CHAPTER XIVPreaching in Four Asiatic Languages
Inother chapters are given the facts concerning the beginnings and development of the English work in Rangoon. The beginning among the natives is of equal interest to the inquirer after missionary information. When a mission without resources begins operations in a foreign country, it may be supposed that it would be very modest in its undertaking. But in the case of Methodism in Burma, and some other parts of Southern Asia as well, rightly or wrongly, it has pursued exactly the opposite course. With a mere handful of workers, including missionaries and their helpers, our people have from the beginning undertaken about every kind of mission work possible. Within two weeks from the time Bishop Thoburn landed in Rangoon he had organized an English Church of seventy members and probationers, and from the membership thus brought together there were volunteer workers raised up to preach among peoples of three different native languages. As the streets were always thronged with these people, it was always easy to get a congregation. This hopeful beginning was in perfect keeping with the theory of missions long in vogue in a large portionof India—that from these self-supporting English Churches there would be raised up the workers who would evangelize the heathen peoples around them. William Taylor was the great apostle of this policy, and most of the Methodist missions not included in the North India Conference were founded on this theory by him and those that caught his spirit.
This theory has fatal defects we now know, but it was believed and put to the test in the way indicated; and while it did not succeed in accomplishing all that it was hoped at the beginning, it did accomplish more than any other theory of missions has done in the same time in proportion to the number of missionaries employed, while its expenditure of mission money for years was almost nothing. This movement carried Methodism into every city in Southern Asia that had a considerable English-speaking population. It gave us English Churches in all these centers. Our methods aroused other missions to do more for these people than they had ever done before. More than this, it committed us to general mission work over this area, and that with no outlay of mission money until safe foundations were laid in all the centers occupied.
Moved by this impulse and flushed with the warmth of a great revival, these laymen in Rangoon began to preach in Tamil, Telegu, and Hindustani. It will be noticed that all these are languages of India proper, indicating that these English-speaking laymen had themselves come fromIndia, and so were familiar with the languages of the native immigrants to Burma. But most of our English-speaking laymen were from Madras or the Telegu country, so that the preaching in Tamil and Telegu were continued; but for a long time we were unable to keep a layman interested who could preach in Hindustani, and it was discontinued, except at irregular intervals.
There were converts from among the heathen Tamil and Telegu people from the start. They were baptized, and later on some Church organizations were formed and some schools kept for the children of these people. Preaching was kept up in the English Church and at half a dozen other places in Rangoon; in Dalla, across the Rangoon River from Rangoon, among the coolies in the mills, and in the jungle villages, and in Toiurgoo, and later in Pegu on the railway. The Tamils and the Telegus were generally found together, and we could sometimes get a layman who could preach in both languages, though generally we had to engage different preachers.
As time went on we learned several important facts about these people and this work that we did not know at first. We very soon discovered that we lost heavily among our converts by these immigrants returning to their own land, and that our people were not so distributed in India that they could care for them in their native land on their return. But this continual loss made it out of the question to hope for much permanency in this kind of work. Another weakness was that the men didnot bring their families with them. And while we got the men converted, they were still connected with heathen relatives in India to whom they would return. But the immediate weakness was in the fact that there were few women and children to complete the Christian families and Christian communities. So family life, school, and Sunday-school work was not possible.
As the work extended somewhat, we were met by the fact that we must depend on paid agents, and could not hope to go beyond a very narrow limit by unpaid volunteer preaching and subpastoral care. Applicants for such places were not wanting. Many of these men in course of years applied, and in turn were found, with few exceptions, wholly unfit for permanent responsibility. In the case of the Tamils especially, this was true. The breakdown of this class of mission employees was nearly complete. This was due to two causes. The one seems to be in the Tamil race itself. They do seem to lack the element of reliability generally in everything that has not the highest monetary value attainable as its goal. It is astonishing how many of these employees failed us at this point. There was the further difficulty, in that we had to employ the men who drifted into Burma as the dislodged members of other missions in India, who were either unwilling to accept the regulations of their own missions, or were not of its better material. We seldom employed a man without certificate of character, and we imported some agents under special recommendation; but our experiencewith them was generally unsatisfactory for the highest interest of the mission. But I am happy to record that some were very true and reliable.
