Part 13

All these provinces that we were now visiting, and others more distant still, were originally settled by refugees driven from the more southern districts by the persecution for witchcraft. Now they are important provinces. Since these people had been ruthlessly driven forth because of the spirits, I thought they would willingly accept any way of escape from their control. But they seemed, if anything, more superstitious and harder to reach than others. Having suffered once, as they supposed, from the malicious power of the spirits, they seemed even more than others to dread to incur their anger again by deserting them. But there were many hopeful exceptions.

Mûang Pāo was the next city visited. From the incidents of our stay there I select the cases of two persons who excited our deepest sympathy. One was an aged Buddhist monk, a Ngīo, who, with a younger companion, visited our tent daily. The monk was a venerable man, with striking features, serene countenance, earnest and intelligent. His long life had been spent in worship, meditation, and study. All this he soon told us with some quite natural pride. While not bold, he was not reticent, freely stating his own doctrines, hopes, and fears, and asking ours. To the question what were his hopes for a future life, he frankly said, “I don’t know. How can I? I have tried to keep the commandments, have performed my devotions, have counted my beads. But whether I shall go up or down [indicating the directions with his finger] I do not know. I have done what my books tell me, but I have no light _here_ [pointing to his heart]. Can the teacher’s religion give me any light?”

The earnestness and the despondency of the man drew me to him. I asked, what of his failures and transgressions? “That,” he said, “is the dark point. My books say that all my good deeds shall be rewarded, but the failures and transgressions must be punished before I can reach Nirvāna, the final emancipation of the soul by the extinction of all desire.” “How long will that be?” we ask. He answered by giving a number that would baffle even astronomers, who are accustomed to deal in almost fabulous numbers.

“But is not that virtually endless?”

“Yes; but what shall we do? That is what our books say.”

“But is there no room for pardon?”

“No. Buddha only points out the way that he followed himself. He reached the goal by the same almost endless journey. How shall we hope to do so by any shorter or different route?”

“But supposing there is a way—that there is a great sovereign of the universe, before all Buddhas and higher than all Buddhas, who has the right and the authority to grant full pardon through his own infinite merit, and his vicarious assumption of all our obligations and payment of all our debts. Would not that be a joyful message?”

“Yes; if true, it would be.”

And so we argued till light seemed to gleam for once into his mind. But the image of the dear old man pointing up and then down with the sad confession, “I know not whither I shall go,” is a vision that has saddened me many a time since.

The other case of special interest I state as it occurred, with no attempt at explanation of the dream involved in the story.—On the morning after our arrival, Nān Inta and I started out to visit monasteries or houses, wherever we might find listeners. I was dressed in white clothes, and Nān Inta had on a white jacket. We had made a number of calls, and were about to pass by a house in which we saw only an elderly woman and some children, presumably her grandchildren. We were surprised to see her come down from her house and run out after us, and prostrating herself with the customary salutation given to priests and princes, she begged us to stop and come in. We accepted her invitation, though surprised at her evident demonstrations of joy. Sitting down on the mat, we began to explain that we were teachers of religion, pointing out the sure way of happiness both in this life and in the life to come. Our message was one from the great God and Creator to all races and nations, inviting them to return from all other refuges, and He would give them an inheritance as His children in the life to come. She listened with marked interest as we explained to her our religion, and urged her to accept it. We were surprised at the explanation she gave of her intense interest.

Not long before our arrival she had a dream that two men dressed in white came to her to teach her. What they were to teach her she did not know; but when she saw us walking up the street she said, “There is the fulfilment of my dream!” She had watched us as we entered other houses, fearful lest we should omit hers. Now she was so glad we had come. It was at least a strange coincidence, for she affirmed that the dream was before she had ever heard of us. Whatever may have been the cause, it was a delight to instruct one who seemed to receive all that we said as a direct message to her. This at once attracted Nān Inta to her, and she listened to him with frequent exclamations of delight, while he, in his earnest manner, explained the Gospel message of pardon and life eternal through Him who liveth and was dead, and behold He is alive for evermore. She said her one great desire had been to escape from the punishment of her sins; but she never before had known that there was any other way but to suffer for them herself. She, too, was a Ngīo. We visited her frequently during the week of our stay in Mûang Pāo, and to the last she interpreted our coming as the fulfilment of her dream. This was the last that we knew either of her or of the aged monk. Before we visited the place again she was dead, and he had moved away.

