102
“THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS . . .”
The God-fearing and truth-speaking padris of India and their pals in England are once more at work. The bitter truths uttered by Mr. Wm. S. Caine in his Letters from India,[1] about the failure of Christian proselytizing in the East, have touched a sore place in the heart of the wily dissenters. As a result we find in the Methodist Times, a flat denial sprinkled with the spice of pious falsehoods of that which is a patent fact to everyone in, or out of, India.
The statement that instead of becoming Christian converts the educated youths of India join “the Brahmo, or the Arya Samaj, or become Theosophists” cut the “men of God” to the quick. Hence a cunning thrust in the direction of Theosophy—a thrust in the vacuum, of course—and a shower of pious misstatements. Says the Methodist Times: “since the publication by the Rev. G. Patterson . . . of the truth (?) about Mme. Blavatsky, theosophy has been little more than the butt and laughing stock of all India.” This is why, we must suppose, the number of the “Fellows of the T.S.”—since that failure of the Age, the attempt in The Christian College Magazine to expose those whom the meek missionaries hate and fear—has more than doubled in India, tripled in Europe, and quintupled in America? Alas for poor Yorick-Patterson! The attempt was speedily followed by an Address to the students of the same Christian College of Madras, who protested against the foul calumny. If the disproofs brought forward by the Methodists against Mr. Caine’s assertions are as truthful as this statement and those 103others saying that Mme. B. was “compelled to become an exile from India,” and therefore “the T.S. rivals no longer Mormonism” (?!)—then Mr. Caine must feel secure. “Let God be true but every man a liar” is the Pauline precept carried out literally by most of the Missionary organs and those of the Methodists especially. Of course, if the necessity for missions at all “hath more abounded through my [their] lie,” what have the “infidels” to say? Perhaps, however, there are still a few genuine Christians left who may think otherwise. There are those who would prefer seeing the Indian padris—the white ants of religion—girding their loins to turn homeward rather than disgracing Christianity as they do. An honest infidel is surely preferable to a lying and slandering Missionary; and of such there is a terrible percentage among those who claim to do their Christian duty.
Footnotes
- ↑ [Most likely his Letters entitled “Young India” and published about 1889 in the Pall Mall Gazette.—Compiler.]