Agitation in India to Send Missionaries to the "Christian Nations" — Shocked by Their Spirit of War — Feelings Expressed before the War Broke Out
By HOMER R. SALISBURY
Superintendent Mission Work in India
THIS article from Elder H. R. Salisbury was written just as war was breaking out in Europe. His letter that accompanied the article made no reference to the war. He was in the interior visiting some of our mission stations, and without question had not learned that war had been declared between Austria and Servia, which occurred just the second day before the date of his letter. This article, coming under such circumstances, shows in a very remarkable manner how the war spirit of Europe was impressing itself upon the people in India even before the war broke out. As expressed by Elder Salisbury, the people over there recognize the fact that the fearful preparations for war actually mean war.
IT will doubtless come as a surprise to many Christians in the West to learn that heathen of the East are putting forth an effort to send "competent missionaries" to Europe to convert her, and "save her from her threatened doom before her nations destroy one another in a great European war."
THEY THINK IT MEANS WAR
The cable, the telegraph, and the daily paper have brought the West to the East. The raising of new war loans, the launching of super-Dreadnoughts, the increasing of land forces unparalleled in history, the insatiable greed for territory, and the distrust and jealousy existing between countries, receive prominent mention and are critically commented upon by the public press in India. While sentimentalists close their eyes to facts, and prate of the imminence of universal peace at a time when the nations of Europe are beggarning themselves to overreach each other in their preparations for war, the East is learning the facts, and believes that this mad preparation for war means war.
EMPEROR WILLIAM (LEFT), WITH HIS GENERALS, CONSULTING WAR MAP ON THE FIELD
GOD NOT RECOGNIZED
Because the peoples of the West call themselves Christian nations, while by their actions they repudiate the principles of peace lived and taught by the One whose name they have taken, they have subjected themselves to severe criticism by non-Christians, as will appear by the following quotation from the editor of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, a daily paper published in Calcutta, having a large circulation among Hindus:
"France in the height of her prosperity deposed the Almighty God. This was during the great Revolution. Europe has, however, reinstated Him, but with a constitution. God no doubt reigns in Europe now, but He does not rule. He is only a constitutional sovereign there; for as a free people, the Europeans choose to govern themselves, though they accept the need of a king, bound hand and foot by a constitution.
"That God has no authority in Europe is evidenced from the fact that even His most pronounced wishes are not respected in that continent. God declared that men were all brethren, and Jesus came mainly to impress that idea on the minds of the people in the West. But the invention of the Maxim gun, and later on, the aeroplane (for war), shows what little regard they pay to the injunctions of the Messiah they profess to love and worship."
Even the non-Christian peoples of India recognize that these conditions exist because Christ does not have His place as Lord and Master in the lives of those who formally profess to follow His teachings, and that peace can never come while men show by their actions that their hearts are filled with greed and hatred.
The editor of Patrika continues:
"Europe is in need of a living religion, or that continent will one day disappear from the face of the earth. They have now twenty-five to thirty millions of regular soldiers there. These are trained like bloodhounds, and all humane sentiments are systematically sought to be eradicated out of their hearts. Let there be one great European war now, with each power appearing in the field with its millions of soldiers and thousands of Maxim guns and aeroplanes, and Europe is desolated.
"Europe finds itself in this condition because it has no religion. Yet her nations have a superabundance of energy. That being so, what else can they do but slaughter, overreach, and beggar one another when they have no God to control them? Superabundance of energy is good, but when it is not controlled by religion it becomes very dangerous."
It is humiliating to be rebuked by such words, and we could but wish that there were not so much truth in them. It must be evident that such comments as have just been quoted, when put before those who are already too well pleased with their ancient religions, make the already difficult task of the Christian missionary doubly hard.
REPROACHED BY HEATHEN
The missionary has not only to battle with the subtle and pernicious influence of these Eastern religions, whose doctrines are so pleasing to the natural man and so deadly to spiritual growth, but what often seems harder, he must meet the reproaches cast upon his own religion by those who have judged Christianity by its fruit as it appears in the life of those who, while professing to follow the same Christ whom the missionaries exalt as the hope of mankind, put Him to open shame by their words and actions.
But God is jealous of His great name; and though darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people, His glory will be seen in the lives of those who delight to exalt Him, and who believe that "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." And so through His blessed providence many are forsaking their idols, devil-worship, and the teaching of the false prophet, and led by the true light, are looking upward with longing hearts for the coming King.
