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Five days were spent in the journey, and again the Edwardses reverentially opened their doors to a guest so near heaven.  For some time he rode out two or three miles daily, and sat with the family, writing or conversing cheerfully when not engaged in prayer.  His brother John came from Crossweeksung and cheered him with a good account of his Indians; and hearing of the great need of another school, he wrote to the friends who had shown themselves so warmly interested in him at Boston, and was gratified by their reply, with a subscription of 200l. for the purpose, and of 75l. for the mission to the Six Nations.  His answers were written with his own hand; but he had become so much weaker that he felt this his last task.  He had been one who, in his short life, had sown in tears to reap in joy.

He was sinking fast as the autumn cold came on, often talking tenderly to the little ones of the house, but suffering terribly at times, and sighing, “Why is His chariot so long coming?” then blaming himself for over-haste to be released.

He had a smile for Jerusha as she came into his room on Sunday morning.  “Are you willing to part with me?  I am willing to part with you, though if I thought I could not see you and be happy with you in another world, I could not bear to part.  I am willing to leave all my friends.  I am willing to leave my brother, though I love him better than any creature living.  I have committed him and all my friends to God, and can leave them with God!”

Presently, looking at the Bible in her hands, he said, “Oh that dear Book! the mysteries in it and in God’s providence will soon be unfolded.”

He lingered in great agony at times till the 9th of October, 1747, when came a cessation of pain, and during this lull he breathed his last, then wanting six months of his thirtieth birthday.  He had told Jerusha that they should soon meet above, and, in effect, she only lived until the next February.  She told her father on her death-bed, that for years past she had not seen the time when she had any wish to live a moment longer, save for the sake of doing good and filling up the measure of her duty.

David Brainerd’s career ended at an age when John Eliot’s had not begun.  It was a very wonderful struggle between the frail suffering body and the devoted, resolute spirit, both weighed down by the natural morbid temper, further depressed by the peculiar tenets of the form of doctrine in which he had been bred.  The prudent, well-weighed measures of the ripe scholar, studious theologian, and conscientious politician, formed by forty-two years’ experience of an old and a new country, could not be looked for in the sickly, self-educated, enthusiastic youth who had been debarred from the due amount of study, and started with little system but that of “proclaiming the Gospel”—even though ignorant of the language of those to whom he preached.  And yet that heart-whole piety and patience was blessed with a full measure of present success, and David Brainerd’s story, though that of a short life, over-clouded by mental distress, hardship, and sickness, fills us with the joyful sense that there is One that giveth the victory.

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 converted.  One plainly said that love of money and pleasure alone kept them from accepting Christianity.  In 1769 he had a personal interview with the Rajah Tuljajee, a man of the dignity, grace, and courtesy usual in Hindoo princes, but very indolent, not even rising in the morning if he was told that it was not an auspicious day, though he was more cultivated than most men of his rank and period.

Swartz found him seated on a couch suspended from pillars, and was placed opposite to him, on a seat.  The interpreter addressed him in Persian, and Swartz replied in the same; but, perceiving that the man omitted part of his speech, he asked leave to speak Tamul.

The Rajah asked questions, which led to an exposition of the Christian doctrine, and he listened with interest; and he likewise was struck when Swartz uttered a thanksgiving before partaking of the sweets that were carried round on trays.  He showed himself so much disappointed when he learnt that the Padre had left Tanjore, that it was resolved that Swartz should return thither again; and for some days there were out-of-door preachings on the glacis of the fort, where, in spite of clouds of dust brought by the land wind, the people collected in crowds to hear him, and expressed ardent wishes that the Rajah would become a Christian, when they all could do the same.  The Prince himself was much drawn towards the missionary; but it was the old story,—he was surrounded with ministers and courtiers who feared any change, above all any plain-speaking truth, and therefore did their best to keep the new light at a distance.  However, Tuljajee called Swartz “his padre,” and gave him free entrance to his fort at Tanjore, where his arguments made a wide impression, and still more his example.  “Padre,” said a young Nabob, “we always regarded you Europeans as ungodly men, who knew not the use of prayers, till you came among us.”

He continued to go backwards and forwards between Trichinopoly and Tanjore, in both which places he began to gather catechumens round him.  Unfortunately his Protestant principles brought him into collision with the Roman Catholics at the former place.  A young Hindoo, of good birth, seems to have had one of those remarkable natures that cannot rest without truth.  He had for seven years wandered to all the most famous pagodas and most sacred rivers, seeking rest for his soul, but in vain.  Some Roman Catholics had given him a little brass crucifix, which he used to set up before him as he prayed; but he had learnt little more of them, and he was mournfully gazing at “the pagodas of Sirengam” (in his own words), and thinking, “What is all this? what can it avail?” when some of Swartz’s catechists began to speak.  “Will this be better than what I have found?” he said to himself.  He listened, was asked to remain a fortnight at the station, and soon had given his whole soul to the faith.  He was baptized by the name of Nyána Prácasam, or Spiritual Light, and became a catechist.  His father and mother were likewise led to Christianity by him, but the Roman Catholics, having begun his conversion, considered that they had a right to him, and on one occasion, when he was found reading to a sick relative, probably a member of their Church, he was severely beaten, and was rescued by the heathen neighbours when nearly killed.