In those days when the people were afraid to make a public profession of Christianity, it would have been a great gain to the mission if we could have had schools, and used them as a means of evangelizing the youth. A first attempt, indeed, had been made by Mr. Wilson with a few Burmese boys. A young Burmese who had been trained in Maulmein, and who spoke English, was employed to teach them under Mr. Wilson’s oversight, in the hope that Lāo boys would presently join them. This hope was not realized, and the experiment was presently abandoned.

The first call for a Christian school was for the education of girls. In the first Christian families girls predominated. Mrs. McGilvary collected six or eight Christian girls, and devoted as much time to them as her strength and her family duties would permit. They were really private pupils, living on our premises and in our family. More wished to come than she could do justice to. Hence about this time an appeal was made for two single ladies to devote their whole time to the school. But it was not till four years later that Miss Edna E. Cole and Miss Mary Campbell of the Oxford Female Seminary, Ohio, reached Chiengmai. Very soon they had twenty pupils. From this small beginning has grown our large Girls’ School. Two of Mrs. McGilvary’s pupils were soon made assistants. These and others of the first group became fine women, who have left their mark on the church and the country.

Notwithstanding our disappointment in the delay of the school for boys, it proved a wise arrangement that the Girls’ School was started first. A mission church is sure to be greatly handicapped whose young men must either remain single—which they will not do—or be compelled to take ignorant non-Christian wives. Such are a dead-weight to the husband, and the children almost surely follow the mother. After marriage, the almost universal custom of the country has been that the husband lives with the wife’s family. He becomes identified with it, and for the time a subordinate member of it, almost to the extent of becoming weaned from his own family. Where all the atmosphere of the family is strongly Buddhist, with daily offerings to the spirits and gala days at the temple, the current would be too strong for a father, with his secondary place in the family, to withstand. For a while it was feared that Christian girls would have difficulty in finding husbands. But, on the contrary, our educated girls become not only more intelligent, but more attractive in manners, dress, and character; and, therefore, have been much sought after. The homes become Christian homes, and the children are reared in a Christian atmosphere. The result is that, instead of the wife’s dragging the husband down, she generally raises the husband up; and, as a general rule, the children early become Christians.

In August, 1876, our beloved Princess became very seriously ill. Dr. Cheek had been called upon to treat domestics in the family, but not the Prince or Princess. Hearing that she was in a critical condition under native doctors, and fearing the worst, I took the liberty of suggesting that they consult Dr. Cheek. They seemed pleased with the suggestion, and asked me to accompany him—which I did for one or two visits. His treatment was very successful, and soon she was convalescent.

About this same time we had an adventure with white ants which came near costing us our much-valued cabinet organ. It will serve to illustrate an experience formerly common enough, and still not unknown. One Wednesday evening before prayer-meeting Mrs. McGilvary sat down at the instrument to look over the tunes, when she found it full of white ants. Our house was built on higher ground, into which the creatures are driven when the lower grounds are filled with water from the annual floods. They do not attack the teak walls and floors of our houses, but, climbing up the posts, at last they stumbled upon the soft wood and leather inside the organ, and were just beginning their feast when our meeting broke in upon them. Had we not discovered them then, the instrument would have been completely wrecked before morning.

Once the white ants destroyed a trunkful of our children’s clothes, once a box of “knock-down” chairs, and once they attacked my library—evidently not at all deterred by the learned discussions and deep thought of Dr. Joseph A. Alexander’s _Commentary on Isaiah_. They had got through the margin, and would soon have digested the rest, had not an unexpected occasion for opening the library saved it.

XVI

SEEKERS AFTER GOD

On New Year’s Day, 1877, I went into the city to make some calls. The first was at the new palace. In the large reception hall I found the Princess, virtually alone. She was embroidering some fancy pillow-ends for the priests—a work in which she was an expert. Her maidens, some distance off, were sewing priests’ robes. The Prince was in his little workshop not far off, turning ivory rounds for the railing of an elephant howdah, a favourite amusement with him.

The subject of religion was one that continually came up in all my interviews with the Princess; but hitherto she had apparently argued more for victory than from a desire to reach the truth. She was as keen as a lawyer to seize a point, and her quick wit made her a very enjoyable antagonist. Not only she and her domestics, but the whole country as well, had been preparing for a great occasion of merit-making in connection with the approaching dedication of a shrine. Whether the peculiar interest of this conversation was due to the fact that these matters had been running in her mind, or to some particular mood in which I found her, I never knew. Most likely it was both. A chance allusion to the great event which was in every one’s mouth, at once brought up the question. Stopping her work and resting her arms on the embroidery frame, she asked, “Why is it that foreigners do not worship the Buddha or his images, and do not believe that merit is made thereby?”

