Chapter 24

With this preparation the Alliance undertakes the higher service of joining in the missionary activities of the denomination, supplementing as far as possible the work of the American Unitarian Association. This includes sending missionaries into new fields, aiding small and struggling churches, helping to found new ones, supporting ministers at important points, and and distributing religious literature among those who need light on religious problems.

[1] Memorial History of Boston, IV. 353.

[2] See later chapters for account of admission of women to National Conference, Unitarian Association, the ministry, Boston school board, and various other lines of activity.

[3] Mary P.W. Smith, Miss Ellis's Mission.

[4] This library is in the Unitarian Building, 25 Beacon Street, Boston.

XIII.

MISSIONS TO INDIA AND JAPAN.

Foreign missions have never commanded a general interest on the part of Unitarians. Their dislike of the proselyting spirit, their intense love of liberty for others as well as for themselves, and the absence of sectarian feeling have combined to make them, as a body, indifferent to the propagation of their faith in other countries. They have done something, however, to express their sympathy with those of kindred faith in foreign lands.

In 1829 the younger Henry Ware visited England and Ireland as the foreign secretary of the Unitarian Association; and at the annual meeting of 1831 he reported the results of his inquiries.[1] This was the beginning of many interchanges of good fellowship with the Unitarians of Great Britain, and also with those of Hungary, Transylvania, France, Germany, and other European countries. During the first decade or two of the existence of the Unitarian Association much interest was taken in the liberal movements in Geneva; and the third annual report gave account of what was being done in that city and in Calcutta, as well as in Transylvania and Great Britain. Some years later, aid was promised to the Unitarians of Hungary in a time of persecution; but they were dispossessed of their schools before help reached them. In 1868 the Association founded Channing and Priestley professorships in the theological school at Kolozsvár, and Mrs. Anna Richmond furnished money for a permanent professorship in the same institution. Soon after the renewed activity of 1865 an unsuccessful attempt was made to establish an American Unitarian church in Paris; and aid was given to the founding of an English liberal church in that city. These are indications of the many interchanges of fellowship and helpfulness between the Unitarians of this country and those of Europe.

[Sidenote: Society respecting the State of Religion in India.]

As early as 1824 began a movement to aid the native Unitarians of India, partly the result of a lively interest in Rammohun Roy and the republication in this country of his writings. On June 7, 1822, The Christian Register gave an account of the adoption of Unitarianism by that remarkable Hindoo leader; and it often recurred to the subject in later years. In February of the next year it described the formation of a Unitarian society in Calcutta, and the conversion to Unitarianism of a Baptist missionary, Rev. William Adam, as a result of his attempt to convert Rammohun Roy. There followed frequent reports of this movement, and after a few months a letter from Mr. Adam was published. Even before this there had appeared accounts of William Roberts, of Madras, a native Tamil, who had been educated in England, and had there become a Unitarian. On his return to his own country he had established small congregations in the suburbs of Madras.

In 1823 a letter from Rev. William Adam was received in Boston, addressed to Dr. Channing. It was put into the hands of the younger Henry Ware, who wrote to Mr. Adam and Rammohun Roy, propounding to them a number of questions in regard to the religious situation in India. In 1824 were published in a volume the letter of Ware and the series of questions sent by him to India, together with the replies of Rammohun Roy and William Adam.[2] This book was one of much interest, and furnished the first systematic account that had been given to the public of the reformatory religious interest awakened at that time in India. In February, 1825, was organized the Society for obtaining Information respecting the State of Religion in India, "with a view to obtain and diffuse information and to devise and recommend means for the promotion of Christianity in that part of the world." The younger Henry Ware was made the president, and Dr. Tuckerman the secretary. Already a fund had been collected to aid the British Indian Unitarian Association of Calcutta in its missionary efforts, especially in building a church and maintaining a minister.

During the year 1825 there was published at the office of The Christian Register a pamphlet of sixty-three pages, written by a member of the Information Society, being An Appeal to Liberal Christians for the Cause of Christianity in India. In 1826 Dr. Tuckerman addressed A Letter on the Principles of the Missionary Enterprise to the executive committee of the Unitarian Association, in which he gave a noble exposition of the work of foreign missions, especially with reference to the Indian field. This letter and other writings of Tuckerman served to arouse much interest. The Appeal urged what many Unitarians had large faith in,--the promulgation of "just and rational views of our religion" "upon enlarged and liberal principles, from which we may hope for the speedy establishment and the wider extension there of the uncorrupted truth as it is in Jesus."

