Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877Kennedy, James
History
Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877
Kennedy, James
India -- Description and travel; India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Biography; Missionaries; Missions -- India
show the effect on the mind of a devoted missionary by English hostility
to the conversion of natives. On every side, from European as well as
from native society, there is every worldly obstacle to their embracing
the Gospel.
[Sidenote: GOVERNMENT OPPOSITION TO THE GOSPEL.]
At one time there were obstacles to the profession of Christianity which
do not now exist. When India was being brought under the sway of
England, our rulers regarded the Gospel as a disturbing and threatening
element, which ought to be carefully excluded. Long after the Christian
feeling at home had forced open the door, the Gospel was treated as an
intruder to be in every possible way thwarted and disgraced. In
illustration of the opposition the Gospel had to encounter, I quote a
few sentences from a recently-published volume, "Asiatic Studies,
Religious and Social," by Sir Alfred C. Lyall, K.C.B., the present
Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces:--"We disbursed
impartially to Hindus, Mussulmans, and Parsees, to heterodox and
orthodox, to Juggarnath's Car, and to the shrine of a Muhammadan who had
died fighting against infidels, perhaps against ourselves." "The chief
officers of the Company in India were so cautious to disown any
political connexion with Christianity that they were occasionally
reported to have no religion at all." "Up to the year 1831 native
Christians had been placed under the strongest civil disabilities by our
regulations.... Converts were liable to be deprived not only of
property, but of their wives and children; and they seem to have been
generally treated as unlucky outcasts, with whom no one need be at any
trouble of using any sort of consideration." We are told that they were
even forced by Government order to pull the car of Juggarnaut, and
severely punished if they refused. According to a parliamentary paper of
1832, "our interference extended over every detail of management: we
regulated funds, repaired buildings, kept in order cars and images,
appointed servants, and purveyed the various commodities required for
use of the pagodas." Under home pressure this state of things has
gradually given place to neutrality, which, if impartially maintained,
is I suppose the only policy open to us in the peculiar circumstances of
India.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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