The American Baptist Mission is the oldest Protestant mission working in Burma. It was commenced by Dr. Judson in Rangoon in 1813, and has expanded in Lower Burma to a large and strong mission, having had very signal and rapid success amongst the Karen races, and to a fair extent amongst the Burmans also. As far back as 1824, Dr. Judson, wishing to extend the work to Upper Burma, went up the Irrawaddy and opened a mission at Ava, which was then the capital. Ava is situated about ten or twelve miles from Mandalay, and is now quite an insignificant village, with the remains of the royal city and palace still to be seen. Mandalay, of course, did not at that time exist as a town. Unfortunately, the first Burmese war with England took place whilst Judson was at Ava, and completely broke up the work he had begun to do in the capital, and Judson was imprisoned, together with the few European and American residents, at Ava.

For a year and ten months he was kept in rigorous confinement, under circumstances of great barbarity, first at Ava, and afterwards at the village of Oung-pen-la, which is only about two miles from Mandalay. I have often been to Oung-pen-la, a typical Burmese agricultural village, surrounded by rice fields, which are irrigated from the great Oung-pen-la lake, close by. The site of the old prison is still pointed out by the villagers, but the building itself has been removed, and, being of teak, has left no trace behind. Seldom have the annals of missions furnished a more pathetic narrative of suffering than this.

“On the 8th of June,” wrote Mrs. Judson, “just as we were preparing for dinner, in rushed an officer, holding a black book, with a dozen Burmans, accompanied by one, who from his spotted face we knew to be an executioner, and a ‘son of the prison.’ ‘Where is the teacher?’ was the first inquiry. Mr. Judson presented himself. ‘You are called by the king,’ said the officer,—a form of speech always used when about to arrest a criminal. The spotted man instantly seized Mr. Judson, threw him on the floor, and produced the small cord, the instrument of torture.”

With this the prisoner was bound and dragged off to the court house, where the governor of the city and the officers were collected, and one of them read the order of the king, to commit Mr. Judson to the death-prison. He was suspected of being in communication with the English, with whom they were at war, though of course he had nothing to do with them.

This was the beginning of his long imprisonment. Whilst in prison Judson suffered much. He was loaded with fetters, which left their marks on his limbs till the day of his death. He was placed in the common prison, amidst dirt and noisome smells, in charge of ferocious jailers, who had to be continually plied with presents to secure for him the very necessaries of existence. At night it was the custom to secure the safe keeping of the prisoners by enclosing their feet in a kind of stocks, several of them in a row, the stocks being then hoisted up into the air a little way, so that the feet were elevated higher than the head, which must have caused great pain and inconvenience. During a great part of the time of this captivity the prisoners were in a state of dreadful suspense, not knowing whether they might not be put to death any day or hour. More than once the design was formed to kill them, but by the Providence of God that intention was never carried out.

The death-prison was constructed of boards, and was rather stronger than a common Burman dwelling-house. There were no windows nor other means of admitting the air, except by such crevices as always exist in a simple board house, and only one small outer door. What must have been their state with one hundred prisoners of all classes huddled together, including the worst of criminals, all shut up in one room, loaded with fetters, in the sweltering heat of the hot season of Upper Burma, where the thermometer rises every day to 110° in the shade? Prisoners were continually dying of disease, as well as by violent treatment, and yet the place was always full. Several sepoys, and occasionally English soldiers, prisoners of war, swelled the lists of the miserable. These poor creatures, having no regular supply of food, were often brought to the very verge of starvation; and then, on some worship day, the women would come, as a work of charity, to the prison with rice and fruit, and the miserable sufferers, maddened by starvation, would eat and die.

Suddenly, in May, the very hottest month of the year, when life is a burden, even with all that can be done to mitigate the effects of the climate, and when for Europeans to go out in the sun unprotected is at the peril of their lives, the prisoners were removed from the prison at Ava to Amarapoora, and after that to Oung-pen-la. They were made to walk barefoot a journey of nine miles, chained together two by two. The Burman guards, by a refinement of cruelty, instead of making the journey in the cool of the day or night, set out at eleven o’clock in the day, so that they were under the scorching sun all the time, the sand and gravel like burning coals to tread upon, first blistering their feet, and then taking the whole of the skin off. One of the European prisoners, a Greek, who when taken out of prison was in his usual health, fell down on the way, and expired in an hour or two after their arrival, doubtless from sunstroke. The others reached Oung-pen-la more dead than alive.

