METHODIST MAGAZINE,

VOL. XIV, No. 4.

AND

Quarterly Review.

OCTOBER, 1832. NEW SERIES-VOL. III, No. 4.

CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.

From the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.

FROM the earliest period in the history of mankind, India has excited the interest, and commanded the attention, of very distant nations, as well as of its immediate neighbors. Nor is it without good reason that India has been the object of intense curiosity and general interest: its vast extent, the regularity of its climate, the fertility of its soil, the wealth of its mines, the peaceful character of its inhabitants, and the skill of its artisans, combined with its early advance in science, and the acknowledged antiquity and professed wisdom of its institutions both sacred and civil, have in all ages given it an eminence among the nations, have rendered it favorable to the enterprises of commerce and of war, and have justly attracted the inquiries of the most eminent in letters and religion.

It is generally admitted that India was peopled by the descendants of Joktan the son of Eber, who was great grandson to Arphaxad, the son of Shem, as seems to be intimated by Moses, Gen. x. It was one of the countries most early settled after the dispersion of Babel; and being ever jealous of foreign intercourse, and having a profound veneration for antiquity, it has preserved perhaps more extensively than other countries the traditionary lore and the sublime doctrines of the patriarchal Church; though they are now found connected in the same system with the speculative and practical absurdities and villanies of the grossest idolatry and demon worship. The exclusive character of the institutions of India, and the preservation of them unaltered for upward of thirty centuries, have been favored by its remote situation, and by the natural obstacles presented to aggressions from other nations by the ocean to the south, east, and west, and by some of the highest mountains and most majestic rivers in the world, on its northern side. When Europe, therefore, was only half peopled, and its barbarous and warlike inhabitants, subsisting by the chase, were, for the most part, ignorant of letters and the arts, India was highly populous, its fertile soil was ploughed and irrigated with extraordinary skill, and it was the universally acknowledged seat of learning and of science.

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It would be matter of just surprise had such a country obtained no share of the pious attentions and zealous labors of the apostles of Christ, or their immediate successors; while countries equally difficult of access, whose climates were inhospitable, and whose inhabitants were sunk deep in barbarism, were visited by the messengers of truth, and raised to a state of moral beauty and fruitfulness, indicative not of transitory attention, but of constant and systematic cultivation.

I would not therefore hastily reject the tradition, that the Apostle Thomas travelled as far as India, and there preached the Gospel. Some modern writers have thought it unworthy of credit; but it is firmly believed by the Syrian Christians of Travancore in the south of India: they have received it from remote antiquity, that the apostle visited that part of the world, and labored with great success for the conversion of the idolaters to the faith of Christ; and that at length he was martyred by the envious and opposing Brahmins, near Mielapoor, the place of his interment; from that tradition, called St. Thomé by the Portuguese and other European nations. The mount on which the holy apostle is said to have been pursued and martyred is only a few miles distant from Madras. These places are deemed sacred by Hindoos and Mohammedans as well as by the native Christians. I have visited them with a deep feeling of interest, disturbed only by the surrounding abuses and perversions of Romish superstition.

The credit of these traditions is considerably strengthened by the corroborating testimony of the most ancient writers on ecclesiastical history. Eusebius, the father of the historians of the Church, who wrote in the fourth century, and Socrates, who in the fifth century continued the work of Eusebius, have recorded that they were informed, that Bartholomew the apostle preached the Gospel in India beyond Ethiopia, and that Thomas went to Parthia. Tertullian, in the second century, testified that the inhabitants of Parthia, or modern Persia, of Media, and of Mesopotamia, had believed. St. Jerome, who wrote in the fourth century, asserts that Bartholomew and Thomas both, died in India; and Nicephorus, patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century, records it as a commonly received fact, that the Apostle Thomas founded Churches in Ethiopia, in Parthia, and in Taproban, or the island of Ceylon. St. Jerome informs us also, that in the year 178, Christians from India attended the school at Alexandria in Egypt; that Pantænus, one of the heads of that school, accompanied them back to India, where he communicated instruction to the Brahmins; and on his return brought with him a copy of the Gospel by St. Matthew, which he had discovered there.

It may therefore be considered not improbable that the numerous native Churches of Travancore, sometimes called the Christians of St. Thomas, but more commonly Syrian Christians, are, in part at least, the descendants of the Hindoos converted in the

apostolic age. These Churches have from an early period acknowledged the authority of the Maphrian, or co-patriarch of Antioch, formerly residing in Seleucia; but who, subsequent to the destruction of that city, has had his seat in Mosul, the ancient Nineveh, in Mesopotamia. Their metropolitan, or bishop, has been sent, or received his appointment, thence from time immemorial; and it is perhaps from this circumstance, and their having been early joined by a colony of Syrians accompanying one of their bishops, that they have been called Syrian Christians; and have retained their Scriptures and liturgy in the Syriac tongue. That India was anciently considered as part of that see, is confirmed by the record, that one of the three hundred and eighteen bishops assembled by Constantine the Great in the first general council at Nice, A. D. 325, was John, bishop of all Persia and of India: and, not to multiply authorities, Casmas Indicopleustes, who wrote a work on Christian Topography, A. D. 547, says, that there were Christian Churches in Taproban and in Malayalim or Travancore; and that the bishop of Calicut received his appointment from Persia.

It is no part of my design to trace the history of the fourteen hundred Churches under the care of the Syrian metropolitan in India. Those Churches have long lost their missionary zeal; in the sixteenth century part of them was united to the Church of Rome by the violent zeal of Don Alexis de Menezes, bishop of Goa: but the other part with surprising courage and tenacity clung to their ancient institutions; and it is hoped that the labors of the missionaries of the Church of England will, under the Divine blessing, effect a revival of religion among them; and that they may prove successful evangelists in that country, in which for so many ages they have been witnesses for the truth.

