India, Its Life and ThoughtJones, John P. (John Peter)
Religion
India, Its Life and Thought
Jones, John P. (John Peter)
India -- Civilization; India -- Religion; Missions -- India
All know the works, the sufferings, and the results attained by that
great prophet of Burma, Adoniram Judson. He was a saint of the heroic
mould, and his influence will affect the history of that people for
centuries to come.
The American Baptist Mission overshadows, by its numbers and success,
all other bodies of missionaries in the land. And at the present time
their splendid force of workers is making a deep impress upon the
community.
But their success has been mostly achieved among a very peculiar
hill-tribe of that country,--the Karens. It was long after the
Baptists had begun work there that this low hill-tribe, of less than
two million people, was in the lowest depths of barbarism. Their
language was not reduced to writing, and consequently, they had no
literature whatever. But they had one interesting tradition. It had
come down to them, generation after generation, that their bible had
been lost, and that some day the Great Spirit would send a fair
brother from the West to restore unto them the message of God which
had disappeared. The "Fair Brother" came in the person of the American
missionary; and his message was received in the assured faith that it
was divinely sent and was the long-lost tradition of their tribe. From
that day forward, thousands of the Karen tribe have everywhere
accepted the Gospel of the Christ, until there are, at the present
time, connected with that mission alone, more than one hundred and
fifty thousand Karen converts.
And this is by no means all of the wonderful story of the regeneration
of this barbarous tribe. Either by a very wise missionary
statesmanship, or by a rare inspiration, such as we do not see
elsewhere in the East, these people have almost entirely assumed the
financial burdens of their own religious training and institutions,
and are always quick, even beyond their means, to respond to every
Gospel claim upon their purse. The story of their offerings, in view
of their extreme poverty, is marvellous in its self-denial and
outgoing generosity. The writer spent a few days at the missionary
centre in the outskirts of Rangoon. Upon that compound there was a
memorial church that had cost $30,000, of which the Karen Christians
had given all, save a grant made by government for a few adjoining
class-rooms. Three bungalows and other buildings of value are also
found there, and the whole property is owned, not by the mission, but
by the Karens themselves. Ten miles away from this is the largest
theological seminary in the East, with more than one hundred and forty
students under training. For the maintenance of this, again, those
poor Karen Christians gladly impose upon themselves a family tax, and
have the sweet consciousness that their youth are being trained for
Christian service through their own self-denying endeavour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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