But the greatest weakness was on our part, in being unable to give the missionary supervision necessary to insure the highest success. We have never been strong enough to give a missionary to this work among immigrants to Burma. Without this close missionary supervision, we can not hope to succeed largely. Then we did not have the money to extend the work largely so as to acquire the momentum, and that would place at our disposal enough candidates to enable us to sift them and employ only the most worthy. But a great deal of good has been done with a very little outlay of money, and this work will be continued, though only incidental to the larger mission plans. We must make the Burmese people our real objective.
For reasons already given, we have been slow in taking up work among the Burmese people. These reasons were in brief, too few missionaries to spare even one man or woman to make the beginning, and for years no missionary appropriation at all was made to Burma. When a little money was given us, we made the best use of it. But we did baptize Burmese before we had any missionary appropriations or missionary to these people. Some inquirers from several miles out on the Pegu River came into Rangoon, and sought out our missionaries. Bishop Thoburn being in Rangoon at the time, a boat was secured and a party madeup to visit the village and investigate this new opening. The village was found, and the bishop preached, with a young Eurasian girl as his interpreter. The interest created was considerable, and before the day was over several candidates were baptized. The initial step could not be followed up as we could wish, but two years later I arrived in Burma, and after some months was able to visit this village and the surrounding country. It was a great joy to find some of these converts still true to all they knew of the gospel. One of them could read the Bible, and he had a copy of the good Book and some good tracts. Later on in this region, but a little further from Rangoon, we had our first considerable awakening among the people.
In Rangoon we had one Burmese boys’ school, which for two or three years gave promise of much usefulness. These boys came from the country and city, and were bright young lads from nine to fifteen years of age. They were instructed in the secular studies, and at the same time taught the Bible. A Sunday-school was kept up also. If this school could have been well cared for under a missionary who knew the language, it could have become largely useful and permanent. It finally was broken up by the Burmese teacher going wrong. But if a trained missionary had been in charge, another teacher could have been employed and the school sustained. During the continuance of this school there were a number of boys baptized in the school, and that with their relatives’knowledge, and there was no special opposition to it. Bishop Thoburn was much impressed with this fact, as such an occurrence in one of the schools in India among the Hindu or Mohammedan boys would have broken up the school. In all the schools we have had, mostly in large villages in the district, the same accessibility to the young Burman has been found.
Among the missions which have become strong enough to found a good school or system of schools, they find not only that the Burmese are ready to send their boys and pay the fees according to the Government school code, but that these same schools are the best missionary agencies, both for the conversion of the Burmese and the Christian training of prospective preachers and teachers. For the latter, years under immediate Christian training are indispensable. As Buddhism is founded on a system of monastic schools, where the boys are indoctrinated in the teachings of that faith, it would seem that any policy which looks to the overthrow of Buddhism should contemplate replacing these Buddhist schools with Christian schools. And when we find the Buddhists themselves seeking education in Christian schools, and willing to pay good fees for the privilege, the prospect for the Christian schools becoming the greatest auxiliary of evangelism is very encouraging. It is my conviction that no nonchristian country in the world presents the prospect of extensive usefulness of the Christian system equal to Burma.
So eager were we to begin mission work amongthe Burmese, that we took up with whatever opening presented itself. So sure were we that we would not get the ear of the home Church, and so get the necessary funds really to establish the Burmese mission work, that we were ready to accept whatever the field offered that promised to give us access to the Burmese people.
