THEWESLEYAN MISSIONARIES IN INDIA. w - E cannot approve the compromise submitted
to the Wesleyan body with regard to its mis- sionaries in India ; it will, we are convinced, seriously impede the success of all missionary labour there. The managers of that body are reputed to be the most judicious of all the Nonconformist clergy, and certainly want of firmness is not among their prominent defects ; but in this instance they seem to have been coerced by influences from within their churches, and the result has been a deplorable proposal. Their mis- sionaries in India were accused, as our readers may remember, of being too luxurious. They received, it was said, too large salaries, lived in too comfortable a way, and were therefore divided by too deep a social fissure from the Indians whom they were expected to convert, and who undoubtedly are poor men. The charge was, we imagine, made in all sincerity by men—as, for instance, Mr. Caine—who could have no interested motives in raising the discussion, and was based on an idea as old as mission work, and in itself not without nobleness, that a missionary, to be efficient, must identify himself with those whom he addresses, not only in things spiritual but in social life, should, in fact, begin his great task of persuasion from a platform of social equality. The proposal, which has from time to time been re- peatedly and thoroughly tested, more especially by the Roman Church, which, as it employs celibate agents, is of all Churches the least embarrassed in adopting it, has always been abandoned, and is hopelessly im- practicable, not only because the missionaries die, which, if the cause were gained, would signify little, but because teacher and disciple are not, either in India or Africa, separated by social barriers, but by differences of race, and all that race implies, colour, civilisation, and in- herent mental tendency, which are insuperable and beyond alleviation. To attempt to place Englishmen and Indians on the same plane by reducing the allowances of the former, or by altering their habits of daily life, is exactly as sensible as it would be to shave Newfoundland dogs in order to make greyhounds of them. Both are dogs, and for their purposes may be equally valuable, but the differences between them are not within any human control. It was not, however, unnatural that the old controversy should. be raised once more, for it is a fixed opinion of our absurd day that Paul cannot convert Onesimus unless he first lays down his own right of exemption from the rods, and we think the missionaries might have been less ready to be offended, as their adversaries might have been less hard and contemptuous in their tone. At all events, the contest grew bitter; the critics were, we fancy, aided by that latent jealousy, as of seculars and monks, which must always exist between a pastorate and its missionaries ; and the chiefs of the Wesleyan denomination con- ceded a committee of investigation into the charges made. That committee has now reported, and acquits the missionaries on all points. Its members find unanimously, as all who know India were aware that they must find, that "the Indian missionaries of the Society are completely exonerated from all charges made or sug- gested against their character and, the character of their work, whether in respect of their mode of living, or of their relations with the native population, Christian or other- wise." As no one impugns either the capacity or the fairness of the committee, that is final, and on Tuesday the grand Committee of the Wesleyan Missionary Society assembled in the Centenary Hall in unusual numbers, and unanimously accepted the verdict, even the Radical leader of the inquiry movement, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, promising, according to the Daily News, that, although apparently unconvinced, he would loyally respect the decision arrived at after so much pains.
The controversy should have closed here, but, unhappily, the Missionary Committee endorsed a proposal which will, we greatly fear, reopen it, and that in half the Missionary Churches of the country. The Wesleyaus, like the Scotch Churches, and, we believe, the English Estab- lished Church, calculate their missionaries' stated salaries, as apart from their allowances for various purposes, in English money, and the missionaries benefit by the difference in exchange. This is to cease, and each missionary is therefore mulcted on the average to the extent of £60 a year, a direct reduction, in fact, in his total spending-money of nearly one-fourth. That means for him the loss of all the small cherished amenities of his life, the power of purchasing a few books in a land without libraries, the privilege of taking a newspaper, the ability to maintain that neatness of appearance and. of household arrangement without which the European in India is apt to lose some of his self- respect, and much of that social respect which, among other results, renders every secular European his friend, and makes of the subscription in India itself the second largest contribution to mission resources. The missionaries can still live, for the Baptist missionaries do it ; but they are to live in pecuniary hair-shirts. The sentence falls at once and most heavily, as its advocates allow, on the married missionaries and the missionaries who are growing old; and it will arouse incalculable bitterness, not only because the missionaries will feel that an implied contract with them has been broken, but because they will take it as evidence of distrust in their readiness to burden the Churches as little as they can help. A human being is not worth much unless he has some self-respect; and it is the first condition of personal dignity in a missionary's mind, that he himself decides what is essential to his usefulness, and that the Society accepts his estimate. The missionaries of the Wesleyan body will feel utterly humiliated by the decision of the Society, and so will every other missionary in their position, for it will compel him either to resign his claim to be paid in gold, or to defend himself against the imputation of taking too much. We believe the effect of the decision, should it be finally ratified by Conference, will be deplorable, even if it does not increase that worst tempta- tion of all missionaries in India,—to increase their incomes by using their special and often most extensive knowledge in secular work. No one knows here the extent of tempta- tion they resist in that way, the constant rejection of sums for honourable and often beneficial work outside their religious duties, or the extent to which unkind treatment like that involved in this vote will make resistance hard.
We trust we shall not be mistaken. We are in no degree arguing to-day against the idea of evangelising India through the agency of white mendicant friars, which is the true ideal in the minds of the abler of those who contend that missionaries are overpaid. That idea seems to us wholly impracticable, a mere dream long since dissi- dated by experience ; but it is a noble one, and if enthu- siasts like to try it once more under new conditions, they will have our pitying sympathy. What we contend is, that it is most unfair to mix up the two ideas—that of preaching friars, and that of superintending pastors— without adopting either ; to treat a faithful body of clergy as if they were overpaid workmen doing too little for their wages ; and to fine all the elderly, experienced, and suc- cessful missionaries of a great Society, on a mere fancy, unanimously discredited by au investigating committee, that they can do very well without the money. Any terms may be justifiably made with new men, though no men can do their best while harassed with pecuniary care ; but to apply the new rule to old and tried agents—if they are, indeed, agents, and not working colleagues—is harsh in the extreme. As to any effect it may have in levelling the Euro- pean pastor with his flock, or even with the Indian pastors who look to him for guidance, the idea is a pure absurdity. The Society might as well tell its missionaries to wear native clothes, in order to assimilate them to their converts in external appearance. That experiment also was tried once in a whole district of Southern India by an entire body of missionaries, and with the result that might have been expected : the preachers looked slightly indecent, and whiter than before. The Societies are bound to see that the money of their constituents is not uselessly expended, and the missionaries are bound to see that they do not by any wastefulness diminish the number of evangelists available' for the great work ; but this notion of making Englishmen and Indians equal by making the former miserable in their daily lives, could only have occurred to men under the dominion of an idea. The missionaries will submit, of course, rather than raise discord in the Churches ; but they will submit as men who have been unjustly treated, and calumniated besides, by their own trusted friends.
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