The sufferings of Judson’s devoted wife were scarcely less severe than his own all this time, although she was not imprisoned. During all the months he lay imprisoned at Ava she was harassed with the most consuming anxiety for her husband, and had constantly to exert herself to the utmost to get him food into the prison. During that time her child was born. The removal of the prisoners to Oung-pen-la occurred when the babe was only three months old. It occurred suddenly and unknown to her and when she found him gone, she knew not whither to go seeking him. She sent first to the place of execution, fearing the worst, but they were not there; and then she had to follow the party as best she could, finding them at last at Oung-pen-la. The very morning after their arrival there, the little Burmese girl she had with her, to help with the baby, was taken ill of smallpox, and the babe of three months took it from her. After that Mrs. Judson herself was taken seriously ill, and for two months lay helpless on a mat on the floor of the wretched little hut, where she had taken up her abode, to be near her husband in the prison. When the child recovered, the mother was unable to nurse her, so that, being deprived of her usual nourishment, the infant suffered greatly. Neither a nurse nor a drop of cow’s milk could be procured in the village. However, by making presents to the jailers—nothing could be done without presents—she obtained leave for Dr. Judson to come out of prison daily, in order to carry the emaciated little creature round the village, to the houses of those women who were suckling children, and to beg them for pity’s sake to give each a little, to keep the life in the child!

In this way the twenty-two weary months of his captivity passed, amidst hardships, sickness and anxiety unspeakable. At length release came. On the advance of the English army up the Irrawaddy, Dr. Judson was sent for to the Burmese camp, being then a most valuable man, to serve as interpreter and translator, and to negotiate terms of peace; and thus their long captivity came to a close.

Ardently as Judson longed to see his mission established in Upper Burma in his day, sixty years were destined to elapse before the society to which he belonged secured a permanent footing there. It was after the annexation in 1886 that work was permanently taken up by them in Mandalay. A handsome church has recently been erected there at a cost of about £3,000, by contributions from America and Burma, as a memorial of Dr. Judson, and the mission has met with a fair share of success. In addition to Mandalay, three other stations have been taken up by the American Baptist Mission in Upper Burma—viz., Sagaing, Myingyan and Meiktila, and one medical missionary has gone to the Shan States. Bhamo was occupied previously, during King Theebaw’s reign, for work amongst the Kachin tribes.

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S. P. G.) began its work in Mandalay under the comparatively favouring auspices of King Mindohn, the father and immediate predecessor of Theebaw. This monarch built for the mission, at his own cost, very commodious and handsome premises of teak wood, consisting of a church, a mission house, and a school, which still remain. In the church is a handsome font, the appropriate gift of Queen Victoria to this church, built by the munificence of a heathen king! Theebaw, when a boy, was a pupil in that school, and there was no thought then of his succeeding to the throne. He made very little progress with English study, though he had a good reputation for Buddhist lore.

Owing to the massacres and other grievous disorders of Theebaw’s reign, the mission had to be closed for several years, the missionaries, along with all the other English residents, having to leave Mandalay. On the annexation being declared, the S. P. G. mission was reopened, and subsequently another station was opened at Shwebo, and these two stations, with a sub-station at Madeya, have experienced a fair share of prosperity since.

During the six years these two missions have been re-established in Upper Burma, the effects of the climate upon the health and lives of the missionaries have been very marked. Both missions have already their record of the faithful dead—mission workers, both male and female, who have fallen in the prime of life, and one before she had well begun her mission work. In both missions, too, during that time several valued workers have had to leave the country, worn down by sickness, and unable to endure the climate.

The Wesleyan Mission commenced work in Mandalay at the beginning of 1887. Up to date we number three European missionaries, two Singhalese workers (from Ceylon), and three other native preachers, and we have occupied three stations, Mandalay, Pakokku and Kyaukse. The story of our work will appear in the subsequent pages.

Coming now to the subject belonging to the second half of this chapter,

But there is a further objection against this false ideal, on the ground that abroad, in the mission field, it gives rise to a powerful and subtle temptation in some minds, and leads to waste of precious power. In most mission fields the hardness of the hearts of many of the heathen, and the deep sense of isolation from the people which the missionary feels, and which is inevitable from the difference of race, language and habits, are so distressing, that there are few conscientious souls that have not felt, at some time or other, a strong tendency towards an ascetic mode of life: “O! let me do this, let me do that, let me do anything, if I can only come nearer the people.” There is quite enough tendency to this abroad, without its being further stimulated by a demand at home.

“But what do you mean by asceticism? Where do you draw the line?”

By asceticism I mean the deliberate—sometimes even ostentatious—cutting down of provision as to food, clothing, dwelling, and general comfort, to a point obviously below the standard of health and efficiency; this standard being naturally fixed at an approximation to that of the mode of life to which the missionary has previously been accustomed. My own experience of missionary life, extending over nineteen years, is that I have always had to work much harder than if I had been in England, and, whilst the mode of living must needs be very plain and temperate to be healthy, the food must be nourishing, and the surroundings in a fair degree of comfort, or it will soon lead to a collapse.

