Chapter 4

Penang, however, furnished us with our greatest sensation. It was a Chinese funeral. In this city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, a millionaire Chinese banker had died. He was a Buddhist as well as a Confucianist, but also a loyal and patriotic supporter of charitable institutions, and of the British rule. He had given to the British government a number of aeroplanes to facilitate its military operations, and a large sum of money for its war-loan. When he died, the customary worship of ancestors, which is a part of Chinese religion, as well as gratitude for his past gifts, prompted his family to plan a sumptuous funeral. It is said to have cost them thirty thousand dollars. We arrived in Penang just in time to see the show. All the way from Singapore, indeed, we were accompanied on our steamer by a fine brass band, which was only one of three brass bands hired to furnish music for the funeral service.

My powers of description fail, when I attempt to tell the wonders of a funeral procession fully a half mile long. It was headed by a symbolic float of waxwork figures, in which a colossal horse, prancing on its hind legs, seemed just about to soar into the air. The horse was held in by four angelic forms following and holding in their hands scepters of royalty. This apparition reminded me of the horses and chariot in which Elijah ascended to heaven, and it seemed to indicate that the deceased had departed with all the honors heaven and earth could bestow. A band of music accompanying the float, and playing solemn but not mournful strains, gave color to this interpretation. A retinue of sedan-chairs, decorated with all the colors of the rainbow, came next in order. These sedan-chairs were empty of occupants, and contained long strips of red paper on which were written the names and merits of the millionaire's ancestors, to be read by Buddhist priests at the grave. The chairs were each the gift of some relative or friend of the departed. They symbolized the welcome given him by those who had gone before him to the better land. A second band of music was followed by a body-guard of British soldiers in khaki, deputed by the British governor to show his estimate of the character and loyalty of the deceased.

Then came the hearse, if hearse it could be called. It was really an enormous catafalque, decorated with gold tinsel and costly embroideries. Peacocks and birds of paradise were depicted on its silken hangings. A dozen men, in elaborate robes of blue, carried this gaudy structure upon their shoulders, while other gorgeously attired attendants bore great ribbon-banners of satin, say twenty feet long by four feet wide and of the most brilliant colors, inscribed with Chinese characters and making known the virtues of the departed. But the most curious part of the procession, was yet to come. Preceded by the third band of music were the offerings of food and drinks which were to furnish sustenance to the spirit in the world into which he had now entered. There were six roasted sucking-pigs, laid in order, on portable tables, with baskets of rice, oranges, bananas, all kinds of fruit and confectionery, and cups of tea and wines. These were carried to the cemetery, to be presented to the departed spirit at the grave, then jealously guarded for an interval, finally in part given to the officiating priests, and in part consumed at a feast held by the surviving members of the family. The costlier the offerings, the better would the feast be enjoyed. There was no lack of priests in this ceremonial. They were young and clean-shaven, and looked as if they had enlisted for this very service. I thought I could discern a sly twinkle in their eyes, as they inspected the preparations for the feast, before the march began.

The mourners must not be forgotten. Among the Chinese, white, and not black, is the appointed sign of mourning. The four wives of the deceased and the members of his family were accordingly dressed in the coarsest of white sackcloth, with ashes sprinkled over their faces, and they walked behind the hearse, howling. It was a piteous spectacle, reminding one of the professional and hired wailers in Palestine, where "the mourners go about the streets," uttering dismal lamentations which can be bought for money. Far be it from me to suggest that such was the lamentation which we heard that day, for there is reason to believe that in this case the deceased was respected and beloved.

This ceremonial had required long and elaborate preparation. The death indeed occurred last July; the body had been embalmed; it had lain in state and open to public inspection for four whole months; the funeral did not take place until November. A vast amount of detail had been attended to and provided for. Great packages of silken umbrellas had been stored to shield the heads of guests and servants. All the bearers of sedan-chairs, scores in number, were clad in silken uniforms; there were banners, and inscriptions, and lanterns, galore. Everything was done to impress the Chinese multitude with the greatness of the occasion. But it was all a glorification of man and of his virtues. There was no confession of sin, nor assurance of pardon; no proclamation of a divine Redeemer; no promise of life and immortality in Christ. Heathen religions are man's vain effort to win heaven by merits of one's own. Only Christianity is God's revelation of salvation "without money and without price," through the sacrifice and death of his only Son. This is the gospel which Confucianist and Buddhist, Hindu and Mohammedan, need to-day, and which, thank God, our missionaries are giving them.