The fame of those distant Churches was known in Europe even in the dark ages. It is not the least interesting fact in the history of our own country, that Alfred, whose learning, piety, and bravery rendered him at once the delight and the benefactor of the English nation, toward the end of the ninth century, sent an embassy to the Christians of St. Thomas in India, with charitable offerings for their relief. It is not improbable they had begun to suffer from the persecuting spirit of Mohammedanism, then successfully prevailing in India: as I learn from a historical work in the Tamul language, now before me, that in the year 900 of the Christian era, Sera, the king of Travancore, embraced Islamism, and undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he died. Alfred's embassy, having visited the shrine of St. Thomas, returned to England laden with spices and pearls; and bearing intelligence that gladdened the pious heart, and delighted the inquiring spirit, of that Christian king. The notice of this most interesting fact in the Saxon chronicle, A. D. 883, is but brief; as is also the mention made of it by William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century; who justly remarks

on the circumstance, quod quivis in hoc seculo miretur. Both testimonies are admitted by Gibbon himself; and are considered on all hands to be unimpeachable.

Comparatively few Europeans visited India before the discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope in the end of the fifteenth century. At that time Pope Alexander VI., whose gross vices rendered him a disgrace to human nature, pretended to bestow Hindostan and the neighboring countries on the crown of Portugal, and to give the new world to Spain. The naval chaplain of Vasco de Gama, the Portuguese admiral who first made the voyage out to India, baptized a Hindoo monk at Calicut by the name of Michael; and in all their future visits, and in the formation of their establishments, the Portuguese seem ever to have had the intention of subjugating India to the see of Rome.

When the famed Francis Xavier arrived in India in the year 1541, he found many thousands of the natives nominally Christians, but exhibiting no more of the knowledge or practice of Christianity than their Heathen neighbors. As he was one of the first, so he appears also to have been the best, of the disciples of Ignatius Loyola: he studied and labored with a disinterestedness, a zeal, and a perseverance, which evidence that according to his light he was pious and sincere: but, as might be supposed from the extent of the circuit in which he labored, his knowledge of the languages of India was very imperfect, and his instructions were confined to the creed, the Lord's prayer, the commandments, a short catechism, and a sermon or exhortation; but the attention of the people was excited by the earnestness of his manner, and it is said that he made ten thousand converts in one month.

Some of Xavier's successors were men of superior talents; but, according to the accounts published by their own society, were not very scrupulous in the methods they employed to induce the Hindoos to unite with them. Robert de Nobili, an Italian Jesuit, whose successes in Madura were noised through the world, is said to have forged a document, and to have sworn to its authenticity and correctness, to show that the Jesuits of Rome descended in a direct line from the god Brahma, and were Brahmins of much older date than those of India; and by these means to have succeeded in his mission to an amazing extent. I consider these stories unworthy of credit. De Nobili was a voluminous author: I have had opportunity of reading many of his works in the Tamul language; in which, so far from claiming such a lineage for himself and his brethren, he most powerfully contends with the Brahminical system, and exposes and ridicules its absurdities; and so impressive were his discourses on God, that he is known among the natives by a name which signifies, Teacher of the Divine Attri butes. It is true that he and his coadjutors assumed the ap pearance, and practised many of the observances, of Hindoo sann zases, or monks, and thus attracted and won over multitudes of the

people. On his portrait, representing him in Brahminical costume, in the convent of the Jesuits in Rome, was inscribed, 'Father Robert de Nobili, a Jesuit of Rome; of noble family, and of eminent piety and learning: for forty-five years he labored for the conversion of the Heathen, eating only rice and other vegetable food he died in Mylapoor, in the year 1656.'

Others of the Romish missionaries who have labored in India have been equally clever, self-denying, and devoted to the papal cause. Various orders of the regular clergy, Portuguese, Italian, and French, have formed their establishments in India: but, while the Portuguese greatly outnumber the others in consequence of their numerous and richly endowed ecclesiastical establishments in Goa, the French and Italian Jesuits have been the most enterprising and successful. They have founded missions of considerable extent, at a distance from European settlements, and independent of European influence; by their pretended authority and their imposing superstitions, they continue to hold the minds of many thousands in subjection; and they have also created a literature in the native tongues, in science as well as religion, well adapted to engage the minds of such of their converts as may have leisure and taste for elegant and abstruse learning.

But among the converts to the Church of Rome, we look in vain for a speculative knowledge of the truth, or for its practical effects in the heart and life: their spiritual guides never presented to them the book of God in their vernacular tongues, nor even orally instructed them in the whole 'truth as it is in Jesus; and it is not surprising that, with the Abbé Dubois, they should complain that their people are the worse for their change, and are less. trust-worthy than their Heathen brethren: and indeed we should have had little pleasure in tracing the history of Christianity in India from the time of Alfred to the present day, had we not kept in view the more modern and the more worthy attempts of the Protestant Churches of Europe for the conversion of the Hindoos.

The Dutch have the honor of having led the van in this holy enterprise. In 1630, they had a congregation of native Christians in Pulicat, about twenty-five miles north of Madras. In 1660, the famous Philip Baldæus labored in Negapatam, in the Dutch and Portuguese languages; but his successor, Nathanael Pope or Baup, acquired a knowledge of the native tongue, and was zealous in the propagation of Christianity among the Heathen. Many testimonies to the pious industry and zeal of the Dutch ministers present themselves in the island of Ceylon, and on the continent of India; the names of some of them are still familiar in the mouths of the people; they translated and published some excellent books; and the Wesleyan mission in Negapatam now uses a place of worship of some antiquity erected by the Dutch.

But it was reserved for the Danes to render more important and permanent service to the Christian cause on the continent of India.