The Introduction of the Gospel into India by Stephen Nelson Haskell

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 20.

The Introduction of the Gospel into India

By Stephen Nelson Haskell

INDIA. NO. 5.

The Introduction of the Gospel into India.

BY ELDER S. N. HASKELL.

WITHOUT biblical facts to direct the mind to right conclusions, there is no branch of knowledge but what would become vague and obscure. The Bible gives the leading facts in history and science without going into the minutæ that destroy the individuality of the person. There are reliable facts that carry the mind back somewhere about the time of the days of Abraham and a little before, which show that India and China were settled by individuals coming from the land of Shinar. But it is the eleventh chapter of Genesis alone that reveals the particular circumstances how, and the exact time when, these individuals first left that country to settle the remotest lands.

So with the early introduction of the gospel into India. When God poured out his Spirit on the day of Pentecost, "there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven." Acts 2:5. This passage of Scripture not only reveals the fact that there were devout men in India, but some of them were attending the Pentecost at Jerusalem. It is but reasonable to conclude that thus, by God's providence, a knowledge of the truth was carried to India. It was twenty-nine years later that the apostle wrote to the Romans, "I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world." Rom. 1:8. It must then have reached India. Again, in the tenth of Romans and the eighteenth verse, the apostle says: "Have they not heard? Yes, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." Four years later he writes to the Colossians as follows: "For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel; which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth." Col. 1:5, 6.

It is evident, therefore, that within twenty-three years from the death of Christ, and nineteen years from the ordination of the first two foreign missionaries (see Acts 13) it had gone into all the world and brought forth fruit as it had in Colosse. And it was preached in that city sufficiently to lead a company of the heathen to embrace the gospel, of sufficient importance for the apostle to write to them this epistle. He further states, in Col. 1:23, that the hope of the gospel which they had heard "was preached to every creature which is under heaven." Would anyone dare to say that India, with its teeming millions, a nation that could give music to Europe, and various sciences to the now more enlightened countries, and then had for five hundred years its reformers, Buddha, etc., who had carried a false religion to China, Japan, and the islands of the sea, was not included as having the gospel in such expressions as above alluded to?

Unreliable tradition has much to say about Paul's preaching in Great Britain, and Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead, preached in Gaul; Bartholomew, in Barthia; Andrew, in Russia; Thaddeus, in Edessa; Phillip, in Syria; Matthew, in Ethiopia; Judas the Zealot, in Arabia; and also of the wonderful works of Thomas in India. The marks in stone are now shown by the Romanists where Thomas fell when pierced by a spear in his back, after planting the gospel in that country. There can be no doubt but what these men were busy somewhere preaching the gospel and building up churches. They must have gone from country to country and watered the seed that was carried back from the day of Pentecost to the homes of the various individuals, who came from all parts of the world. Anyway, it is true, according to the inspired penman, that the gospel was so universally preached that the whole world had had an opportunity to have received it as early as A. D. 64.

A little later than this we find Christianity firmly planted in these far-away places, and subsequently the Romans claiming these countries as theirs. The history of the "Syrian Church in Malabar," India, is a very interesting one, although the origin of it is doubtful. The traditions current among the people go back to the preaching of Thomas, in the middle of the first century; but scholars suppose that a small colony from Antioch, Syria, landed here in the fourth century. But certain it is at the close of the sixteenth century the Romanists by their usual argument of persecution and force, succeeded in detaching from that body of Christians 80,000 members; but those who were in the interior refused to submit.

In 1816 the Church Missionary Society sent missionaries to labor among its members. At first the Syrian priests coöperated with them. In 1820 a Syrian college under the joint coöperation of the English church and the Syrian churches was opened for the education of young priests under the care of the Rev. Fenn, and forty-five students were enrolled. In connection with it there was a grammar school, in which forty-three boys were being educated, and, besides this, fifty-one parochial schools, where instruction was given to 142 children.

But in 1838 dissatisfaction began to manifest itself, which resulted in dissolving all connection with the English missionaries. Since then they exist but sadly degenerated, like all others who reject advance light. These facts are sufficient proof that in the first century the gospel was established in India, and from that time the Christian religion has had thousands of adherents.

Buchanan in his work speaks of Sabbatarians in India until modern times. It is quite evident that these Syrian Christians were seventh-day Christians; but the "mystery of iniquity," as in the case of the Abyssinians in Africa, corrupted them with the wine of Babylon. During the first centuries, history records the fact that delegates from India visited the church counsels in Europe. The above facts corroborate the Scripture testimony that even India in early times had as much light of the gospel as Colosse (Col. 1:5, 6, 29), and it also explains how there are traces of a knowledge of God and our Lord Jesus Christ in many of their heathen rites.