I do not condemn economy; God forbid! No one believes in that more than I do. I entertain strong views as to the importance of a humble, simple, unostentatious manner of life, and have always practised it. Nor do I wish to state that the missionary has no need of self-denial. A man cannot be even a disciple without self-denial. Without it, as a missionary he would be useless; and I may testify, in all simplicity, that I have known what it was to practise it, and have reaped the sweet and precious fruits of it. But if that hymn of Keble’s is true anywhere it is true in the missionary’s life—

“All we ought to ask”; missionary life with its labours, cares and anxieties, often in an exhausting climate; its frequent and sore disappointments, its loneliness, the separation from friends and children, and the special call sometimes to new and untried spheres of duty; its sense of heavy responsibility in having to stand practically alone, at the head of a band of native helpers, and to be expected to supply enthusiasm for everybody about him—these, the necessary and unavoidable trials, are the legitimate means of denying himself; and they afford infinite scope for useful, holy service, and they are quite enough, without going further afield, like Don Quixote, in search of more.

I trust my readers will bear with me whilst I give the details of some cases I have known, where honoured brethren and sisters have felt moved to attempt the ascetic method, in order that we may observe how it works.

I knew a pious devoted missionary of another Society. He was a man of decidedly ascetic life. One of the ordinary diseases of the country, not generally fatal, assailed him. His constitution, in the opinion of those best able to judge, was so weakened by his ascetic life that he could not rally, but died in the prime of life. Humanly speaking, he died before his time, and one fails to see that his death constitutes any adequate object lesson, to compensate for the loss of his active usefulness. A missionary’s continued and useful life ought to be a much greater benefit to a country than the deposit of his remains in the soil, and the example of a living worker is surely more influential than the memory of one departed.

I knew a missionary and his wife, earnest, devoted, exceedingly kind to the people, and successful. From the first of their settling in the country, their asceticism was so marked that their friends, who saw it, pleaded with them to eat more food and better food, but in vain. Being new to the country, they did not know the risks they ran. After barely two years of earnest work, ill health compelled their retirement from the field, with scarcely any prospect of ever returning. And yet there was no kind of necessity for them to live thus. They appeared to think there was some virtue in self-denial of this type, merely for its own sake.

Another case of the same kind was that of an unmarried missionary lady, with a strong natural tendency to asceticism. She was an able and diligent missionary, and well acquainted with the language. After some years of missionary life, the tendency grew upon her to such an extent, that she withdrew more and more from association with her own people, lived with none but natives, on native food, and broke off one comfort after another, until even bread was too much of a luxury! After a year or eighteen months of this ascetic life, her health broke down so completely that she had to return home to America or die.

One of our brethren in India has told us his story of a similar attempt. It was a sense of duty that urged him to come down to native diet, native dress, and general mode of life; and very loyally to this sense of duty did he persevere for many months. But, to his infinite sorrow, he found that instead of bringing him any nearer to the people, it seemed only to increase the distance; for it aroused their suspicions as to his motives for doing so. He found at length that he could have reached them better if he had moved amongst them in the ordinary way. But meanwhile the penalty of all this had come; his health so completely broke down, clearly in consequence of this method of living, that he had to leave India, and now for several years he has been laid aside completely in England, unable to do any regular work. He is the victim of an honest, and very persistent, but mistaken attempt to live an ascetic missionary life.

As regards the wearing of the native dress, it has often been assumed that to do so must needs place a missionary more in touch with the natives. But in India it is not found that such is really the case. With the exception of the Salvation Army, this is the only case in India where I ever heard of its being attempted, and it had quite the contrary effect. I have heard that a venerable missionary once tried it in Burma, but the peals of laughter that greeted his appearance in the streets instantly convinced him that he could gain nothing by that method. There are probably cases where it is advisable, and even almost necessary, to assume the dress of the country. Each case should be judged upon its own merits, and it greatly depends what kind of a dress it is. In India and Burma they like to see the man be himself, and they respect you for keeping to the customs you have been brought up with.

I shall naturally be asked, “What then about those larger missionary organisations, in different parts of the world, that put asceticism (not economy) avowedly in the forefront, as one of their leading principles?” Well, I will only say of them, in brief, that where it is asceticism as defined above, and not mere economy, facts and experiences have proved that, in the tropics, it has resulted in a far heavier death-rate, in far more total or partial failures of health, and, as human nature has its limits of endurance, in a considerable addition to the numbers in the column headed “retired from the work.” A proper deduction made from the working strength of such missions, on account of these non-effectives, would show, perhaps, that the cheapness supposed to be attained, is more apparent than real.

On one occasion it was pointed out to the great Napoleon that he was losing a great many men in a battle; he is credited with the cynical reply, “You cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs.” In like manner one at least of these organisations has said boldly, “You cannot have a war without losing soldiers.”

