p. 12 | AGGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 16, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 11.

AGGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.

By Rev. G. F. Pentecost, D.D.

BY REV. G. F. PENTECOST, D.D.

THE particular object that carried me to India was that I might preach the gospel—the same gospel, and by the same methods, that, as an evangelist, I had used at home. I had come to know that there were perhaps accessible a million educated, English-speaking Indian gentlemen. There are English colleges over all the land, and the aspiration of every young Indian, especially the Brahmin, is to receive an English education. How sensitive they are on this point I will illustrate! I was told that it would be impossible to hold a student class of Brahmins throughout a whole discourse—that they would slip out by twos and threes, and that, beginning with an audience of five hundred, I would be fortunate if I held fifty to the close. Well, the congregation began to go out as predicted, and I tried my little experiment. "I find," I said, "that some of the gentlemen here do not understand English. I sympathize with them greatly, because I know that it must be very tedious to sit here and listen to an address that they cannot understand. Therefore I will pause, that those who do not understand English may retire." There were probably fifty men on their feet as I said these words, and they sat down as if they had been shot. They would rather sit and listen to me an hour and a half than have it appear that they did not understand English. You could not have pulled them out with a derrick.

I preached in Calcutta every night for eight weeks to congregations of educated, English-speaking natives, nine-tenths of them Brahmins. I have seen some Brahmins defying all precedent, braving all reproach, stand boldly on their feet in the presence of five hundred of their fellows, asking that the Christian God might have mercy upon them. I have some seventy cards in my possession signed by Brahmins, indicating their desire to be Christians, only they were not yet prepared to make their confession openly. They say, "Be patient with us; we have insuperable difficulties to overcome." You and I do not know what it means to forsake father, and mother, and houses, and lands, and wives, and brothers, and sisters, and not only be hurled out of our own community, but cast into the very mud and mire of society, and to throw back upon those we love best all the reproach of our disgrace. That is what these converts to Christianity have to face. God help them and pity them.

In the city of Lucknow, after preaching for three weeks to the educated Brahmins in that city, I proposed to them that they should hold a series of meetings, and that, if they liked, they might traverse my preaching. They agreed to do so if I would attend. I said I would, and they selected five men eminent for knowledge and for skill in debate. There were one magistrate, two barristers, and a judge, and fifteen hundred natives assembled in the hall to listen. The first speaker was a Brahmin pundit of some reputation, whose task was to overthrow my contention that the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, which they constantly teach as the substance of their faith, was not found in the Brahminical Scriptures, but was a plagiarism from the New Testament. After a discourse of fifteen minutes, the chairman said his texts were irrelevant, and that he had better bring his address to a close. After that one of the barristers arose and made a very ingenious address, in which he extolled a great many of the Christian doctrines which unconsciously they have taken as their own, and repudiated idolatry, which, he said, no true Hindu ever did believe in. It was a mere excrescence upon Hinduism, and not of its essence. He gave us a good Unitarian address on morals. Then followed another speaker, who said he was ashamed of the speaker who had preceded him for so outrageously misrepresenting Hinduism; and he spent his twenty-five minutes in attacking him. The next speaker said in substance that he was sorry he had lived to see the time when, standing on the platform with representative Hindus, there was not one man who appeared to know what Hinduism was.

The five speakers were literally at each other's throats during the whole meeting, until the grave old Brahmin who presided said he thought it was time to close the meeting, and he would ask his friend, Dr. Pentecost, to make the closing address. Well, I stood up and thanked the gentlemen for their addresses, and told them that if I were going to stay another twelve months I would like these five men to go with me as assistant evangelists.

You cannot find one man who is consistent with another in expounding Hinduism today. They have been so permeated with Christianity that they do not know what they believe, and they are held only by two things,—the remnants of a dominant superstition and their social status.—Our Day.