Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission fieldYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission field
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missionaries
then too strong for him; and thus it was that Serfojee was only one of
the many half-reclaimed Indian princes who have lived out their dreary,
useless lives under English protection, without accepting the one pearl
of great price which could alone have made them gainers.
It is just possible that there may have been too much of a certain sort
of acquiescence in Swartz's mind, missionary as he was. He did not
attack the system of caste, with its multitudinous separations and
distinctions. Of course he wished it to be abolished, but he accepted
converts without requiring its renunciation, allowed high-caste persons
to sit apart in the churches, and to communicate before Pariahs, and did
not interfere with their habits of touching no food that the very finger
of a person of a different caste had defiled. He no doubt thought these
things would wither away of themselves, but his having permitted them,
left a world of difficulty to his successors.
He lived, however, the life of a saint, nearly that of an ascetic. His
almost unfurnished house was shared with some younger missionary.
Kohloff, who was one of these, related in after years how plain their
diet was. Some tea in a jug, with boiling water poured over it and dry
bread broken into it, formed the breakfast, which lasted five minutes;
dinner, at one, was of broth or curry; and at eight at night they had
some meal or gruel. If wine were sent them, it was reserved for the
communions or for the sick. Swartz only began, very late in life, to
take a single glass in the middle of his Sunday services.
Every morning he assembled his native catechists at early prayer, and
appointed them their day's work. "You go there." "You do this." "You
call on such and such families." "You visit such a village." About four
o'clock they returned and made their report, when their master took them
all with him to the churchyard or some public place, or to the front of
the Mission-house, according to the season of the year, and there sat
either expounding the Scriptures to those who would come and listen, or
conversing with inquirers and objectors among the heathen. His manner
was mild, sometimes humorous, but very authoritative, and he would brook
neither idleness nor disobedience.
Over his Christian flock his authority was as complete as ever that of
Samuel could have been as a judge. If any of them did wrong, the
alternative was--
"Will you go to the Rajah's court, or be punished by me?"
"O Padre, you punish me!" was always the reply.
"Give him twenty strokes," said the Padre, and it was done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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