CHAPTER III.  CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH SCHWARTZ, THE COUNCILLOR OF TANJORE

We must turn from America to the warmer regions of the East, from the patriarchal savage to complicated forms of society, and from the Red-skin to the Hindoo—a man of far nearer affinity to ourselves, being, like us, of the great Indo-European race, speaking a language like our own, an altered, corrupted, and intermingled dialect of the same original tongue, and his ancestors originally professing a religion in which the same primary ideas may be traced as those which were held by our ancient northern forefathers, and which are familiar to us in the graceful dress imposed on them by the Greeks.  The sacred writings of the Hindoos form the earliest storehouse of the words of our common language, and the thoughts therein found, though recorded after the branches had parted from the common stock, are nearer the universal germ than those to be found anywhere else, and more nearly represent the primary notion of religion held by the race of Japheth, after that of Shem, to which God revealed Himself more distinctly, had parted from it.  These oldest writings are quaint, pure, and simple, but on them the fancies of a race enervated by climate engrafted much that was hideous, monstrous, and loathsome, leading to gross idolatry, and much vice perpetrated in the name of religion.  Mythology always degenerates with the popular character, and then, so far as the character is formed by the religious faith, the mythology helps to debase it further, until the undying moral sense of conscience awakens again in some man, or band of men, and a new morality arises; sometimes grafted upon philosophic reasoning, sometimes upon a newly-invented or freshly introduced religion.

Thus, when Hindooism had become corrupt, the deeply meditative system of Buddha was introduced into many parts of India, and certainly brought a much higher theory and purer code than that founded on the garbled nature-worship of ancient India; but both religions co-existed, and, indeed, Buddhism was in one aspect an offshoot of the Hindoo faith.

Christianity—planted, as is believed, by St. Thomas, on the Malabar coast—never became wholly extinct, although tinged with Nestorianism, but it was never adopted by the natives at large, and the learning and philosophy of the Brahmins would have required the utmost powers of the most learned fathers of the Church to cope with them, before they could have been convinced.

The rigid distinctions of caste have made it more difficult for the Church which “preaches the Gospel to the poor,” to be accepted in India than anywhere else.  Accounting himself sprung from the head of Brahma, the Brahmin deems himself, and is deemed by others, as lifted to an elevation which has no connection either with moral goodness, with wealth, or with power; and which is as much the due of the most poverty-stricken and wicked member of the caste as of the most magnificent priest.  The Sudras, the governing and warlike class, are next in order, having sprung from the god’s breast, and beneath these come infinite grades of caste, their subdivisions each including every man of each trade or calling which he pursues hereditarily and cannot desert or change, save under the horrible penalty of losing caste, and becoming forsaken and despised of every creature, even the nearest kindred.  The mere eating from a vessel used to contain food for a person of a different caste is enough to produce contamination; the separation is complete, and the whole constitution of body and mind have become so inured to the distinction, that the cost of becoming a convert is infinitely severer in India than ever it could have been even in Greece or Rome, where, though the Christian might be persecuted even to the death, he was not thrust out of the pale of humanity like a Hindoo convert who transgresses caste.

The Christians of Malabar are a people living to themselves, and the great Bengalee nations never appear to have had the Gospel carried to them.  The Mahometan conquest filled India with professors of the faith of the Koran; but these were a dominant race, proud and separate from the mass of people, whom they did not win to their faith, and thus the Hindoo idolatry had prevailed untouched for almost the whole duration of the world, when the wealth of India in the early days of naval enterprise first began to tempt small mercantile companies of Europeans to form factories on the coast merely for purposes of traffic, without at first any idea that these would lead to possession or conquest, and, in general, without any sense of the responsibility of coming as Christians into a heathen world.

The Portuguese did indeed strive earnestly to Christianize their territory at Goa; and they promoted by all means in their power the labours of Francisco Xavier and his Jesuit companions, so effectually that the fruits of their teaching have remained to the present day.

Neither were the Dutch, who then held Ceylon, entirely careless of the duty of instructing their subjects; and the Danes, who had obtained the town of Tranquebar on the Coromandel coast, in 1746, sent out a mission which was vigorously conducted, and met with good success.  Hitherto, however, the English at Madras and Calcutta had been almost wholly indifferent, and it must be remembered that theirs was not a Government undertaking.  The East India Company was still only a struggling corporation of merchants and traders, who only wanted to secure the warehouses and dwellings of those who conducted their traffic, and had as yet no thought of anything but the security of their trade; often, indeed, considering themselves pledged to no interference with the religion of the people around, and too often forgetting their own.  However, the Danish mission received grants of money and books from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; and the first Indian missionary of any note, a German by birth, was equally connected with both England and Denmark.

