remembered as one of Schwartz’s earliest converts, and of the four priests ordained by the Lutherans,—with three catechists, and ten of the general body; all the others remained in a state of secession. When the first death took place among them, Nyanapracasem, the one conforming priest, was appointed to read the funeral service; but he fell sick, and the only substitute available on the spot was a low-caste catechist, a very respectable man, butwhom the Soodras silenced with threats, employing one of their own people in his stead. Next time, they borrowed the Roman Catholic burial-ground, and services were carried on, on Sunday, by one of the dissentient priests, but marriages were celebrated in the heathen fashion, and there was evidently a strong disposition to form a schism, which the reckless, easy, self-willed conduct of the Soodras showed would be Christianity only in name. There had even been an appeal to the Governor-General, and the Bishop felt the whole tone of Christianity in India to be at stake.
It was in the height of this crisis that his journey to Madras was made in the track of Bishop Heber. Twice he preached at Vepery, and the Soodras attended; but he asked no questions, and let them place themselves as they chose, and take precedence, intending to fight out the question at Tanjore.
There, at seven o’clock in the morning of January 10, 1835, on the bank of the Cavery River, he was received by all the faithful Christians and school-children, headed by Kohloff and Nyanapracasem, These were the two remaining fellow-workers of Schwartz. Kohloff, now becoming aged, had his hair long and loose round his florid German face; he was still a true German, full of simple kindness, and his English had a good deal of accent. His Hindoo companion was a beautiful old man, with long snowy hair flowing over his long white robes, who took the Bishop’s hand between both of his, and blessed God for his coming, hoping that as Elijah brought back the stiff-necked Israelites, so the Bishop might turn the hearts of the Soodras.
Late that afternoon, a great party of these assembled to lay their complaints before the Bishop, bringing their two dissentient priests. One was of doubtful character, and was unnoticed; but to the other, John Pillay, the Bishop addressed himself, telling him to assure the other Christians that his heart was full of love, and that he would hear their grievances, and answer them another time, when less weary with his journey.
Several spoke, and the Bishop listened to their individual cases. They were anxious to come and hear his sermon, but would only do so if allowed to sit apart; and to this, as one great object was to obtain their attention, the Bishop consented, with a reservation that it was only for that once. The church was thronged, and after a Tamul service, theBishop preached, pausing after every sentence that a catechist might render his words into Tamul. The text was, “Walk in love, as Christ also loved us,” and the latter part of his discourse was on the lesson from the Good Samaritan, as to “who is my neighbour.” There was at the end a long pause of breathless silence, and then he called on everyone present to offer up the following prayer: “Lord, give me a broken heart to receive the love of Christ, and obey His commands.” The whole congregation repeated the words aloud in Tamul, and then he gave the blessing and dismissed them.
After this there were a great number of private conferences. People came and owned that they had been very unhappy; religion had died in their hearts, and they had had no peace; but their wives were the great objectors—they feared whether they should marry their daughters, &c. &c. The two priests especially saw the badness of their standing-ground, but they should lose respect, they said. No Pariah seems to have been in holy orders, but if a Pariah catechist visited a sick person, he was not allowed to come under the roof, and the patient was carried out into the verandah. And then came a rather stormy conference with about 150 Soodras, which occupied two days, since every sentence had to pass through an interpreter. The objections were various, but as a body the resistance continued, and it was only individuals that came over; some of these, however, did, and it was so clear from all that had passed that to permit the distinctions was but a truckling to heathenism, that the Bishop was more than ever resolved on firmness. Two of the priests had conformed, and the Christianity of those who would not do so was plainly not worth having.
There was some polite intercourse with Serfojee’s son, whose taste was visible in the alteration of a fine statue of his father by Flaxman, from which the white marble turban had been removed to substitute a coloured one, with black feathers and tassels. In him the family has become extinct, since he only left a daughter, and the adoption of a son, after the old Hindoo fashion, has not been permitted by Government.
Thence, Bishop Wilson proceeded towards Trichinopoly. He encamped, by the way, at a place called Muttooputty, a large station on the Coleroon river, where the way had been so prepared for him that there was a grand throng of native Christians, untroubled about caste, and he was obliged literally to lengthenthe cords and strengthen the stakes of the large tent used as a chapel. It was one of the memorable days of joy that come now and then to support the laborious spirit of the faithful servant. “One such day as we have just passed is worth years of common service.”
At Trichinopoly, with the deepest sense of reverence, he visited the scene of Heber’s death, ministered at the same altar, and preached from the same pulpit, after an interval of nine years.
Here, his mode of dealing with the caste-question was thus: When he came robed into the church, he saw groups of natives standing about, instead of placing themselves like the others of the congregation. He went up to two, led them to seats, and his chaplain following, did the same; the rest were seated in like manner without resistance.
When the Celebration took place, the Bishop had given directions as to the order of things. First, a Soodra catechist communicated, then two Pariah catechists, then an English gentleman, next a Pariah, then two Eurasians; and thus without distinction, 147 communicated. The barrier was broken down, and the nucleus of a church without caste was formed.
This presidency of Madras was immediately after formed into a separate see, and given to Daniel Corrie, the friend of Martyn, while Dr. Thomas Carr became Bishop of Bombay.
On Wilson’s return to Tanjore he found an increasing though still small number had conformed, and before he left the place there were hopes of larger numbers. On his way back to Calcutta, he visited the horrible pagoda of Juggernaut (properly Jaghanatha, Lord of the World), which was still the centre of worship and pilgrimage; and though the self-immolation of the pilgrims beneath the car had been prohibited, yet the Company’s Government still fancied themselves justified in receiving a toll from the visitors to this shrine of cruelty and all uncleanness, up to 1839, when the disgrace was done away by Lord Auckland.
In the year 1836 another journey was made, first to Bombay and then further into the interior, to many places, never visited by a bishop before, and with no chaplain or anything to keep up the sense of religion. At Aurungabad, the utter ignorance of the English officers was appalling. The old Colonel-commandant had not heard a sermon for twenty years,and thought every sentence on the text, “Walk in love,” was a personal attack on himself. He refused to attend another service, or to bid the Bishop farewell! And when the Holy Communion was celebrated, nobody knew what the offertory meant, and scarcely any one was prepared to respond.
Yet in contrast to these English, a small band of Hindoos, four men, six women, and five children, presented themselves, asking permission to join in the service, and to have their children baptized. They had been once Roman Catholics, but an old Dutchwoman from Ceylon had taught them most of what they knew; and they had a Hindostanee prayer-book, whence they held a service every Sunday, but leaving out the Absolution and Benediction, which they rightly perceived to be priestly functions. Two of them were servants to an English officer, and they were all nearly related. They were perfectly respectable and trustworthy, and looked well dressed and intelligent. The Bishop tried to bring about an application from the Company to the Nizam, to defray the expenses of an occasional visit from a chaplain to the Christian officers and residents in his employ, but he was answered that “it would form a dangerous precedent.”