India -- Description and travel; Missionaries -- India -- Biography; Missions -- India; Swartz, Christian Frederick, 1726-1798
The personality of Schwartz was unique. He seems to have combined, like
Gordon, a singular tenderness with heroic strength of purpose--a man of
action with a strain of mysticism, a very Bayard in purity and honour
in an age when reputations in India suffered loss. As will be seen in
these pages, he served the civil power well because the enemy could
implicitly trust him. In the audience chamber of a pagan tyrant he was
still a Christian missionary; he kept his hands clean of bribes, and
his conscience of compromise; his character was a testimony that “there
is no fear in love.”
He had to do his sowing on a very wild and stormy day, but, though
we have now established the Pax Britannica, some of his difficulties
still confront the modern missionary, and with all our progress and
accomplished methods we find ourselves even now wistfully experimenting
on problems which he too could not solve. If the compass of the present
work permitted, one might be tempted to discuss a few of these points
in modern missions, which Schwartz, standing on the threshold of the
new era, foresaw and did his best to meet. But we have travelled far
since then, and if this old-time missionary could re-visit India he
would marvel at the change. He would find us still puzzled with the
problems of caste, perfecting our widespread system of education, busy
with elaborate schemes of vernacular literature. He would see European
ladies carrying a sweet song and message of mercy behind the purdah,
crowds of patients waiting at the door of the medical missionary,
the suttee and the Juggernauth car stopped for ever, native judges
presiding in the courts, and a native episcopate an accomplished fact.
But Schwartz would also see that our western culture has armed the
educated Hindu with a scientific unbelief which is the destructive
enemy of his religion and bitterly assails our own. With so much to
thank God for he would also recognize that there is still need enough
for fervent prayer and faith that India may be saved.
I may add that the quotations in these pages from the letters and
journals of Schwartz are chiefly drawn from the original “Remains”
published in 1826, and the two volumes of Dean Pearson’s “Memoirs” of
1839, supplemented by a few scattered gleanings from other fields.
I should like also to express my indebtedness to the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, the Church Missionary Society, and many literary friends for
placing at my disposal books of great service.
* * * * *
The publishers have to thank the Rev. F. Penny for three illustrations
from vol. i. of “The Church in Madras,” and the Rev. J. A. Sharrock
for one illustration from “South Indian Missions.”
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE iii
I. HOW CHRISTIANITY CAME TO INDIA 1
II. THE FRIAR AND THE LUTHERAN 11
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