Swartz seems to have regarded the Roman Catholics as in almost as much need of reconversion as the Hindoos and Mahometans; and as in those days their Church shared in that universal religious torpor that had crept over the world, it is most likely that he found them in a very debased condition.

With the Mahometans he had some success, though he found, like all other missionaries, that their faith, being rather a heresy than a paganism, had truth enough in it to be much harder to deal with than the Hindoo polytheism.  Besides, they accepted the Persian proverb, “Every time a man argues, he loses a drop of blood from his liver.”  He was impeded also by the want of a Persian translation of the entire Bible, having no more than the Gospels to give the inquirers, and these badly translated; and with Mahometans the want of the real history of the Patriarchs was very serious.  Some, however, were convinced and baptized, though by far the greater number of his converts were Hindoos.

In 1776, a coadjutor, either German or Danish-trained, named Christian Pohlé, joined him at Trichinopoly, and thus he became free to reside more constantly at Tanjore, where the Rajah always protected him, though continually fluctuating in feeling towards Christianity, according to the influences of his ministers and the Brahmins who surrounded him, and the too frequent offences given by the godless officers of the European garrison which was stationed in the fort.

Mr. Swartz was anxiously soliciting for means to build a church for the use of this garrison, when he was summoned to Madras, to the governor, Sir Thomas Rumbold, who promised him a grant for his church; but, at the same time, informed him that he was to be sent on a mission to visit the formidable Hyder Ali in Mysore, in order to judge how far his intentions towards the English were pacific.  He was selected for the purpose on account of his perfect knowledge of Hindostanee, the simplicity of his manner of travelling, and his perfect immunity from any of the ordinary influences of interest or ambition; and he undertook it, as he tells the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, because he regarded it as conducing to peace, as opening fresh doors to the Gospel, and as a token of gratitude to the Honourable Company for kindness he had received; “but at the same time,” he says, “I resolved to keep my hands undefiled from any presents, by which determination the Lord enabled me to abide, so that I have not accepted a single farthing save my travelling expenses.”

On the 1st of July, 1779, he set out from Trichinopoly on this journey, taking one of his catechists, named Sattianadem, with him.  He travelled in a palanquin, and took six days to reach Caroor, on the Mysore frontier, forty miles off, where he stayed a month with a young Ceylonese Dutchman in Hyder Ali’s service, while sending to ask the Nabob’s permission to proceed.  All this time he and his catechist preached and gave instruction in the streets.  It is curious to find him, on his journey, contrasting the excellent state of Hyder Ali’s roads and bridges with the careless disorganization of the public works under the Company.  An epidemic fever was raging in Seringapatam, and Swartz pitched his tent outside, where he could conveniently visit the many-pillared palace of the sovereign.  He was much struck with the close personal supervision that Hyder Ali kept up over his officers, and with the terrible severity of the punishments.  Two hundred men were kept armed with whips, and not a day passed without many being scourged, no rank being exempt, the Nabob’s two sons and sons-in-law being liable to be whipped like the meanest groom.  Swartz was the unwilling spectator of the punishment of the collector of a district who was flogged with whips armed with nails.

A few hundreds of Europeans, English, German, and French, were in Hyder’s pay, encamped about the town, and a German captain lent his tent for public worship.  No molestation was offered to any instructions that Swartz attempted to give, and he was very courteously entreated by the Prince himself.  The conferences with him were generally held in a hall of marble columns, open to a garden adorned with fruit trees, rows of cypresses, and fountains.  Hyder Ali sat on rich carpets, covering the floor, and the Padre was placed next to him.  He spoke in general terms of his desire to keep the peace, though the British had violated their engagements, referring to an attempt that had newly been made to march troops through his territory without his permission.  To Swartz he was gracious in speech, but the letter he entrusted to him was full of threatening for this and other acts which he considered aggressive; and the general impression brought back by the missionary was that a war was to be expected.

Hyder Ali had presented him with a bag of three hundred rupees for travelling expenses, which it would have been a great affront to return.  He, however, made it over to the Government at Madras, and when they would not take it, asked leave to use it as the foundation for a collection for an English orphan school at Tanjore.  This was granted, and proved a success.  Finding that there was an intention of voting a present to him, he begged instead that a salary might be given to Mr. Pohlé at Trichinopoly; and, in consequence, both were enabled to maintain catechists and schoolmasters; for of making a home for themselves, these devoted men never thought.  Moreover, Swartz obtained bricks and lime for the building of his English church within the fort; and he bought and enlarged a house half a mile from it, for his Malabar Christians to worship in.  His own observations of Hyder Ali’s warlike intentions led also to his purchasing 12,000 bags of rice as a provision against the scarcity that too surely attends upon Indian warfare.