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1867-1871
SECOND AND LAST VISIT HOME.
The Shadow darkening—Sir Bartle Frere leaves Bombay—Isabella Wilson’s
Death—Legislation of Sir Henry Maine and Sir Fitzjames Stephen—Acts for
Re-marriage of Converts and Marriages between non-Christian Natives
—Testimonial from the Inhabitants of Bombay on fortieth Indian
Anniversary—Addresses from University and Asiatic Society—Summoned to be
Moderator of General Assembly—Addresses to the Assembly—Modern Criticism
and Missionary Translators—Work at Home—Portrait—Evidence before
Commons’ Committee on the Opium and Excise System— Return to Bombay.
The year 1867 cast over
Dr. Wilson the first shadow of that darkness beyond which is the
everlasting light. In his long course of nigh forty years he had seen
band after band of temporary English settlers in the land come and go ;
he had himself trained generations of native youth, and built up a
native church, colleges, and schools. As friend departed after friend he
bewailed the exodus from a land which needed all their experience and
their energy. The last was the Governor whom he had received at Ambrolie
fresh from Haileybury, and had admitted to an almost life-long intimacy.
Sir Bartle Frere turned from the honours and the applause which attended
his departure from Bombay, to spend one of the last days there with the
missionary among his schools and college students. Still invested with
all the influence of his office, his Excellency, having examined the
youth, expressed to them his personal conviction that religion is all
important as an element of education. He warmly commended the life-long
efforts of Dr. Wilson and others who sought to impart that to the
natives of India, to whom it could not fail to be a blessing even when
they fell short of embracing Christianity.
As the hot season passed into the rainy time, and the one really
intolerable month of the Indian year, September, came round, when
wearied humanity pants for the cooling breezes and reviving life of what
Europe calls winter, Isabella Wilson was taken away. Her abundant
labours of twenty years, in which she had enjoyed only the combined rest
and toil of a six months’ visit to her sisters in Scotland, precipitated
the end. All Bombay, from the Chief Justice and Judges of the High Court
to the humblest Native Christian and student, followed to the Scottish
cemetery the remains of one whose influence was all the greater that it
had been never obtruded yet ever present in all that was good in the
place. In her own home, in the native church, in the central native
female day school, in the monthly inspection of the district and other
girls’ schools, in the Beni-Israel school, in the native female
boarding-school, in the Ladies’ Committee of the Scottish Orphanage, in
the Bible-woman’s Association, and in other philanthropic institutions
of Bombay, she had proved so potent a force that it was difficult to
realise how these organisations could prosper without her. Her social
intercourse for the highest ends, with Hindoo, Parsee, Jewish, and
Muhammadan families, had been closer than that of any other English lady
in all India. What she was to her husband in his literary researches and
missionary tours, which taxed the courage and resources of the bravest
men, we have partially seen. But the purest tribute to her memory was
that which the converts rendered, the women and the girls, the
catechumens from all the lands of the East from Abyssinia to China, the
ordained Natives who, in an eloquent sermon by the Rev. Dhunjeebhoy
Nowrojee, expressed the loss of the whole Church of India. Henceforth,
to his own last hour, Dr. Wilson is cared for by his niece, Miss Taylor.
All this came upon him at the time of the preparations for the
Abyssinian Expedition, which, however, gave Lord Napier an opportunity
of calling on him to express warm sympathy. His own sorrow he manifested
by erecting a female school, as the best memorial of one who had given
herself for the women of Bombay.
