Forlong - Rivers of Life

Introductory Chapter.
paper lately ventured to write judiciously about missionaries being permitted to annoy
Hindoos and Mahomedans, by preaching at their doors against their Faiths; and a
missionary in the true spirit of a Bibliolater retorts—“You and I are never likely to
come to any agreement as to the utility of street preaching. We practice in obedience
to a command which is quite regardless of all rules of human expediency, and if it
could be demonstrated that we never by this means made one convert, our perverse
body would still cling to their authority, and act on it(!); men believing in a Bible
do not ordinarily look to results to confirm their belief, but live and die ‘faithful
unto the end!’ we do not value the example of our lives (the editor had said
they were good) except as means to an end.” This then is the “unreasonable
service” of the Christian bigot, and what are its results? After a residence of nearly
a third of a century in India, and Barma, and a close and intimate acquaintance
with Christian missionaries of all sects, I can only state that I have never yet seen a
converted man, i.e. one who has been reasoned over to Christianity from his own
faith. I have seen many who for a time and an object, or owing to certain circumstances
have adopted Christianity, but no independent reasonable man: As a rule the
Christian “converts” are those reared from childhood in the Faith, or old and weakly
men and women, who have lost their relatives from one cause or another, and desire
to make friends of “the Mammon of unrighteousness;” or, the converts are wild,
ignorant, superstitious Sontáls or other barbarous tribes, ready to adopt anything
which respectable-looking people urge upon them.
I read in the “Bombay Statesman” Newspaper of June 1872, in the letter of a
pious correspondent, most probably a missionary, who is not satisfied with the progress
of that large society “for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts,” that the
society has existed “for nearly twelve years in western India, and it has not been able
to my knowledge to prepare a single efficient agent from the heathen community . . . . .
its purse is always full, its staff of European workers is not of a mean order, and yet
there is not a single convert from heathenism whom they can call their own.” Now
if for its paid and permanent officers, where it proffers a permanent provision with
house and salary, this large missionary body have been unable in Bombay, Poona,
&c., with their English speaking communities, to draw a single convert in twelve years,
where and when are we to expect converts? The fact is that Christianity, like all
faiths resting on miracles and bare assertion that “its truths are direct and miraculous
revelations from God,” has nothing to recommend itself to man’s reasoning faculties!
For safety’s sake it must avoid reasoners and all who are sceptical, and all wise Christians
do so. I speak as one who for years preached publicly and privately to natives, until I
came to see the weakness and unsoundness of my then foundations. Educated natives,
no longer fearing Government influence, are now openly opposing missionaries when
preaching publicly, and in Bombay, October 1873, this matter attracted much attention.
Opposition preachers were set up, and notices cast widely abroad against the
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