Sonnenburg in Brandenburg, still an electorate at the time, was the native home of Christian Friedrich Schwartz, of whose parents it is only known that they appear to have been in easy circumstances, and that his mother, who died before he could remember, told her husband and her pastor on her death-bed, that she had dedicated her infant to the service of God, imploring them to cherish and forward any inclination towards the ministerial office that might be visible in him.  It was, of course, the Lutheran form in which the child of this pious woman was bred up, and in 1734 he was sent to the grammar school of Sonnenburg, where his piety was first excited by a religious master, then cooled by an indifferent one; and he was then taken by his father, walking on foot the whole way, to pursue his studies at Custrin.  There he became beset by the temptations that surrounded young students, and after giving way to them for a time, was saved from further evil by the influence of the daughter of one of the Syndics.  It does not appear to have been a matter of sentiment, but of honest friendship and good counsel, aiding the young man to follow his better instead of his worse impulses; and thus giving a labourer to the vineyard.

Before residing at Custrin, this lady had lived for a time at Halle, and what she told the young Schwartz of the professors at that university, inspired him with the desire of completing his course under them, especially August Hermann Francke, who had established an admirable orphan house, with an excellent grammar school.

In his twentieth year, Schwartz entered at Halle, but lodged at the orphan house, where he became teacher to the Latin classes, and was put in charge of the evening devotions of the household.  At Halle, he met a retired Danish missionary, named Schultz, who had come thither to superintend the printing of a version of the Bible in Tamul, the language of Ceylon and of the Coromandel coast; and this it was that first turned his mind to the thought of offering himself as a worker in the great field of India.

He was the eldest of the family, and his friends all declared that it was impossible that his father should consent to part with him; but when he went home, and earnestly stated his desire, the elder Schwartz, instead of at once refusing as all expected, desired to take three days to consider; and when they were passed, he came gravely down from his chamber, called his son Christian, gave him his blessing, and told him to depart in God’s name, charging him to forget his own country and his father’s house, and to win many souls to Christ.

And certainly that good old German’s blessing went forth with his son.  Christian Schwartz next resigned his share in the family property to his brothers and sisters; and after completing his studies at Halle, went to Copenhagen, since it was by the Danish government that he was to be authorized.  Two other young Germans, named Poltzenheigen and Hutteman, went with him.  The Danes, though Lutherans in profession, have an Episcopal hierarchy, and the three students were ordained by the Danish Bishop Horreboa on the 6th of September, 1749; Christian Schwartz being then within a month of twenty-three.

Their first stage was to England, where they had to learn the language, and were entertained at the cost of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.  Mr. Ziegenhagen, German chaplain to George II., was very kind to his countrymen, helped them in all their difficulties, and gave them directions for which they were very grateful.  He made them preach in the Chapel Royal on Christmas Day.  No doubt the language was German, which must have been acceptable to the Hanoverian ears.

Their English studies were not greatly prolonged, for they arrived on the 8th of December, 1749, and sailed on the 29th of January, 1750, in an East India Company’s ship, where they were allowed a free passage, and were treated with respect and friendliness.  The voyage lasted long enough to improve them in English, for they did not cast anchor at Tranquebar till the 8th of October.

At this considerable Danish factory, they were received into the mission-house of the Danes, and there remained while studying the language, in which Schwartz made so much progress that he preached his first Tamul sermon only four months after his arrival, and by the spring was able to catechize the children who attended the school.  This station at Tranquebar formed the home of seven or eight missionaries, who lived together, attended to the services and schools, prepared candidates for baptism, and made excursions by ones and twos into the villages that stood thickly on the coast, where they talked and argued with the natives, hoping to incite them to inquire further.  The two greatest obstacles they met with here were the evil example of Europeans and the difficulty of maintenance for a convert.  One poor dancing girl said, on hearing that no unholy person could enter into the kingdom of heaven, “Ah! sir, then no European will;” but, on the whole, they must have met with good success, for in 1752 there were three large classes of catechumens prepared and baptized at the station.  In the district around there were several villages, where congregations of Christians existed, and, of all those south of the river Caveri, Schwartz was after two more years made the superintendent.

The simple habits of these German and Danish clergy eminently fitted them for such journeys; they set out in pairs on foot, after a farewell of united prayer from their brethren, carrying with them their Hebrew Bibles, and attended by a few Christian servants and coolies; they proceeded from village to village, sometimes sleeping in the house of a Hindoo merchant, sometimes at that of one the brother ministers they had come to see, and at every halt conversing and arguing with Hindoo or Mahometan, or sometimes with the remnants of the Christians converted by the Portuguese, who had been so long neglected that they had little knowledge of any faith.

