The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-28 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

Christianity in Hindostan,

Catholic Missions in Southern India—To 1865. By
Rev. W. Strickland, S. J. ; and T. W. M. Mar-
shall, Author of " Christian Missions." One

vol. pp. kO. Longman and Co.
Of the severity of the ordeal to which the Christian
missionary is subjected when preaching the Gospel of
Peace in remote lands, among the idolatrous races,
no matter whether of Asia or of Australasia, the
world has had but very recently a new and appal-
ling illustration. The hideous death to which that
good missionary clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Volkner
was only the other day most inhumanly subjected
by the fiendish barbarity of the Maori savages,
came to us as a painfully vivid reminder of the perils
environing the pathway of those whose Feet the lips
of the inspired writer have tenderly apostrophised as
—Beautiful ! Wherever the seed (" which is the
word of God") hasbeen sown, by the wayside, among
the pagan multitudes whether of old or in these our
own days, the ground there, so to speak, has been
fattened, to the bringing forth of fruit an hundred
fold, by being watered plentifully with the blood
and the tears of martyrdom. Happily, as Civilisation
advances in the wake of Christianity—always in
the wake, Christianity invariably being precursive
of Civilisation, and never following simply in its
trail—happily, we say, as Civilisation advances in
the wake of Christianity in those remote regions,
gaining material strength, there, and political autho-
rity, the peril to which the Christian missionary is
exposed diminishes in proportion to the prestige of
the aegis thrown over him by his protecting Go-
vernment—or, at any rate in proportion to the
appreciation of that prestige by the heathenish popu-
lation appealed to by the persuasive voice of the
missionary, or influenced by the visible puissance of
his Government. Of this beneficent diminution of
danger to the missionary priests in India, the pro-
foundly interesting records here collected together
by Messrs. Strickland and Marshall afford eloquent
and, in some instances, most affecting attestation.
They relate (these records) to the experiences of the
Catholic missionaries in that portion of Southern
India, known as the mission of Madura, showing
in a particular manner what has been there accom-
plished—but during the last dozen years more particu-
larly. There, in Madura, throughout, very nearly, one
whole quarter of a century, the duties of a Christian
missionary among a race of Asiatic idolaters have
been discharged by the Rev. F. Louis St. Cyr, S.J.,
from whose notes, jotted down in French, the
materials of this volume, we are told by its com-
panion Editors in their Preface (p. vii.) have been
chiefly prepared. The volume is subdivided, in the
arrangement of its contents, into some seventeen
chapters : in all, six of them written by Mr. Marshall,
the author of " Christian Missions ;" the other eleven
chapters being all of them penned by the Rev. W.
Strickland, S.J., who for these twelve years last
past has been one of the Military Chaplains in
Hindostan, under Her Britannic Majesty's Go-
vernment. From the first half-dozen of these
eleven chapters, penned by Father Strickland, a
very world of informationmay be derived. First
of all, in regard to the position occupied by the
English in India. Secondly, in regard to the
idolatry prevailing throughout the peninsula of
Hindostan, but more particularly in Madura.
Thirdly, in respect to the original introduction of
Christianity to the Hindoos. Fourthly, in regard
to the position of Protestantism throughout the
southern portions of Hindostan. Fifthly, in respect
to the general history of the New Mission of Madura.
And, sixthly, in the account here given by F.
Strickland of the daily life and journeys of the
Missioners and the consequent mortality there is
amongst them. Familiar as most educated Eng-
lishmen are with the general condition of things in
that the grandest of all our dependencies, it is
curious to remark upon the air of freshneEs im-
parted to the information here compacted together
for our instruction by the hand of this thoughtful
and observant missionary. As, for example, where
he takes occasion to realise to his reader's imagina-
tion, at the very outset, upon the very first page of
the very first chapter of his volume, the fact hitherto
so little thought of, that that immense country of
Hindostan, peopled by 150,000,000 of inhabitants,
consists of a number of different races and nations,
" as distinct in personal appearance and language as
the various nations of Europe." It is startling, too,
and very noteworthy, when we find F. Strick-
land insisting upon it as a thing quite indisputable,
that the division of the people of India into different
castes, has, there " contributed immensely to the
preservation of morality" and to the conservation of
the patriarchial customs still existing in that coun-
try. Nay, to find him going on still further to remark,
yet more emphatically, that " without the institution
of Caste" the Hindoos must long ago have sunk
down to the lowest depths of barbarism, and lite-
rally devoured one another ! Wonderfully eloquent
as it seems to us in its epigrammatic force is the witty
application by him of a verse from the Book of Mac-
chabees, as descriptive of the ways and means by
which Great Britain has acquired her Indian terri-
tories—to wit—" Possederunt omnes terram concilio
suo et patientia!" Fain are we, however, to believe
that the reverend author is in error when he comes
to the conclusion (aud wishes his readers also to
come to the conclusion) that India as a nation has,
in a material point of view, been a loser by reason
of the English occupation—going so far as to insist
(upon the authority of Dr. Russell, of the Times,
note, p. 6) that the country is becoming every year
more and more impoverished, the native manu-
facturers disappearing under the pressure of British
competition. In a material point of view,
alone, however, does he regard India as
having proved a loser, thus, because of the English
occupation. Otherwise, he declares India to have
been a signal gainer from that occupation, if only
in this--" that the people enjoy more peace and
tranquillity, that law is administered with far
greater ' justice, that wars cannot go on at the will
and caprice of each petty prince as in former times!"
A noble eulogium this, pronounced upon English
rule in Hindostan—and pronounced, too, by the
judgment, the heart, the conscience of a Catholic
Missionary !It almost seems to us—if we may so
express it---a tribute emanating directly from a gene-
rous sense of gratitude. As if in consideration, for
example, of the fact attested in so many words upon
page 11, namely, to the effect that—" The position
of the Catholic Church at present in India is one of
the utmost liberty." • F. Strickland adding to this,
" She is entirely unaided and unsupported by the
Government—but there arc now no exceptional
restrictions, no penal laws !" As among the conse-
quences of which—to the material advantage of
English Rule generally in Hindostan —there are now
—among the Catholic body alone in Southern India,
as the Government at Calcutta very well knows—
as many as 30,000 able-bodied men always avail-
able, always to be counted upon in any emergency !
The Apostolic-Vicariate of Madura, to the history
of which during the last twelve years the compilers
of the present volume have more particularly directed
their attention, is situated, by the way, in the southern-
most portion of British India, embracing within it
part of the Carnatic, the whole of the provinces of
Tanjore, together with the soi-disant independent ter-
ritory of the Tondimau, Marava, Madura, and the
contiguous districts, down to the most southerly
point of Cape Comorin ! It extends, this Madura
Mission, in other words, within a width at the out-
side of three degrees of longitude, from about 7 deg.
57 min. to 11 deg. 50 min. North latitude. Its cli-
mate is such that even in the months of March and
April, when the sun is going northward, the at-
mosphere is so intolerably hot that everything
touched even indoors feels hotter than the hand
touching it—exertion of mind or body being most
difficult, excepting only very early in the morning
or after sunset. The population, there, numbers
altogether some 4,ooo,ooo—partly Hindoos, partly
Mussulmans—about 150,000 of the former (that is
of the Hindoos) being Christians. The Moslems in
India as elsewhere obdurately refusing to hearken
to any instruction at the hands of the Christian
missionary. Especial note is here taken, as a mat-
ter of course, by F. Strickland, of the fact, that the
Hindoos, even in their idolatrous belief, may, in
some sort, be said to possess the rough outline,
skeleton, or groundwork, so to speak, of the whole
scheme of Christian Theology. The Trimurti or