She seemed to approach the question as a personal one for herself. If we were right and she were wrong, she would like to know it. We agreed on that point, and I encouraged her in her estimate of its paramount importance to every rational man or woman. If Buddhism does, indeed, lead to happiness in a future life, she was wise in diligently following its precepts; but if wrong, it would be a fatal mistake. Why do we not worship Buddha? Because he was only a man. We reverence his character, as we do that of other upright men who have tried to do good and to lead their fellow-men to better things. Gautama Buddha seems to have sought with all his soul for light—was willing to forsake a kingdom and to renounce all sensual and even intellectual pleasures in this life for the hope of escaping sin and its consequences in the next.

Why do we worship Jehovah-Jesus? Because He is our sovereign Lord. The Buddha groaned under his own load of guilt, and was oppressed by the sad and universal consequences of sin among men. The Christ challenged His enemies to convince Him of sin, and His enemies to this day have confessed that they find no sin in Him. Buddhists believe that Buddha reached Nirvāna after having himself passed through every form of being in the universe—having been in turn every animal in the seas, on the earth, and in the air. He did this by an inexorable law that he and every other being is subject to, and cannot evade. Our Jehovah-Jesus, as our Scriptures teach, is the only self-existent being in the universe, and Himself the cause of all other beings. An infinite Spirit and invisible, He manifested Himself to the world by descending from heaven, becoming man, taking on our nature in unison with His own holy nature, but with no taint of sin. He did this out of infinite love and pity for our race after it had sinned. He saw there was no other able to save, and He became our Saviour.

And take the teachings of the two systems—which is the more credible? The sacred books of the Princess teach that there is no Creator. Everything, as the Siamese say, “pen ēng”—comes to be of itself. All this complicated universe became what it is by a fortuitous concurrence of atoms, which atoms themselves had no creator. We come as honest seekers for truth. We look around, above, beneath. Everything seems to imply the contrivance of mind. The sun rises and sets with greater regularity than our clocks strike the hour of noon. The seasons follow each other with wonderful uniformity. Animals are born and die, plants and trees grow and decay, each after its kind, and in wonderful adjustment to the conditions about them. The eye is made for seeing, the ear for hearing, and the air for breathing. Light is necessary for work by day, and darkness for sleep by night. This city has its walls and gates; this palace has its beams, its roof, its doors and windows, and its different apartments, because it was so planned. The Princess gives her orders, and her servants in distant villages come at her summons. The Prince’s command is obeyed throughout all his dominions. Subjects obey because they are under constituted authority. Even so we obey Jehovah and not Buddha, because we believe that He is the Creator and the sovereign Lord of the universe.

In His word—His letter to our race—He claims to be Creator and Lord. We read His word, and then we look around for evidence as to whether this is really so. We find that evidence in earth and sea and sky. A letter comes from the King of Siam. How do we know that it is really his? It has his seal. Not otherwise “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” By faith, then, we believe that the worlds were made, as His word tells us. We read the account of that creation. What wonderful beings we are!—made in His image, endowed in our degrees with His own attributes, and with authority over the world in which He has placed us. He has given us dominion over all the beasts of the earth, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea. Every time that a Buddhist kills a fish or a fowl, he sins, because he breaks a command of his religion. Why not so for a Christian? Because these creatures were made for man’s use, and were given to him. We partake with gratitude of the gifts our Father has provided for us. This one great truth, when received by Christians, relieves the conscience of one of the greatest burdens that the followers of Buddha must bear.

But if God made man in His image, why all this suffering that we see and feel? The best explanation ever given is that given in the Bible. Man was created holy, and was put on trial. He transgressed. A subject who disobeys the law of his sovereign incurs his displeasure. He suffers for it. We are suffering from this disobedience of our first parents by a law that we daily see exemplified. A man by extravagance or vice squanders his estate. His children are born penniless. The Prince of Wieng Chan rebelled against the King of Siam. His country was conquered and laid waste, and thousands of its inhabitants were made captive and deported. Thousands of the descendants of these captives are now serfs. Why are they so? Because of the errors or misfortunes of their ancestors. The Prince appoints a governor over a province, with the promise that if he is faithful, his children shall succeed him. Because of misdemeanor he is deposed. His descendants are born subjects and not rulers. We belong to a fallen race.