Our first opportunity was thrust upon us. We embraced it with perhaps too much eagerness. But this is a question raised in the light of subsequent experience which no man could foresee. In the early part of 1893, I received a message from the deputy commissioner of the Pegu District, saying that he was opening a large tract of newly-drained rice land to settlement and cultivation in his district, and if I would start a colony of Burmese cultivators on it, he would put at the disposal of the mission from two to three thousand acres of land. This was a very singular proposition, as I had never seen that official but once, and had never been in that part of his district, and had not planned such an undertaking. I went up and made a hurried investigation of the region, and found it a part of a large plain that for a short time each year had too much water for even rice cultivation, which grows in water often a foot deep. The Government felt certain its new drainage canals, dug at considerable expense, would drain this plain. And as its soil was the most fertile possible, and covered with a light grass, which would easily yield to the ordinary native plow, it seemed desirable to co-operate with the district officials, and take up alarge section of the land. The deputy commissioner offered to put at our disposal three thousand acres of land, for which we were to have a title as soon as we put it under cultivation. Having no mission money of any account to go on in the conventional method of founding a mission, it does not at all seem to be wondered at that this inviting offer of land was looked upon as a providential way of founding an industrial mission.
Just at this time, in a thickly-populated part of the district, some forty miles away, a company of twenty-eight Burmans, whom I had not seen before, sought me out, and asked me to help them get some land. Taken with the offer of the land by the district officer, it seemed a rare opportunity to get forward with our mission.
The season being far advanced, it was imperatively necessary to act quickly because these Burmans had to make their arrangements for the year, and the opportunity to get this land or any other so well situated we thought would never come again. This combination of urgent features led us to take the land and make the venture at once.
There was a great deal of planning to launch such a scheme. We did not want to be involved financially. We did want to lay a good foundation of evangelism and to establish schools. The plan finally adopted was that we were to aid the Burmans in their dealings with the Government, and in selling their rice. We were to furnish schools for their children and to preach to them. But we were not to become financially involved, either forthe running expenses of the colony, or for the tax due the Government. The plan was one of mutual helpfulness. To this plan all parties cheerfully agreed.
It was nearly time for the rains to begin when the papers were secured allowing us to move upon the land. Meantime a good many of the people who would have gone with us a month earlier dropped out during the delay in getting the land. But we succeeded in gathering one hundred and twenty people, and moved on to the land about the first of May. We still had time to build a village out of the bamboo poles and thatch, out of which these cultivators’ houses are always made. This was rather a hopeful beginning, and we had assurance of twice as many people to follow.
Just at this time we met with an example of the careless disregard of a financial obligation often found in the Burman. His cool indifference to a promise, however well secured, is frequently refreshing in its audacity. The Burmans were to furnish all the cattle to work the land. We were to lay out no money whatever on the business features of the colony. Four head men of the colony had been recognized by the deputy commissioner. They had pledgedtwo hundred cattlesecurity for the tax due on the land. Their cattle would have been entirely sufficient to cultivate at least a thousand acres the first year. But when the houses were built and the colony began business, it became clear that only a small number of these cattle were really in the hands of the colonists. Theirexplanation was that many of the men having most cattle dropped out, as the uncertainties of getting the land for the crop remained over the venture. This we learned later was true in part. More of them had dropped out because they did not want to put in all their cattle, while some of the colonists had none, or only a few, and they were heavily mortgaged.
But these men had pledged to the Government, officially, cattle which they did not possess. In this they deceived us, a not very difficult matter, as we were new to the country and unacquainted with the characteristics of the Burmese people. But if we were deceived, the deputy commissioner had more reason to regret having been duped, as he was an officer in the province for many years, and supposed he knew the Burman. He also drew up the revenue bond which they signed. He indeed planned and extended this bond, entirely apart from the revenue regulations, I believe. Therefore, when we reproached ourselves in not being as farsighted as we should have been, we still could shield our humiliation behind the much greater defeat of the pet measure of this official.
If we had been willing simply to save the mission from all financial obligations, and retreat from the enterprise without any dishonor, we could have done so when we learned that these Burmans were unable to carry out their part of the contract. But it would have been equivalent to the utter collapse of the enterprise. While we were in no way financially obligated to meet what they had failed tomeet under our general agreement, yet in my mind I have never been convinced that it would have been the wisest thing to do, even if we could have foreseen the final outcome, which we did not at that time even suspect. Then every honorable man must give his character to the enterprise he launches.