The character of Christian Schwartz was one to influence all around him.  He seems to have had all the quiet German patience and endurance of hardship, without much excitability, and with a steadiness of judgment and intense honesty and integrity, that disposed every one to lean on him and rely on him for their temporal as well as their spiritual matters—great charity and warmth of heart, and a shrewdness of perception that made him excellent in argument.  He had also that true missionary gift, a great facility of languages, both in grammar and pronunciation, and his utter absence of all regard for his own comfort or selfish dignity, yet his due respect to times and places made him able to penetrate everywhere, from the hut to the palace.

The Carnatic war was at this time an impediment, by keeping the minds of all the natives in a state of excitement and anxiety, from dread of Mahratta incursions; but Schwartz never intermitted his rounds, and was well supported by the Danish Governor, a good man, who often showed himself his friend.  Some of the missionaries were actually made prisoners when the French took Cuddalore, but Count Lally Tollendal was very kind to them, and sent them with all their property and converts safely away to Tranquebar.

The Dutch missionaries in Ceylon had been in correspondence with those of Tranquebar, and had obtained from them copies of their Tamul Bible, and in 1760 Schwartz was sent on a visit to them.  He was very well received by both clergy and laity; and though he was laid up by a severe illness at Colombo, yet he was exceedingly well contented with his journey and his conferences with his brethren.

Christian Schwartz had been more than sixteen years in India, and was forty years of age, before his really distinctive and independent work began, after his long training in the central station at Tranquebar.

The neighbouring district of Tanjore had at different times been visited, and the ministers of the Rajah had shown themselves willing to bestow some reflection on what they heard from the missionaries.  Visits to this place and to Trichinopoly became frequent with him, and in 1766 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge having decided on planting a mission station in the latter place, he was appointed to take the charge of it.

About this time he seems to have accommodated his name to English pronunciation, and to have always written it Swartz.  It was now that he became acquainted with William Chambers, Esq., brother to the Chief Justice of Bengal,—not a Company’s servant, but a merchant, and an excellent man, who took great interest in missionary labours, and himself translated a great part of St. Matthew’s Gospel into Persian, the court language of India.  From a letter of this gentleman, we obtain the only description we possess of Swartz’s appearance and manners.  He says that, from the descriptions he had heard, he had expected to see a very austere and strict person, but “the first sight of him made a complete revolution on this point.  His garb, indeed, which was pretty well worn, seemed foreign and old-fashioned, but in every other respect his appearance was the reverse of all that could be called forbidding or morose.  Figure to yourself a stout well-made man, somewhat above the middle size, erect in his carriage and address, with a complexion rather dark though healthy, black curled hair, and a manly engaging countenance, expressive of unaffected candour, ingenuousness, and benevolence, and you will have an idea of what Mr. Swartz appeared to be at first sight.”  Mr. Chambers adds that Swartz’s whole allowance at Trichinopoly was ten pagodas a year, that is, about 48l. (as Mr. Chambers estimates it).  The commanding officer of the English garrison was ordered to supply him with quarters, and gave him a room in an old native building, where “there was just room for his bed and himself, and in which few men could stand upright.”  With this lodging he was content.  His food was rice and vegetables dressed native fashion, and his clothes were made of black dimity.  The little brass lamp which he had used for his studies at the University went with him to India, and served him all his life, often late at night, for he never preached even to the natives without much study.

He found the English without church or chaplain, and had very little knowledge of their language, having lived almost entirely among Germans, Danes, and natives; but he quickly picked it up among the soldiers, to whom his kindly simple manners commended him; and, as soon as he could speak it to any degree, he began to read the Church Service every Sunday to the garrison, with a printed sermon from an English divine, until he had obtained sufficient fluency to preach extempore.  At first, the place of meeting was a large room in an old building, but he afterwards persuaded them to build themselves a church capable of holding from 1,500 to 2,000.  His facility in learning languages must have been great, for the English of his letters is excellent, unless his biographer, Dean Pearson, has altered it.  It is not at all like that of a German.  His influence with the soldiers was considered as something wonderful, in those times of neglect and immorality, and the commandant and his wife—Colonel and Mrs. Wood—were his warmest friends; and when the Government at Madras heard of his voluntary services as chaplain, they granted him, unsolicited, a salary of 100l. a year, of which he devoted half to the service of his congregation.  He was thus able to build a mission-house, and an English and a Tamul school, labour and materials being alike cheap.  But, in spite of all his care of the English soldiery, the natives were his chief thought; and he was continually among them, reading and arguing home with the most thorough knowledge and experience of their difficulties.  He made expeditions from Trichinopoly to Tanjore, then under the government of a Rajah, under the protection of the British Government.  The principal worship of the place was directed to an enormous black bull, said to be hewn out of a single block of granite, and so large that the temple had been built round it.

The Brahmins conversed with him a good deal, and often were all but