IV

THREE WEEKS IN BURMA

Burma is the land of pagodas. These places of worship are the most striking feature of every landscape. Their bell-shaped domes, startlingly white, or so covered with gold-leaf as to shine resplendent in the sunlight, crown many a hilltop and constitute the chief beauty of the towns. The pagodas are usually solid structures of brick, with facings of plaster, and they are buildings at which, rather than in which, worship is offered. There are exceptions, however. The more ancient of these edifices, like the Ananda at Pagan, have inner chambers enshrining gigantic statues of Buddha, with corridors around the chambers, quite comparable to the aisles of English or French cathedrals. But the greatest of all the Burmese pagodas, the Shwe Dagon of Rangoon, is a solid mass of brick, with no interior cell, yet enormous in size, erected on a broad platform one hundred and sixty-six feet from the ground, towering to an additional height of two hundred and seventy feet, and crowned with a jewelled "umbrella" at the total elevation of four hundred and thirty-six feet above the teeming streets of the city below. The main platform from which the pagoda proper rises is an immense court nine hundred feet long by six hundred and eighty-five feet wide, and crowded with minor pagodas and shrines. This great esplanade is approached from the four points of the compass by long covered arcades, lined with shops in which offerings of every description can be bought. On the marble floor of the main court and before the minor shrines these offerings are presented by scores of worshipers prostrating themselves before statues of Buddha of every size. And yet the great conical or bell-shaped dome of the pagoda is its chief attraction, for this is covered with gold-leaf from its base to its summit, and its shining splendor salutes the traveler from miles and miles away.

The religion of Burma is Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion of "merit," so called, and the surest way to acquire "merit" is by building a pagoda. Repairing an old pagoda will not answer the purpose; hence many an old pagoda goes to ruin, side by side with a new one coated with whitewash or gold-leaf. Curiously enough, the epoch of pagoda-building was almost coincident with that of cathedral-building in England and France, that is, from A. D. 1000 to 1200. When one sees at Pagan an area along the Irrawaddy River eight miles long and only two miles wide, with nearly five thousand pagodas, multitudes of them small and in ruins, but many still standing great and splendid in their proportions, it seems impossible to doubt that a certain genuine religious impulse, however blind and mistaken, led to their erection. There they stand, mere relics of a magnificent past, but now erect in the midst of desolation, with only scattered huts about them, where once there must have been a dense population, rich and lordly. The fate of these towering monuments of idolatry and superstition, now for the most part given over to the moles and the bats, shows what God can do for pagodas, and encourages us to believe that missionary effort will be mighty through God to the pulling down of similar more modern strongholds, together with all the high things that exalt themselves above the knowledge of his truth.

This leads me to speak of the great missionary work that is now honeycombing and undermining the foundations of heathenism in this pagoda-land. We came to Burma to see what God has wrought. The labors and sufferings of Adoniram Judson appealed to us even in our childhood. We wished to see how the mustard-seed which Judson sowed in faith has grown up to bear fruit. So we went to Aungbinle, where for twenty long months Judson was imprisoned and tortured. There we seemed to hear God's word to Moses: "Take off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground." We were reminded also of the burning bush, which was ever burning but not consumed. Great forward movements in history are born in suffering. Through death to life, and the cross before the crown--that was the way of Christ, and it will be the way of his followers. We gathered, a small group of missionaries and visitors, in the little chapel that has been built upon the site of that old prison, and we prayed, with a lot of dusky villagers and children before us, that God would yet more gloriously prosper the work of missions.

We had every advantage in our investigations in Burma. Thirteen of my former pupils are now missionaries in that land. For many years they have been inviting me to visit them. Nine missionaries met us at the dock, as we landed from Singapore and Penang. They have made our visit delightful by their affectionate and boundless hospitality. Morning, noon, and night have been full of sightseeing, of visiting mission churches and schools, of "chotas," or little breakfasts, of "tiffins" or substantial lunches, or afternoon-teas and dinners at the close of the day. The social and kindly spirit of it all has turned what otherwise would have been wearisome into a succession of pleasant experiences. But there has been work, and there has been hard thinking also. Making three addresses a day, longer or shorter, for three weeks in succession, is no sinecure. I am sometimes called an "octogeranium," but I have not been permitted to waste my sweetness on the desert air. It is a wonder to me that I have survived so much stress and rushing, but I am compelled to say that good appetite and good sleep have made me feel in better health and spirits than for many months before.