Our second surprise came only a few weeks later. I had secured money outside of mission funds, for we had none of the latter, and bought sufficient cattle for the colony. This was beyond all our agreement. The men began work well enough, and soon had a promising beginning of cultivation. As the young rice began to show in the fields, the water which had been slowly rising over the plain during the increasing rains suddenly covered all the fields to a dangerous depth. A foot of extra water will not hurt much if it goes down within two or three days. But this flooding of our land covered a score of square miles of the country. Then it slowly dawned on us that the Government engineers’ drainage system was a failure, and with it our colony was doomed. We had depended upon the work of the engineers, and their canals could not carry off the water, and we were the sufferers. The colony slowly melted away while the water remained.
Let it be noted that though the Burmans failed us, and some of our acutely sympathetic friends have assured us all these years that this failure of the Burmese character was inevitable, yet it was the failure of the work of the Government engineersthat destroyed our colony. The Burmans were at work until the floods came, and they remained weeks after all ordinary hope of making a crop was gone; while the failure of the drainage scheme developed early, and the whole plain remained flooded for six years until supplementary canals were dug. If we failed by overconfidence in the adroit Burman, we failed with double effect when we trusted to the skill of the Government engineers.
A very unpleasant incident occurred about the time the colony was drowned out. The deputy commissioner, who had gone out of his way to induce us officially to enter upon this colony scheme, turned against us in a very unaccountable way. He misrepresented our undertaking to his superiors. He accused us of exacting oppressive terms of the Burmans, when the exact opposite was true. We had gone far beyond all our agreement with them, and gave them better terms than any other people ever gave to any cultivator in Burma. In the end it was easy enough to show wherein this unwise official was wholly in error. But it was not until his official opposition had wrought its work on scattering the colony, and had made success in recognition impossible. This episode is an unpleasant matter to record. I would omit it entirely if it did not bear a vital relation to the defeat of a missionary enterprise. But I am glad to be able to say that he is the only official of British blood who ever gave our mission or missionaries in Burma during my experience thereany annoyance or ungenerous treatment in a business way. The officials have been courteous gentlemen always, and I have been much in business transactions with all classes of them for a decade. Our missionaries of long experience in other parts of the empire have been delighted in making much the same report.
While the colony was broken up and scattered in a way that forebade us to hope for any good to result from our undertaking, it was not really so bad as we believed at the time. We had not baptized any of the colonists, though a number of them had indicated that they wished baptism in the early beginnings of the colony. When they scattered abroad in the country doubtless they made reports very discouraging. But we have much reason to know that there came to be quite a general feeling that we had sought the good of the people. There have been many evidences of this, but that which is clearest proof, is that every year since Burmans in the same neighborhood have urged us to undertake some such enterprise again. But there were other evidences.
The colony was begun in April, 1893, and was abandoned entirely by the end of the year. Just at this time Rev. G. J. Schilling and wife came to us to take up the Burmese work. I had been the only man among our small band of missionaries for nearly three years. My assistants were supplies picked up in the country. I got very weary often with the heat and much work. But I was often worn greatly for lack of counsel in the responsibilitiesof the mission. There have always been some of the truest friends among the laymen in Rangoon, but naturally they can not take the responsible care of the mission. The coming of Mr. and Mrs. Schilling was a great joy to me and all our lady missionaries.
A little incident occurred the second day after the arrival of our friends, which shows the playful side of missionary life. They arrived in the afternoon, and early next morning I took Mr. Schilling with me a day’s journey by steam launch through one of Lower Burma’s many tidal creeks to a village where we had some Christians. We were so busy we did not allow the new missionary even a day to look around the city of Rangoon, but hurried him immediately into the district. I had the journey planned, and could not delay the trip for pressure of work in the city.