Somana Gautama belonged to the same race. He groaned under its pains and penalties. He saw a race sunk in misery. He saw its religion shamefully corrupt. He inaugurated one of purer morality. But he does not profess to be divine or a saviour. His religion does not offer a sufficient remedy. By asceticism and self-mortification it would extinguish all noble desire as well as the vicious instincts with which we are born. And then, after interminable cycles of transmigrations, we may hope to reach a state of unconscious sleep. Happiness and misery are inseparable things. We escape the one only by escaping the other. That is the dark prospect which makes Buddhism so pessimistic. To this the Princess assented, “That is so.”

Now compare this with the religion of Jesus. The sovereign Father who loves His wandering, sinful children, in His infinite wisdom devised a plan that satisfies their needs and desires, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Our Maker became our Redeemer by emptying Himself of His glory and becoming man. He is Himself the greatest possible illustration of the love of God to the race. He came to reveal the Father. His holy life we have in His word. He set us the only perfect example, full of pity toward the miserable and the sinful. Then, by a painful and shameful death, He became Himself a sacrifice for the sins of the world. He obeyed the law which we had broken, and which condemns us; and suffered in our stead the penalty due to us. He conquered death. He took away the sting of death by taking away sin. He arose from the dead, showing Himself for many days. He ascended to heaven before the eyes of His disciples. He has sent His servants and His word to offer a full and free pardon to all who will accept. He is now, and ever will be, our intercessor in heaven. He sends His Spirit to purify and fit us for an endless state of conscious existence which begins at death, and not cycles after. Millions of the best men and women the world has ever seen have given their testimony to the reality of this salvation by a triumphant death, with the assurance that all sin and all suffering were past. Jesus removed the curse, and brought to light the immortality which we had forfeited by sin. The missionary and his associates have left both parents and children that they might offer this to the Princess and to her people.

To all of this the Princess was mainly a most interested listener. She had asked to be taught. She put no captious questions. I have omitted an occasional assent that she gave, and an occasional difficulty or doubt—not all of which could be fully answered; as, for example, why an all-powerful God allowed the entrance of sin, and now allows wicked spirits to tempt us; or that other sad question, why the Gospel had not been sent to them, so that they might have known this from childhood—a question the burden of which should press on my readers as well as on the missionary.

At last, after a long pause, the Princess made a wonderful confession, the very words of which I can never forget:

“Tā chak wā dūi kwām ching, kā han wā paw krū ko tūk lêo.” To speak the truth, I see that the father-teacher is right. “Kā chûa wā kong chak mī Pra Chao ton dai sāng lōk.” I believe there surely must be some divine Lord who made the world. “Lê bat nī ko chûa tī paw krū atibāi dūi kān pon tōt dōi Pra Yēsū.” And now I believe what the father-teacher has explained about escape from punishment through the Lord Jesus. And then, sadly—almost despairingly—she added, “Tê chak yīa cha dai?” But what shall I do?—I fear it will not be well to forsake “hīt paw hoi mê”—the customs of my father, the foot-prints of my mother.

We were sitting in the new brick palace—the first ever built in the country. In the hall was a large pier-glass with numerous other foreign articles, most of them bought in Bangkok, and brought up for offerings at the coming dedication of the shrine. I asked, “Princess, did your father or grandfather have a brick palace like this?” Somewhat surprised at the question, she replied, “No.” “And I see the Princess riding down to the landing every day in a foreign carriage. Did your ancestors do that?” Before I could make the application, she blushed, perceiving that she was caught. I went on: “You do daily forsake old customs, and adopt new ones which your ancestors never knew. The whole method of government is changing. This foreign cloth, which your maidens are sewing for priests’ robes, was all unknown to your forefathers. These things all come from lands where the people worship neither the Buddha nor the spirits. These are only some of the fruits that grow on the tree. Better still, plant the tree; for all good fruit grows on it.” Just then our long conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the Prince, who had worked till he was tired. He asked what she and the teacher were talking about so long. She replied that we were discussing “bun lê bāp”—merit and sin.

The question often came up after this. She was in a position where it was, humanly speaking, almost impossible for her outwardly to forsake the customs of the country. But I have reason to know that on that morning she received truths which she never forgot. We have seen before that neither she nor her husband approved of her father’s act in murdering the Christians. She continued a warm friend to the last, and so did the Prince.