What I have seen has gladdened my eyes and warmed my heart. Closer contact with mission work and mission workers has broadened my ideas, given me more sympathy, more zeal, and more hope. The vastness of these heathen populations, their appalling needs, together with their infinite possibilities, have dawned upon me as never before. Burma has sixty millions of people. It is a most fruitful land, never visited by the famines which ravage India proper, the land west of the Bay of Bengal. It enshrines a religion which, with all its ignorance and superstition, is more free from gross immorality than that which prevails on the other side of the bay. Its people are the most heterogeneous of any upon earth. Though the proud Burman native is still the dominant power, he has now to compete with the rising intelligence of the Karens, the sturdiness of the Chinese, and the subtlety of the Hindus. These last two peoples have in late years in large numbers migrated hither. Mohammedan mosques are rising side by side with the older Buddhist pagodas. The Parsees are numerous and influential, and theosophists are not rare. Rangoon is probably the capital city of Buddhism, for here at any rate is its most splendid temple. And Rangoon is a sort of melting-pot of all races. Burmans and Chinese are intermarrying, and are producing a most vigorous offspring. Sikhs and Malays, by their peculiar dress, make picturesque the streets. I know of no greater mixture of races, unless it is in the city of New York, where we have more Jews than there are in Jerusalem, and more Italians than there are in Rome. Here in Rangoon, however, all these peoples preserve their distinctive characteristics of dress and language, so that racial differences are more apparent.

The Roman Catholics and the representatives of the Church of England have made great efforts to capture Burma. They have established noble plants in the way of church edifices, hospitals, and schools. The leper asylum of the Romanists is an impressive and worthy provision for the housing and treatment of hundreds thus afflicted. The cathedral and school of the Anglican Church show a most praiseworthy estimate of the needs of this great province of the British Empire, and breakfasting with Bishop Fyffe, the metropolitan of Rangoon, gave us a pleasing impression of his kindly Christian spirit. The Methodist Episcopal Church has also its representative here, and all of these evangelizing agencies are supplemented by the work of the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., and the Salvation Army. Yet it is not too much to say that the Baptists have first place in Burma, both in church-membership and in education. We were the first Christian denomination upon the ground; we have leavened the country with our influence; our Mission Press has furnished the Bible in several different languages to the people of Burma; our schools are the most advanced in grade and the most numerously attended; our churches are most nearly self-governing and self-supporting. We have great reason to thank God and take courage.

All this is the growth of a single century. It was in the year 1813 that the Judsons arrived in Burma, and it was six years after that the first Burman convert was baptized. In 1828 the first Karen convert followed Christ. These two were the first-fruits from the two leading races of Burma. Since their baptism there has sprung up a flourishing Christian community which embraces representatives both of the indigenous races of Burma and of the immigrant peoples from India proper, from China, and from other lands. The Baptist churches in Burma to-day, as their official representatives inform us, enroll members gathered from eighteen different nationalities, besides members of the Anglo-Indian or Eurasian type. "The entire Christian community in Burma, according to the Government Census of 1911, numbers 210,081; of which number, 122,265 are Baptists, while 60,088 are Roman Catholics, 20,784 are Anglicans, 1,675 are Methodists, and the remainder are distributed among smaller sects. That one Protestant convert of 1819 has become an army of one hundred and fifty thousand."

We must add to this numerical statement the facts that a corps of Christian leaders has been trained and put into service; that native Christians have found their way into influential positions as magistrates, township officers, teachers of schools, inspectors of police, and clerks in all departments of the government. Christian men are prominent in business and professional circles, as traders, contractors, brokers, physicians, lawyers; and the Christian character is everywhere recognized and honored. A church, to a large degree self-propagating, has been planted in Burma. A complete system of missionary education has been organized. Modern philanthropic work for the relief and prevention of physical ills has been transplanted to Burma. The Sunday School, the Christian Endeavor Society, the temperance movement, are common methods of Karen and of Burmese church activity. An extensive Christian literature has been provided, in addition to the printing of the Bible in all the main languages of the country. In fact, a Home Mission Society, for the evangelization of the natives in the remoter sections of the country, is in active operation. When we remember that all this is the product of a hundred years, in a land where only a little while ago Christianity was a persecuted religion, we praise God for the result.