At six o’clock in the evening we arrived at the village of Thongwa, a place of five thousand people. After some three hours’ looking about the town we were tired, and as always in Burma when taking exercise, very much heated. I proposed a swim in the river to cool us down so we could sleep. Mr. Schilling, being a strong swimmer, plunged out into the stream, and did not pause till he reached the opposite side of the river. I, being a very moderate swimmer, remained near the shore. But I was impressed with the dark river lined with palm-trees on a moonless night, with no light except from the stars and a faint glimmer from the lamps of the village. I wonderedat the temerity of my fellow-missionary on this, his first night in a tropical country! Perhaps I was not wholly innocent in the practical joke I attempted. Just as I heard a splash on the opposite side of the stream I called out, “Brother Schilling, I forgot to tell you that there are alligators in this river.” There was a splash, a plunge, and heavy breathing of a swimmer exerting all his power in the haste to recross the stream. I was amused at the effect of this bit of information on the missionary recruit. But his amusement arrived only as an afterthought. His first efforts were all spent in getting to my side of the river. He reasoned, “In haste there is safety.” When he recovered his breath he told me that just as I shouted “alligator” he had stepped on some slippery member of the tribe that lives in the muddy ooze of all tropical tidal creeks, and to his imagination the word “alligator” made that squirming creature a very real menace to his personal safety. There were alligators in the stream, but they were several miles further down and, as far as I knew, quite harmless.
Another experience which befell some of us some months before this had features about it too grim for humor, but which may be recorded to show the reality of life in a tropical land. Shortly after the colony was flooded, I made one of my visits to the people. Several times I had to travel in a small boat, a dug-out log. To return to Rangoon I took to the stream after nightfall, and traveled within a mile or two of the railway, and then,the current of the stream becoming too swift for the oarsman, we took to the water, and waded against the current until we reached the station. The particular occurrence occurred when the water was at its highest over an area many miles. The occasion of my making these journeys at night was that I could catch a train bringing me to Rangoon in the morning for my many duties there. As the whole country was flooded, we undertook to guide our boat thirteen miles from the colony to the railway all over an overflowed, treeless plain. Our party consisted of a young Swiss I had in charge of the colony, a Malay servant of the Swiss, who acted as steersman, and a Telegu, a very lazy man, who would not row, and so got a free ride, grudgingly allowed by myself. The Swiss and I had to do all the rowing, no easy task through the protruding elephant grass, which rose several feet above the water in some places. In addition, I undertook to pilot the boat, the open hollow-log canoe, always difficult to keep bottom downward. Without any object to serve as a guide, my own sense of locality, as we had no compass, being my only resource, the downpour of rain every half-hour—all made a combination of circumstances calculated to fill us with doubts as to our success in reaching the railway at all, while the dark hours of the night passed slowly on. We had no light with us, and at times it was exceedingly dark; but the moon showed its half-filled face occasionally. Late in the night we came near to some abandoned grass hut. As an unusuallyheavy storm was approaching, revealed to us by the beating of the rain on the quiet water of the plain, we concluded to steer our unstable craft in through the open doorway of the hut. There were several feet of water in the hut and on the adjacent fields. As the hut was large enough to accommodate our boat and the roof was intact, we hoped to have shelter until the rain had passed.
We had our misgivings, because we feared the snakes, driven from the grass of the plain by the water, would be finding quarters in the house. This proved to be a very true surmise. We had just got into the house, when our free passenger, the Telegu, took out his matchbox and a cigar and prepared to smoke. I thought I could use that match to better advantage, and demanded it. As the match flashed and then burned steadily for a moment, we searched the thatch sides and roof and bamboo supports for snakes. We were not disappointed. Here and there were the glistening coils of snakes tucked away; but our greatest nervous shock came on looking immediately over our heads, when we were startled to see a very large snake coiled on top of the rafter, while the glistening scales of his whitish belly were only two or three feet above some of our heads. We immediately prepared to leave this place in possession of its venomous occupants. Softly we moved lest we shake snakes into our boat. The Swiss was very eager to avoid colliding with a post and shaking a snake into the boat, especially as we were all barefooted, having removed our shoes.