In 1826 the sum of $7,000 was secured for this work; and in the spring of 1827 a pledge was made to send yearly to Calcutta the sum of $600 for ten years. These pledges were in connection with like efforts made by the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. In 1839 Mr. Adam visited the United States, and spoke at the annual meeting of the Unitarian Association. Following this, he was for a few years professor of Oriental literature in Harvard University.

[Sidenote: Dall's Work in India.]

In 1853 Rev. Charles T. Brooks, who was for many years the minister of the church in Newport, visited India in search of health; and he was commissioned by the Unitarian Association to make inquiries as to the prospects for missionary labors in that country. In Madras he met William Roberts, the younger son of the former Unitarian preacher there and visited the several missions carried on by him. In Calcutta he found Unitarians, but the work of Mr. Adam had left almost no results. The report of Mr. Brooks was such that an effort was at once made to secure a missionary for India.[3] In 1855 Rev. Charles H.A. Dall undertook this mission. He had been a minister at large in St. Louis, Baltimore, and Portsmouth, and settled over parishes in Needham and Toronto. Mr. Ball was given the widest liberty of action in conducting his mission, as his instructions indicate: "There you are to enter upon the work of a missionary; and whether by preaching, in English or through an interpreter, or by school-teaching or by writing for the press, or by visiting from house to house, or by translating tracts, or by circulation of books, you are instructed, what we know your heart will prompt you to do, to give yourself to a life of usefulness as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ."

On his arrival at Calcutta, Mr. Ball was in a prostrate condition, and had to be carried ashore. After a time he rallied and began his work. He gathered a small congregation about him, then began teaching; and his work grew until he had four large and flourishing schools under his charge. In these he gave special attention, to moral and religious training, and to the industrial arts. In his school work he had the efficient aid of Miss Chamberlain, and after her death of Mrs. Helen Tompkins. One of the native teachers, Dwarkanath Singha, was of great service in securing the interest of the natives, being at the head, for many years, of all the schools under Mr. Dall's control. Mr. Dall founded the Calcutta School of Industrial Art, the Useful Arts' School, Hindoo Girls' School, as well as a school for the waifs of the streets. In these schools were 8,000 pupils, mostly Hindoos, who were taught a practical religion,--the simple principles of the gospel. In education Mr. Dall accomplished large results, not only by his schools, but by talking and lecturing on the subject. His influence was especially felt in the education of girls and in industrial training, in both of which directions he was a pioneer. Only one of his schools is now in existence, simply because the government took up the work he began, and gave it a larger support than was possible on the part of any individual or any society.

Mr. Dall wrote extensively for the leading journals of India, and in that way he reached a larger number of persons throughout the country. This brought him a large correspondence, and he frequently journeyed far to visit individuals and congregations thus brought to his knowledge. For many years he was one of the leading men of Calcutta. Few great public meetings of any reformatory or educational kind were held without his having a prominent part in them. He published great numbers of tracts and lectures,[4] and translated the works of the leading Unitarians of America and Great Britain into Hindostanee, Bengali, Tamil, Sanscrit, and other native languages. His zeal in circulating liberal writings was great, and met with a large reward. He distributed hundreds of copies of the complete Works of Dr. Channing, and these brought many persons to the acceptance of Unitarianism. When Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland was in India, in 1895-96, he found many traces of these volumes, even in remote parts of the country. When he was in Madras, a very intelligent Hindoo walked one hundred and fifty miles to procure of him a copy of Channing's biography to replace a copy received from Mr. Dall, which, had been reread and loaned until it was almost worn out.

A considerable part of Mr. Ball's influence was in connection with the Brahmo-Somaj, in directing its religious, educational, and reformatory work. He did not make many nominal Unitarians; but he had a very large influence in shaping the life of India by his personal influence and by the weight of his religious character. Everywhere he was greatly beloved. He earned considerable sums as a reporter and author in aid of his mission, and he lived in a most abstemious manner in order to devote as much money as possible to his work.[5] In this devoted service he continued until his death, which took place July 18, 1886.

[Sidenote: Recent Work in India.]