True; but if the greater part of this loss is clearly needless and preventible, and if it is the result of want of proper provision being made, and through the neglect of proper precautions of the most ordinary kind—then even the sacredness of the purpose does not justify the recklessness of the methods.

There remains only one more point which I need to mention, and that is the utter futility of the ascetic method, if it is used with any intention of impressing the Oriental mind. The utmost degree of asceticism which any European could ever think it right to adopt, in the discharge of his duties as a missionary, would, to an Oriental, fall far short of his ideal of self-denial, and would not be worth the name. A writer, with wide experience of India, has put this so well, that I may as well quote his words.

“The Hindus understand real asceticism perfectly well, and revere it as a subjugation of the flesh; and if the missionary and his wife carried out the ascetic life as Hindus understand it, lived in a hut, half or wholly naked, sought no food but what was given them, and suffered daily some visible physical pain, they might stir up the reverence which Hindus pay to those who are palpably superior to human needs. But in their eyes there is no asceticism in the life of the mean white, the Eurasian writer, or the Portuguese clerk, but only a squalor unbecoming a teacher, and one who professes, and must profess, scholarly cultivation.”

I have ventured, not without due reflection, to point out in this chapter what seems to be a very false ideal of missions and missionaries. The setting up of the missionary as a spectacle, an object lesson in self-denial, may be a time-honoured institution, but it ought certainly to give way now to some more rational method of recommending this important enterprise. I do not mean to say that this mistake has been universal, or even general. Many people of knowledge and common sense have risen above it. But the evidences of this idea to be found still in prominent places at home, and the instances of it abroad, which are here cited, prove that there has been in popular thought too much leaning in that direction, and show that there is need to point out the fallacy, and the evil of it.

When the simple recital of missionary facts includes the actual experience of unusual trials and perils—as, alas! must still be the case sometimes—it will always command sympathy and attention; but to represent these things as at all comparable in importance to mission work, or to suppose that they essentially belong to it, is neither true nor judicious. And I have shown that, when this tendency is yielded to in the mission field, it leads to an asceticism which produces no increase of usefulness, but a speedy termination of the missionary’s labours.

Note.—Since writing the above chapter, an article has appeared in the Indian Medical Record on “Missionaries and Mortality,” which is so much to the point, and from such an unexceptionable, independent, and competent source, that my readers ought to have the benefit of an extract from it:—

“We would only be just to claim for the missionary every safeguard that we apply to the lives of Europeans in other callings in India. Good, wholesome food, suitable clothing, a proper dwelling-house, and ordinary English home comforts are certainly the least that might be assured to missionaries working in India. Deprived of these vital necessaries, it is no wonder that men unused to the enervating influence of the tropics, burdened with cares and anxieties in the arduous work of an Indian mission field, should rapidly succumb to conditions so trying and hostile to their constitutions.

“We have endeavoured to obtain all the information we could upon this important subject, and we are astounded, both from our own personal experience, and from reports which reach us from numerous quarters, at the fearful havoc that goes on yearly in the ranks of the various missionary bodies who labour in these foreign mission fields. We have seen scores and scores of men come to the country seemingly full of vigour and spirits, who within two or three years either die at their posts, or retire disabled temporarily, and often permanently, with enfeebled health or utterly ruined constitutions.

“From one of the statements sent us we learn that the mortality has been as high as twenty-two per cent. in a society that only finds a small portion of the monthly maintenance allowance for its missionaries. In another society that works on similar lines the death-rate is eighteen per cent. per annum. In another, in which the members work without any allowance, and are compelled to find their food, shelter, and clothing among the very poorest of the Indian people whom they seek to convert, the mortality has been as high as thirty-two per cent. per annum; while its invalid list yields abundant evidence that its methods, while they may be praiseworthy in their ascetic simplicity, are too sacrificial to European life to justify their toleration and continuance.

“Missionary zeal and missionary enterprise have done more for India than any State effort could ever hope to accomplish, and the best work has been done by those societies which, having a due regard for the health and safety of their workers, have provided for the proper conservation and protection of their lives; and lives thus prolonged and preserved have brought with them accumulated experience, which has yielded the advantage not only of laying the foundations of lasting and useful work, but of seeing it cared for, nourished and brought to fruitful perfection by the hands that inaugurated it. Work to be productive of good in the mission fields of India must be lifelong. The short service system is both imbecile and expensive. The languages and habits of the varied peoples of this vast empire cannot be familiarised sufficiently for effective work in a few years. But to enjoy good health and to protect the lives of missionary workers, it is the bounden duty of the great religious societies of England and America to make a full and ample provision for the support and comfort of their representatives in India.”