We took to the storm again, the worst of that weary wet night, thankful to have escaped keeping company with the snakes. About one o’clock at night we found the railroad, and rested until the train came. I look back on that night’s experience with vivid recollections. The long piloting of the boat without guide of any kind for thirteen miles, and then to have made our exact destination, was no ordinary achievement, of which I have always had some pride. The experience with the snakes in the abandoned house seen by the flash of a match makes a memory too vivid to avoid an inward squirming to this day. These disconnected experiences are given to break the monotony of prosaic account of mission work, and to indicate to the reader that there are realities in journeyings about the inhabited parts of a tropical country calculated to impress the memory.
Mr. Schilling’s coming to us was very timely. He began Burmese very soon, in which Mr. Robertson joined him. We at once planned to open a station for a missionary outside of Rangoon. We selected Pegu, a town on the railway fifty-six miles from the capital city, and on the road to Mandalay. We chose this town because it was the nearest station to our broken-up colony, from which also we could work another region which had been given to the people for the colony, and from whence we could reach half a hundred villages of Burmans unsought by any missionary. We needed a town, also, where we could have a physician for the missionary’s family. A place was desiredwhere land and missionary buildings could be secured economically.
Large Image at Pegu
Large Image at Pegu
Mr. Schilling was supported by the vigorous missionary Church of Montclair, New Jersey. They paid his passage and his salary, and for the mission house. So prompt was their response and so generous, that the mission was very greatly uplifted. Mr. Robertson lived with Mr. Schilling, and they both made rapid progress in learning the language. In a few months inquirers began to be found. Some lapsed Christians were picked up, and they tried to work them into some Christian usefulness. Before the end of the year they were beginning to preach in the vernacular. Altogether our prospect of doing mission work among the Burmese was becoming promising, and we were all filled with cheer.
Within a little more than a year each of these brethren was doing aggressive evangelistic work. Mr. Schilling remained at Pegu, and traveled somewhat widely in the regions east and north. Mr. Robertson was given the district south of Pegu and east of Rangoon. He lived at Thongwa, the village where our Burmese work was first undertaken in a systematic way. Mr. Robertson had married Miss Haskew, of Calcutta.
Mr. Schilling, at the suggestion of some of the Burmese who had been with us in the colony enterprise, organized a new movement to build a village near the place where we had formerly located, but not subject to floods, into which the Christians and their families would move, separating theChristian community and providing a school for their children. About one hundred and fifty people came to the village, and a simple church was built and a school begun. Quite a number of these people were with us in the original enterprise, and they and their friends had had some Christian instruction. Mr. Schilling preached earnestly to the village, and baptized about thirty people in a few months’ time. So we came to have a visible Christian community in the wake of our colony scheme, and that within two years of our first beginning. If, as we are accustomed to say, we failed in the colony, still but for the colony we would not have been in that region at all. If we had not founded the colony, we would not have had a village. We are encouraged this much, that though we failed in our unusual departure in this region for reasons stated, we had more to show at the end of the two years from the failure than the most successful enterprise on the conventional mission lines that I know of in Burma has had during an equal length of time at the beginning of their history. If we count the money invested, the same comparison holds good.
The village still exists, and though it has suffered many vicissitudes, due in part to the nature of pioneer mission work, and partly to lack of continuous missionary direction, yet we have contact with the entire community of that region, and within the last year and a half our missionary in charge has baptized a number of converts in the village and community.
Before a year from the time he took up his residence in Thongwa, Mr. Robertson’s health failed seriously, and he had to give up his labors and go to the hills of India. This was in 1896. At first we thought he would soon be with us again; but this was not to be. He has been kept in India by the exigencies of his health at first, and latterly by the exigencies of the work. The Thongwa circuit has been supplied as best we could do it to this day, and has never had continuous missionary residence or supervision such as is needed. It has had only such attention as could be given it by men whose hands were more than full elsewhere.