Since the death of Mr. Dall the aid given to India by American Unitarians has been through the natives themselves. The work of Pundita, Ramabai has received considerable assistance, as has also that of Mozoomdar. Early in the year 1888, Rev. Brooke Herford, then minister of the Arlington Street Church in Boston, received from India a letter addressed "To the chief pastor of the Unitarian congregation at Boston." It proved to be from a young lawyer or pleader in Banda, North-west Provinces, named Akbar Masih. His father was an educated Mohammedan, who in early life had been converted to Calvinistic Christianity, and had become a missionary. At the Calcutta University the son had outgrown the faith he had been taught; and a volume of Channing's Works, put in circulation by Mr. Dall, had given him the mental and spiritual teaching he desired. Tracts and books were sent him, and a correspondence followed. He read with great delight what he received, and in a year or two he desired to become a missionary. Mr. Herford sent him money, and he was employed to spend one-third of his time in the missionary service of Unitarianism. When Mr. Herford removed to London, the support of Akbar Masih was arranged for in England; and he has done a large work in preaching, lecturing, holding conferences, and publishing tracts and books.

Nearly in the same week in which Mr. Herford received his first letter from Akbar Masih, Mr. Sunderland, in Ann Arbor, received one from Hajam Kissor Singh, Jowai, Khasi Hills, Assam. He was a young man employed by the government as a surveyor, was well educated, but belonged to one of the primitive tribes that retain their aboriginal religion and customs to a large extent. He had been taught orthodox Christianity, however; but it was not satisfactory to him. A Brahmo friend loaned him a copy of Channing, and furnished him with Mr. Dall's address. In the bundle of tracts sent him by Mr. Dall was a copy of The Unitarian, which led him to write to its editor, Mr. Sunderland. A correspondence followed, and the sending of many tracts and books. Mr. Singh began to talk of his new views to others, who gathered in his room on Sunday afternoons for religious inquiry and worship. Soon there was a call for similar meetings in another village, and Mr. Singh began to serve as a lay-preacher. A church was organized in Jowai, and then a day school was opened. Tracts and books being necessary in order to carry on the work successfully, Mr. Sunderland raised the necessary money, printed them in Khasi at Ann Arbor, and forwarded them to Assam, thus greatly facilitating the labors of Mr. Singh and his assistants. Also, through the help of American Unitarians, Mr. Singh was able to secure the aid of two paid helpers. When Mr. Sunderland visited the Khasi Hills, in 1895, as the agent of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, he helped to ordain a regular pastor; and he found church buildings in five villages, day-schools in four, and religious circles meeting in eight or nine others. This mission is now being supported by the English Unitarians.

[Sidenote: The Beginnings in Japan.]

After the death of Mr. Dall it was not found desirable to continue his educational work, and the missionary activities in India naturally came under the jurisdiction of the British Unitarian Association. At the same time, Japan offered an inviting field for missionary effort, and one not hitherto occupied by Unitarians. In 1884 a movement began in that country, looking to the introduction of a rational Christianity, the leader being Yukichi Fukuzawa, a prominent statesman, head of the Keiogijiku University and editor of the leading newspaper. In 1886 Fumio Yano, after a visit to England, took up the same mission, and urged the adoption of Christianity as a moral force in the life of the nation. The latter interpreted Unitarianism as being the form of Christianity needed in Japan, and strongly urged its acceptance. Other prominent men joined with these two in commending a rational Christianity to their countrymen. Not long afterwards the American Unitarian Association was asked to establish a mission in that country. In 1887 Rev. Arthur M. Knapp was sent to Japan to investigate the situation, and in the spring of 1889 he returned to report the results of his inquiries. He had; been welcomed; by the leading men, such as the Marquis Tokujawa and Kentaro Kaneko, who opened to him many avenues of influence. He had written for the most important newspapers, had come into personal contact with the leading men of all parties, had lectured; on many occasions to highly educated audiences, and had opened a wide-reaching correspondence.

On his return to Japan, in 1889, Mr. Knapp was prepared to begin systematic work in behalf of rational Christianity. It was not his purpose, however, to seek to establish Unitarianism there as the basis of a new Japanese sect, but to diffuse it as a leaven for the moral and spiritual elevation of the people of Japan. "The errand of Unitarianism in Japan," said Mr. Knapp to the Japanese, "is based upon the familiar idea of the sympathy of religions. With the conviction that we are the messengers of distinctive and valuable truths which have not yet been emphasized, and that, in return, there is much in your faith and life which to our harm we have not emphasized, receive us not as theological propagandists, but as messengers of the new gospel of human brotherhood in the religion of man."

