Auld lang syne. Second series : $b My Indian friendsMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
History
Auld lang syne. Second series : $b My Indian friends
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
India; Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max), 1823-1900 -- Friends and associates
Judging from letters which I received from him from time to time, he
never quite recovered the balance of his mind. His trials had been too
much for him. Not only had he lost his father and his wife, but he
became separated even from his children, so that no cares of this world
should disturb his peace with God and in God. But to give up a
religion—the religion of our father and mother, the religion of our
childhood and of all our friends, however imperfect it may be from our
own point of view, inflicts a wound that heals but slowly, and is apt to
break open again and again. Why should missionaries fail to see this,
and expect from their heathen pupils sacrifices which they themselves
would shrink from by a natural instinct of self-preservation? It is no
answer to say that the religion of those whom they wish to bring over to
Christianity is antiquated, vulgar, hideous, and false. The religion in
which a man is born, the religion of a man’s father and mother, has
always something sacred in it that ought to be respected. Is there a
single missionary who, if he had been born a Hindu or a Parsi, would
have embraced Christianity without a struggle? When we consider how
unimportant the differences are between the religion of reformed and
unreformed Christians if compared with the treasures that both share in
common, why should it be such a wrench for a Roman Catholic to become a
Protestant, except that his father and mother were Roman Catholics? The
points of difference between them are all, without exception, the work
of men, and often of men who have no very high record in the pages of
history. Yet to give up the mass for the eucharist, the wafer for the
bread, the mixed for the pure wine, has often been too much even for a
truly Christian heart, and has separated those who were meant to be
brothers in Christ. I say all this only in order to make people
understand what trials and tortures Nehemiah Goreh had to undergo before
he could take that step which, from a missionary point of view, seems so
easy and natural. To be torn away from all our friends, to think that
they are all wrong and we alone are right, was too great an effort to a
sensitive mind, such as his was, and left a wound behind which it
required a very strong and healthy nature to bear and many years to
heal. That he should have become a kind of Christian Sannyâsin, or
anchorite, was natural; that he should have been attracted for a time by
childish ritualism was a pity. This, however, was chiefly due to
personal influences, and, if it in any way soothed his broken spirits,
no one would grudge him such anodynes. I was much touched when, in one
of his later letters, after expressing his perfect satisfaction with
what Christianity had given him, he added, “Yet, I often feel like a man
who has taken poison.” He was for many years a useful member of a
Christian brotherhood at Sigra, founded by the Rev. R. M. Benson, whom I
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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