CHAPTER III

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THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN INDIA

[Sidenote: The Land.] The pen seems to falter before the task of describing India, with its varied landscapes, its dense population, its fascinating history, its great learning, its dark ignorance. Its area is one million eight hundred thousand square miles, which is seven times that of the German Empire and fifteen times that of the British Isles. From north to south it measures about one thousand nine hundred miles and the distance across the upper part of its great triangle is about the same. In the north the high wall of the Himalaya Mountains separates it from the rest of Asia; below lies the broad valley of the Ganges River; still farther to the south a high table-land. There are all varieties of temperature, climate and landscape.

[Sidenote: The People.] Even more varied than the temperature and the landscape is the population, which numbers about three hundred and twenty millions or about one fifth of the population of the globe. The people are divided chiefly into two large groups, the Aryans who live for the most part in the north and who have continued the ancient Indian civilization, and the Dravidians in the south who in development belong among the “nature peoples.” In addition there are about sixty-five million Mohammedans, of many races and nations, whose religion is a uniting bond. The Indians speak in all one hundred and forty-seven languages and dialects.

[Sidenote: The Religions.] The chief religion of India is thus described by Doctor Warneck. “Two hundred and eight millions have been won by Brahmanical Hinduism, which combines the most varied forms from the sublimest philosophy to the coarsest idolatry, profound speculations and the wildest fantasies, even childish absurdities, moral truths and immoral myths in wonderful mixture.” The Indian believes in so many gods that it is difficult for him to conceive of one God. Next to Brahmanism in number of adherents comes Mohammedanism and below it the demon worship of the mountain tribes.

[Sidenote: The Caste System.] In addition to the many perpendicular divisions of the people into religious sects, there are the horizontal divisions of caste. This strange institution from which emancipation is almost impossible is an immeasurable hindrance to Christian missions. We have been taught that there are four castes, (1) priests, (2) warriors, (3) merchants and _sudra_, including peasants, artisans and servants, and (4) outcastes. But these are only general divisions. In South India there are said to be nineteen thousand caste divisions. Every trade becomes a caste, and even the Christian Church is regarded as a caste.

[Illustration: CHAPEL OF LEPER ASYLUM, KODUR, INDIA. (JOINT SYNOD OF OHIO)]

[Illustration: INMATES OF LEPER ASYLUM.]

[Sidenote: The Moral Condition of India.] [5]“The moral condition of the people should be described as one of apathy or even deadness rather than as one of violent and malignant opposition to virtue. Their lives are destitute of stimulus and incentive. Their religion furnishes no motive for the present and incites no aspiration for the future. The thought of bettering their own condition or of doing aught to benefit another’s is foreign to their minds. The Oriental doctrine of fate is ever present to quench all upward endeavor. It is their destiny to be what and as they are, and who are they to contend with destiny? Their chief faults are licentiousness and lack of truthfulness. Intemperance is not usually a vice of the Hindu people, though in recent years the introduction of cheap foreign liquors, and the course of the government in licensing drinking-places, has stimulated the use of intoxicating liquor among all classes. The disposition of the people is mild, and crimes are no more common among them than among the people of other races.”

Footnote 5:

_Encyclopedia of Missions_: “India”.

Of the evils of child marriage and the wrongs of widowhood we need take no space to tell. To him who does not believe in missions, who holds that for India its native religions are best, its own thought sufficient, it is only necessary to point to the two million wives under ten years of age or to the evils of the temple system. India still requires help from without and from above.

[Sidenote: The English in India.] About the year 1000 a Mohammedan conqueror entered India from Afghanistan and gradually all India was brought under Moslem control. There was continual strife, however, between the Moslems and the original Hindus who, here and there, were able to rise against the galling rule of their conquerors. Early in the Seventeenth Century the English came to India first as humble merchants, then as rulers. When in 1857 the India mutiny, fomented by dispossessed native princes, shook the power of the great East India Company, the English government took the place of the company and India became British territory.

To-day the fourteen provinces, in which are six hundred and seventy-five native states, are British soil. Whatever we may think the right or wrong of the power by which Great Britain has seized and held her vast possessions, we can feel only admiration for her colonial administration. She has come to feel toward India a sense of duty; she has governed justly; she has established good order and peace. She has taken care of the sick, has educated the young and has fed the starving in time of famine. She has, best of all, made it possible for the Christian Church to do its great work.

[Sidenote: The Contrasts of India.] The contrasts of India are described by a writer in the _Missionary Witness_. “This is a land of blazing light, and yet, withal, the land of densest darkness. There is wonderful beauty with repulsive ugliness. A land of plenty, full of penury. Ultra cleanliness and unmentionable filthiness. There is kindness to all creatures, combined with hardest cruelty. All life held sacred in a land of murders. A people of mild speech given to violent language. Proud of learning and sunken in ignorance. Seekers for merit, resigned to fate. Unbelieving and full of cruelty. Belief in one god co-existent with the worship of 330,000,000 deities. Intensely religious, yet destitute of piety. Altogether, India is lost humanity gone to seed; a diseased degenerate herb become a noxious weed. At least this is the condition of her society.”

[Sidenote: The Word “heathen”.] It is characteristic of the wider charity and also the wider knowledge of our time, that we speak of unchristianized nations as “non-Christians” rather than as “heathen,” a term which, especially in India, has given offense. The exchange of terms is one greatly to be desired, since it removes a cause of offense and also makes clearer than ever the power of the Gospel to enlighten and to bless. For the darkness and misery of India there is one hope of change--that she may cease to be “non-Christian”.

To India Lutherans were, as we have seen, the first of the Protestant Churches to carry the Gospel. Since the landing of Ziegenbalg and Plütschau in Tranquebar, eighty-six years before the Baptist Carey went to Bengal, Lutherans have been preaching and teaching according to the command of their Master.

GERMAN SOCIETIES.

[Sidenote: The Use of Maps.] We shall consider first of all the German missionary societies and their labors. Before beginning the study of any

## particular field the reader should refer to the brief account of the

origin and history of these societies in