With Mr. Knapp were associated Rev. Clay MacCauley as colleague, and also Garrett Droppers, John H. Wigmore, and William Shields Liscomb, who were to become, professors in the Keiogijiku, a leading university, situated in Tokio, and to give such aid as they could to the Unitarian mission. With these men was soon associated Rev. H.W. Hawkes, a young English minister, who gave his services to this important work. There also accompanied the American party Mr. Saichiro Kanda, who had become a Unitarian while residing in San Francisco, and had attended the Meadville Theological School. In the winter of 1890-91, Mr. Knapp returned to the United States, and a little later Mr. Hawkes went back to England. In 1891 Rev. William I. Lawrance joined the mission force; and he continued with it until 1894, when a severe illness compelled his resignation. Professor Wigmore returned to America in 1892 to accept a chair in the North-western University; Professor Liscomb came home in 1893, dying soon after his return; while Professor Droppers remained until the winter of 1898, when he became the president of the University of South Dakota. In the beginning of 1900, Mr. MacCauley, after having had direction of the mission for nine years, returned to America; and it was left in control of the Japanese Unitarian Association, the American Association continuing to give it generous financial aid and counsel.

As already indicated, the purpose of the mission has not been Unitarian propagandism as such. It has been that of religious enlightenment, the bringing to the Japanese, in a catholic and humanitarian spirit, of the body of religious truths and convictions known as Unitarianism, and then permitting them to organize themselves after the manner of their own national life. No churches were organized by the representatives of the American Unitarian Association. Those that have come into existence have been wholly at the initiative of the natives. Early in 1894 was erected, in Tokio, Yuiitsukwan, or Unity Hall, with money furnished largely from the United States. This building serves as the headquarters for Unitarian work, including lectures and social and religious meetings. In 1896 was organized the Japanese Unitarian Association for the work of diffusing Unitarian principles throughout the country. The mission is organized into the three departments of church extension, publication, and education. Of this Association, Jitsunen Saji, formerly a prominent Buddhist lecturer and a member at present of the city council of Tokyo, is the superintendent. The secretary has been Saichiro Kanda, who has faithfully given his time to this work since he returned to Japan with the mission party, in 1889. The broad purposes of the Japanese Unitarian Association have been clearly defined in its constitution: "We desire to act in accordance with God's will, which we perceive by our inborn reason. We strive to follow the guidance of noble religion, exact science and philosophy, and to discover their truth. We believe it to be a natural law of the human mind to investigate freely all phenomena of the universe. We aim to maintain the peace of the world, and to promote the happiness of mankind. We endeavor to assert our rights, and to fulfil our duties as Japanese citizens; and to increase the prosperity of the country by all honorable means."

Early in 1891 was begun the publication in Japanese of a magazine called at first The Unitarian, but afterwards Religion. The paid circulation was about 1,000 copies, but it was largely used as a tract for free distribution. In 1897 this magazine was merged into a popular religious monthly called Rikugo-Zasshi or Cosmos, which has a large circulation. It is published at the headquarters of the Japanese Unitarian Association, and is the organ of the liberalizing work carried on by that institution. The Association has translated thirty or forty American and English tracts,--some have been added by native writers; and these were distributed to the number of 100,000 in 1900. A number of important liberal books, including Bixby's Crisis in Morals, Clarke's Steps in Belief, and Fiske's Idea of God, have been translated into Japanese, and obtain a ready sale. An extensive work of education, is carried on through the press, nearly all the leading journals having been freely open to the Unitarians since the beginning of the mission.

The direct work of education has been the most important of all the phases of the mission's activities. A library of several thousand volumes, representing all phases of modern thought, has been collected in Unity Hall; and it is of great value to the teaching carried on there. Lectures are given every Sunday in Unity Hall, and listened to by large audiences. Much has been done in various parts of Tokyo, as well as elsewhere, to reach the student class, and educated persons in all classes of society; and many persons have thus been brought to an acceptance of Unitarianism. In 1890 were begun systematic courses of lectures, with a view to giving educated Japanese inquirers a thorough knowledge of modern religious ideas; and these grew into the Senshin Gakuin, or School of Advanced Learning, a theological school with seven professors, and an annual attendance of thirty or forty students, nearly all of whom have been graduates of colleges and universities. Unhappily, the failure of financial support compelled the abandonment of this school in 1898. The chief educational work, however, has been done in the colleges and universities, through the general diffusion of liberal religious principles, and by the free spirit of inquiry characteristic of all educated Japanese.

The success of the Japanese mission is chiefly due to Rev. Clay MacCauley, who gave it the wise direction and the organizing skill necessary to its permanent growth. It is a noble monument to his devotion, and to his untiring efforts for its advancement. His little book on Christianity in History is very popular, both in its English and Japanese versions; and thousands of copies are annually distributed.