During 1896 two young men were sent out by individuals who wished to do a generous thing for missions through a representative. Mr. Krull arrived in April, and Mr. Swann came in October. Much was hoped from this arrangement. The young men were religious, and faithful in their efforts. A mistake had been made in both cases, in that neither man was educated sufficiently to enable him to master a foreign tongue, or to meet the responsibility of leadership. After a few months the supporter of Mr. Swann declined to pay the small salary he had agreed upon, and the young man had to retire from the field, as he was not sent out by the Mission Board. Mr. Krull continued as an auxiliary mission agent for nearly five years, for which he contracted, and his friend loyally supported him to the end. Then, he being convinced that he was not adapted to do the work of a missionary, returned and began secular work.However, he still has responsibilities as a local preacher.
These young men were not qualified for the work for which they were chosen. In this they were not to blame, as they could not have understood the needs of a mission field. They were not selected by a Mission Board. But the whole experience is added to like experience elsewhere in proof that the best way to aid missions is through regular channels, or through men whose judgment has been proven in responsible positions.
Mr. Schilling’s health was impaired during 1897, and early in 1898 he and his family returned to America. So within two years we lost two missionary families from our ranks, greatly to the distress of those that remained, and the detriment of the entire work. Our promising beginnings among the Burmese suffered most.
For a year we awaited re-enforcements. Early in 1899, Rev. Mr. Leonard and wife were sent to us from India. Mr. Leonard at once moved into the mission-house at Pegu. Without delay he began the study of the Burmese language, and as he had high linguistic ability, he acquired a working use of the language. Before the end of the year he was preaching without an interpreter, and was doing some necessary translation.
One of the first steps towards putting the Burmese work on a better foundation was the beginning of a school for the boys of our Burmese Christians. For years I had hoped to see this done. Pegu had been chosen for the residence of a missionarypartly with this end in view, as it is accessible, is free from some of the evils of a great city like Rangoon, and simple habits of life can be maintained more easily. The last is most important. Expensive habits are so easily learned and so difficult to unlearn, that we can not be too careful about the training of the children of our Christian community.
This school was begun with about six boys, and soon grew to an attendance of twenty. Some of these paid full school fees. Their instruction was the best. They were given regular lessons in secular subjects and daily Bible instruction. Much of the latter was committed to memory. It would surprise some of our Sunday-schools and some of our Christian people to find how carefully the Bible is taught in mission schools. Mr. Leonard did most thorough work in this matter, and we hope in this school to prepare for future service promising boys. Those who know what it means to work with the only material available in the beginning of a mission can appreciate our solicitude for enough properly-trained workers. These preachers and teachers so much needed must come from our own schools.
Mr. Leonard has been very successful in getting access to the Burmese. He baptized more than one hundred converts from Buddhism during 1900. This shows how accessible the Burmese people are. If it were true that the Burmese have been exceptionally hard to reach hitherto, it is not so now. We have access to all classes of them,and we are positive of winning them to Christ and of founding our Church among them just as rapidly as we can be re-enforced to do this work. Mr. Leonard has twice the territory to look after that one missionary should have.
Our latest work to be done is that among the Chinese. We were led into this work by two circumstances. In Rangoon we found a few Chinese Christians who were not looked after by anybody, and to these were added some of our own Chinese converts from Malaysia and some from China. As Rangoon and Burma are the natural termini of the immigrants from China by sea and overland, we have a large Chinese population in Rangoon, and this same population is very evenly distributed in all important villages of the province. These Chinamen marry Burmese women, so that they become identified with the Burmese people. As we aimed at the conversion of the Burmese, it was easy to begin preaching for those that were Christians, and to fortify the foundation of our mission to the Burmese.
As in other work, we had to employ just such preachers as we could pick up. But in 1897 we secured a young man trained by Dr. West, of Penang, who has done faithful preaching in Rangoon and vicinity. There have been some thirty baptisms since he came to us. This work is so important that it must be done by somebody. There is a demand for as great a school for these people as we have founded in Singapore or Penang. But its support is not in sight.