Pioneers and Founders. Yonge Charlotte Mary

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ them all with him to the churchyard or some public place, or to the front of the Mission-house, according to the season of the year, and there sat either expounding the Scriptures to those who would come and listen, or conversing with inquirers and objectors among the heathen.  His manner was mild, sometimes humorous, but very authoritative, and he would brook neither idleness nor disobedience.

      Over his Christian flock his authority was as complete as ever that of Samuel could have been as a judge.  If any of them did wrong, the alternative was—

      “Will you go to the Rajah’s court, or be punished by me?”

      “O Padre, you punish me!” was always the reply.

      “Give him twenty strokes,” said the Padre, and it was done.

      The universal confidence in the Padre, felt alike by Englishmen and Hindoos, was inestimable in procuring and carrying out regulations for the temporal prosperity of the peasantry at Tanjore, under the Board which had pretty well taken the authority out of the hands of the inefficient and violent Ameer Singh.  Districts that, partly from misery, had become full of thieves, were brought into order, and the thieves themselves often became hopeful converts, and endured a good deal of persecution from their heathen neighbours.  His good judgment in dealing with all classes, high and low, English or native, does indeed seem to have been wonderful, and almost always to have prevailed, probably through his perfect honesty, simplicity, and disinterestedness.

      The converts in Tinnevelly became more and more numerous, and Sattianadem had been ordained to the ministry, Lutheran fashion, by the assembly of the presbytery at Tranquebar, there being as yet no Bishop in India; and thus many, the very best of his catechists, served for many years, at Palamcotta, the first Christian minister produced by modern India.  On the whole, Swartz could look back on the half-century of his mission with great joy and thankfulness; he counted his spiritual children by hundreds; and the influence he had exerted upon the whole Government had saved multitudes of peasants from oppression and starvation, and had raised the whole tone of the administration.  He was once or twice unkindly attacked by Englishmen who hated or mistrusted the propagation of Christianity.  One gentleman even wrote a letter in a newspaper calling a missionary a disgrace to any nation, and raking up stories of the malpractices of heathens who had been preached to without being converted, which were laid to the charge of the actual Christians; but imputations like these did not meet with faith from any one whose good opinion was of any real consequence to Swartz.

      His strong health and the suitability of his constitution to the climate brought him to a good old age in full activity.  He had become the patriarch of the community of missionaries, and had survived all those with whom he had at first laboured; but he was still able to circulate among the churches he had founded, teaching, praying, preaching and counselling, or laying any difficulty before the Government, whose attention he had so well earned.  His last care was establishing the validity of the adoption of Serfojee, who had grown up a thoughtful, gentle, and upright man, satisfactory on all points except on the one which rendered him eligible to the throne of Tanjore, his continued heathenism.  The question was referred to the Company at home, and before the answer could arrive, by the slow communication of those days, when the long voyage, and that by a sailing vessel, was the only mode of conveyance, the venerable guardian of the young Rajah had sunk into his last illness.

      This was connected with a mortification in his left foot, which had been more or less painful for several years, but had probably been neglected.  His Danish colleague, Mr. Gerické, was with him most of the time, and it was one of his subjects of thankfulness that he was permitted to depart out of the world in the society of faithful brethren.  He suffered severely for about three months, but it was not till the last week that his departure was thought to be near.  He liked to have the English children brought in to read to him chapters of the Bible and sing Dr. Watts’s hymns to him; and the beautiful old German hymns sung by Mr. Gerické and Mr. Kohloff were his great delight.  Indeed, when at the very last, as he lay almost lifeless, with closed eyes, Mr. Gerické began to sing the hymn,

      “Only to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ,”

      he joined in with a clear melodious voice, and accompanied him to the end.  Two hours later, about four o’clock in the afternoon of the 13th of February, 1798, Christian Friedrich Swartz breathed his last, in the seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-eighth of his mission service in India.

      The cries and wailings of the poor resounded all night around the house, and Serfojee Rajah came from a distance to be present at his burial.  It had been intended to sing a funeral hymn, but the cries and lamentations of the poor so overcame the clergy, that they could scarcely raise their voices.  Serfojee wept bitterly, laid a gold cloth over the bier, and remained present while Mr. Gerické read the Funeral Service,—a most unusual departure from Hindoo custom, and a great testimony of affection and respect.

      A few months later arrived the decision of the East India Company, that the weak and rapacious Ameer Singh should be deposed, and Serfojee placed on the throne.  He conducted himself excellently as a ruler, and greatly favoured Christians in his territory, always assisting the various schools, and giving liberal aid whenever the frequently-recurring famines of India brought them into distress.

      Three years later, in 1801, Serfojee wrote to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, to beg them to order a “monument of marble” at his expense, to the memory of the late Rev. Father Swartz, to be affixed to the pillar nearest the pulpit.  Accordingly, a bas-relief in white marble was executed by Flaxman, representing the death of Swartz, Gerické behind him, two native Christians and three children standing by, and Serfojee clasping his hand and receiving his blessing.  It was not exactly fact, but it was the monumental taste of the day; and it so much delighted the Rajah, that he kept it in his palace, among the portraits of his ancestors, for two years before he could resolve on parting with it to the church.  The Prince likewise composed the epitaph which was carved on the stone which covers the grave of Swartz, the first instance of English verse by a Hindoo:—

      “Firm wast thou, humble and wise,

      Honest, pure, free from disguise;

      Father of orphans, the widow’s support,

      Comfort in sorrow of every sort:

      To the benighted dispenser of light,

      Doing and pointing to that which is right.

      Blessing to princes, to people, to me,

      May I, my father, be worthy of thee,

      Wisheth and prayeth thy Sarabojee.”

      Swartz had always been striving to be poor, and never succeeding.  Living and eating in the humblest manner, and giving away all that came to him, still recognitions of services from English and natives had flowed in on him; and, after all the hosts of poor he had fed, and of churches and schools he had founded, he was an instance of “there is that scattereth and yet increaseth;” for the property he bequeathed to the Mission was enough to assist materially in carrying it on after his death.  Moreover, Serfojee maintained the blind, lame, and decrepit members of his church, and founded an asylum for the orphan children; so that the good men, Gerické, Kohloff, Pohlé, and the rest, were not absolutely dependent on Europe for assistance; and this was well, since the Orphan-house at Halle and the Society at Copenhagen had in this long course of years ceased to send out funds.

      But Swartz’s work under their hands continued to prosper.  He had a sort of apotheosis among the heathen, such as he would have been the last to covet; for statues were raised to him, lights burnt before him, and crowns offered up.  But about Palamcotta and throughout Tinnevelly there was one of those sudden movements towards Christianity that sometimes takes place.  The natives were asking instruction from their friends, and going eagerly in search of the catechists and of Sattianadem, and even burning their idols and building chapels in preparation for the coming of more fully qualified teachers.  Mr. Gerické made a СКАЧАТЬ