I must mention two features of my visit which claim special attention. I refer to the work of the collegiate and other schools, and to the hospitality of non-Christian gentlemen. We have inaugurated in Burma a graded system of education, under government inspection, and leading to full university training. Nothing in my travels interested me more than to see hundreds of boys and girls of Burmese and Karen families, in which girls have hitherto been unable to read or write, singing Christian hymns from books with the music and words before them. The great need of France, as the Emperor Napoleon once said, was good mothers. It is equally true of Burma, and little children carry back into idolatrous homes their love for Christ, and their juvenile protest against heathenism. I addressed several audiences of a thousand each, where the full half were girls and women, no longer secluded and ignorant, but prepared to assume responsibility as the mothers and trainers of a new race of Burmans. In these schools, exclusive of the seminaries and Bible schools, there are enrolled more than 30,000 pupils, who pay annual tuition fees of more than $80,000. The Morton Lane School at Maulmain, the Eurasian School at the same place, the Kemendine School in Rangoon, the Girls' School at Mandalay, have each of them about three hundred scholars, and they are sending out influences which will in a few years revolutionize the civilization and the religion of Burma. Other schools of not so high a grade are doing equally faithful work. Our Baptist College at Rangoon is caring for the higher grades of education, and is preparing hundreds of young men for teaching and for government service. It was inspiring to address a thousand of its scholars, under the direction of Principal David Gilmore, D. D., formerly of Rochester. The endowment of such an institution in this heathen land would be an achievement worthy of some Christian millionaire in America. And the same thing may be said for our Burman Theological Seminary at Insein under Dr. John McGuire, and our Karen Theological Seminary under Dr. W. F. Thomas.

That walls of partition are breaking down under the influence of Christianity, was made plain to us by invitations to take breakfast with a noted Parsee barrister, and to take afternoon-tea with a wealthy Mohammedan gentleman, both of them citizens of Rangoon. The courtesy and intelligence of these hosts of ours will always be a delightful memory, while their novel and beautiful homes revealed to us what art and nature can do when united in other than Christian surroundings. Our Parsee barrister had obtained his education largely in England, and the Mohammedan gentleman had enjoyed intercourse with the best of our American missionaries. The Moslem friend still maintained a sort of seclusion for his wife, and only the ladies of our party visited her in her private apartments. But when we rose to depart, he surprised us all by asking that we offer prayer, and he endorsed the prayer that was offered by uttering a hearty "Amen." As we stood ready to go, it was easy to pray for a blessing upon the house and the family which we were leaving behind us. Respect for Christianity, and a conviction that Christian education is the great need of the future, are already permeating the higher classes of Burman society.

The climax of our stay in Burma was reached when Lord Chelmsford, the viceroy of India, visited Rangoon, and the lieutenant governor invited us to an afternoon-tea in his honor. The pandal, or reception pavilion, erected at the dock where the viceroy landed and where he was received with a salute of thirty-one guns, had been filled that morning by the élite of Burman society, fifteen hundred in number, and the address of welcome had drawn from the viceroy a fitting response. All Rangoon was a wonder of decoration. Arches with Saracenic domes built by the Moslems, pagodalike structures built by the Buddhists, Parsee towers, and Hindu temples, appeared at many street-crossings, and one long avenue was lined on either side with elevated rows of benches upon which were seated thousands of children from the schools. The viceroy passed in triumphal procession between files of soldiery, with cavalry for a body-guard and a dense mass of humanity thronging the sidewalks, looking on and cheering. At night, the streets and public buildings were brilliantly illuminated, and the great pagodas glittered like gems from top to bottom, encircled with rings of electric lights.

We reached the Government House, the scene of the afternoon lawn-tea, through clouds of dust raised by four lines of vehicles that struggled for precedence. At last we emerged in the grounds before the stately edifice where the lieutenant governor resides, and we were presented to Lord and Lady Chelmsford. The viceroy and his wife were simple and gracious in manner, and they made us feel that we were conferring as well as receiving honor. A group of forty dancing-girls, in antique Burmese costumes, were giving a performance on one part of the emerald lawn, while on another white-robed servants were setting before the guests all manner of refreshments. So, amid music and feasting, the day ended. With the oncoming darkness the viceroy and his lady retired to their apartments in the great government residence, and at the same time the whole company joined in singing "God Save the King!" It was a striking close to our experiences in Burma, for fully half of the guests that day were Hindus and Mohammedans, each one of them arrayed in gorgeous garments and decorated with jewels. It left in our minds the fixed impression that the hold of Great Britain upon Burma and indeed upon all India is largely due to the Christian character of British rule, and that missionary work of evangelization and of education is to be given large credit for India's present universal loyalty to the British Crown.

This chapter would not be complete without special mention of the dinner of our Rochester men. We number thirteen of them in Burma, and they fill very important places in the work of missions. Two are graduates of our university, but not of our seminary--Mr. F. D. Phinney, the superintendent of our Mission Press, and Dr. David Gilmore, the acting principal of our Baptist College. With the wives who graced the company, seventeen persons sat down at table. Singiser presided; McGuire gave us welcome; Dudley, Cochrane, Rogers, Hattersley, Crawford, added spice to the occasion. The rewards of a teacher sometimes come late, but they are very sure. When I saw that gathering of missionary workers, and remembered Geis, Cope, and Streeter, who were prevented from coming, I felt that my labor had not been in vain in the Lord, since Burma is being transformed by Rochester.