Soon after his appointment as law member of the Governor-General’s
Council, Sir Henry Maine had been led by Lord Lawrence to devise a
legislative solution of the two questions—What relief should be given,
first, to Christian converts whose spouses refuse to join them, or are
prevented for years from doing so ; and, secondly, to non-Christian
dissidents from Hindooism who have conscientious objections to the
idolatrous and suggestively indecent marriage rites of Brahmanism. This
second question was afterwards settled by Sir James F. Stephen, so as to
satisfy the followers of Keshub Chunder Sen, and even to lead English
Comtists to take advantage of an Act under which the parties must
declare that they are not Christians. The Converts’ Remarriage Bill had
a keen interest for all Christians, however, and called forth
ecclesiastical discussion for years. Dr. Wilson was consulted by
Government on both difficulties, and the assistance he gave to Sir Henry
Maine was warmly acknowledged. Unlike the sacramentarians who hold that
a marriage is irrevocable by whomsoever made, even if one of the parties
refuses for ever all conjugal duties, Dr. Wilson showed, from the early
Fathers down to the Reformers, that Scripture had been consistently
interpreted so as to give proper relief. He laid special stress on the
opinion of Basi-lius of Caesareia,1 because of the great authority of
that bishop in the Roman, Greek, Syrian, and Gothic Churches. The result
of a learned and sometimes bitter discussion in the Press as well as the
Legislative Council of India, was the most equitable Act under which, if
a wife persistently refuses to join her converted husband (and vice
versa) for two years, notwithstanding private opportunities of
remonstrance judicially given, the district courts may only then
pronounce divorce. The Act has worked extremely well, by affording
opportunities to the law to free wives from such restraint as we have
seen Brahmanism and Parseeism impose on inquirers, and so to prevent
divorce. The great jurist and the experienced scholar were thus happily
allied in removing one of the last obstacles to perfect toleration.
Nothing now remains to be done by the legislature save the promulgation
of a uniform rule or procedure for the protection of the rights of
conscience of minors, in a country where marriage takes place at and
sometimes before puberty.
As the 14th of February 1869 approached, the leaders of all the
communities in Bombay, European and Asiatic, resolved to honour their
foremost man on that, the fortieth anniversary of his arrival in Western
India. Mr. Sassoon, the Jewish millionnaire, and Dr. Bhau Daji, the most
learned reforming Brahman, were active in the movement, side by side
with Mr. James Taylor, secretary of the Chamber of Commerce and of the
Asiatic Society, and with the secretary of the committee, Mr. James
Douglas. The long roll of subscribers and signatures in many languages
on the parchment sheets, represents all races, creeds, and classes in
the East, and all varieties of Christian sects. Although New Bombay was
still suffering from the ruin and apprehension that followed the cotton
mania, and the work was rapidly done, upwards of Rs. 21,000 (£2100) was
presented to the missionary on a silver salver wrought by native
artists, and bearing the inscription, in Sanskrit:—“ This salver was
presented to the Rev. John Wilson, D.D., F.R.S., at a meeting of the
inhabitants of Bombay, as a mark of esteem for his high personal
character, and in acknowledgment of his great services to India in the
cause of education and philanthropy.” The design represents him as a
missionary standing under the sacred peepul tree, a Hindoo temple and a
figure of Rama behind, and before him a crowd of Asiatics of every cult
and caste in Western India, from the learned Brahman to the ignorant
peasant. The Governor, Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, presided at a great
meeting in the Town Hall of Bombay, on the 15th February 1869, and made
the presentation. The Chief-Justice, Sir Richard Couch, assisted. A
loving letter was read from Sir Bartle Frere, and the other speakers
were Mr. Sassoon and Dr. Bhau Daji. Dr. Wilson thus reported the event
to Miss Margaret Dennistoun: — “It is wonderful to think that
gratification has been felt with the issue through the whole of India.
Only one element of my felicitation (I was humbled rather than exalted)
was wanting—the sympathy of her, the beloved one who was so lately
removed from me. I have been weeping whenever I have been thinking of
this deprivation. I always felt that one quiet glance of her loving and
approving eye was better to me than the applause of the multitude. Her
love was always an emblem to me of that of the Saviour Himself.” It was
characteristic of his whole career and of his unfailing tact, that,
agreeing to use the interest only in his philanthropic and literary
labours, he should designate the capital sum to aid the higher studies
of the youth of Bombay, “in a form which will be agreeable alike to my
European and Native friends.” The fund has accordingly devolved on the
University of Bombay for the foundation of the John Wilson Philological
Lectureship, to which his friend and executor, Professor Peterson, was
appointed. Dr. Wilson desired that lectures may thus be delivered “by a
competent European or Native scholar, annually elected for the purpose,
on either of the following classes of languages and the literature in
which they are embodied:—Sanskrit, and the Prakrit languages derived
from it; Hebrew, and the other Shemitic languages; Latin and Greek ;
English, viewed in connection with Anglo-Saxon and its other sources.”
The address of the inhabitants of Bombay, followed by one from the
Hindoos and Muhammadans of Nasik, from which he had been almost expelled
in his first missionary tour, reviewed the whole course of Dr. Wilson’s
work for the people, and thus expressed their own special gratitude: —
“As citizens of Bombay we thankfully acknowledge that the credit of this
city has been upheld by the personal courtesy and learned aid which
distinguished foreigners and others, coming hither as visitors or for
purposes of Oriental research or Christian philanthropy, have always
received from you, as acknowledged by them subsequently in their
published writings or otherwise.”
But again, as in 1842, it was left to the Asiatic Society to review his
contributions to scholarship, and to the University to acknowledge his
work for the higher education. Never before in its history had there
been such a concourse of the members of that Society as on the 17th
February 1870, when it was known that Dr. Wilson had been summoned to
his native country once more, to fill the highest office which the
democratic Scottish Church can confer, that of annual Moderator of the
General Assembly. The Governor, who presided, after stating the thanks
of Government for his political services, which, “ as regards our
relation with the people in trying times, have been of the utmost
value,” declared it a happy thing that one who had been able to combine
the fearless assertion of what he believed to be true with a
conciliatory demeanour and tender respect for the belief of others, had
been summoned to take the chief part in the government of a religious
body who had sacrificed much for the truth at a time when religious
discussion too often means animosity and estrangement. Mr. Justice
Tucker, Dr. Bhau Daji, Mr. Dhunjeebhoy Framjee, the Portuguese Dr. J. N.
Mendonca, Mr. Manockjee Cursetjee, and Messrs. Wedderburn and Connon,
told successively what Dr. Wilson had done for scholarship, for
literature, for education, for progress of all kinds. Dr. Wilson’s reply
was more generous to his fellow members than just to his own researches.
Two days after he was on his way to Edinburgh. The native journals
followed with their eulogies the now venerable apostle, whose delight it
had been to spend and be spent in the service of the people, with an
unselfishness which all admired, though all did not trace it to Him whom
the missionary proclaimed.
The office of Moderator of the General Assembly is filled, as a rule, by
the unanimous vote of the six or seven hundred members on the first day
of its meeting. But the Moderator is designated some months before by
those surviving who have previously filled the chair, is approved of
after consultation by the “ commisson ” of the previous Assembly, and is
requested by his immediate predecessor to allow himself to be nominated.
In this way Dr. Wilson received a formal invitation from the Rev. Sir
Henry Wellwood-Moncreiff, Bart., to come home for the Assembly of May
1870. The Churches, like the country generally, know so little of India
till a catastrophe occurs which knowledge might have prevented, that the
whole learning and power of Dr. Wilson in his new position proved a
surprise to the Free Church of Scotland. Courtesy of the old school;
knowledge of men and their public assemblies; promptitude and fluency in
expression; learning, rarely obtrusive but always present; and grace of
that highest kind which comes down from heaven alone, marked all his
public services and official receptions. The time was one when the vexed
question was near the embittered stage— Whether the great goal of one
reconstructed Kirk of Scotland could best be reached by immediate union
with the early seceders of the United and Reformed Presbyterian
Churches, or by waiting till the minority of the Established Church
atoned for the wrong they have since confessed % To Dr. Wilson, it was
well known, the immediate duty of union with all like-minded who would
unite, was plain, but he held the balance fairly as became one in his
judicial position. So long before as in 1864 he had moved the Presbytery
of Bombay to “overture” the General Assembly for this possible
instalment of union; for to one in the distant high places of the field
the still existing divisions look both ludicrous and criminal. Only on
the one disputed question of the use of hymns in public worship did he,
when he had ceased to be Moderator, let out the force of his alternate
scorn and ridicule for views which would strike evangelical catholicity
out of any Church.
His opening address as Moderator was directed to the part which Scotland
has taken in the reception, propagation, and conservation of
Christianity. A hearer might have supposed that he had never been out of
Scotland, but for the extent of his knowledge and the breadth of his
sympathies. His vindication of the Westminster Confession of Faith did
justice to the foresight and spirit of its authors, only now beginning
to be acknowledged, while he quoted with a keen delight the motto of the
first Confession of 1560 : “And this glaid tydingis of the kyngdome sail
be precheit through the haill warld for a witnes unto all natiouns, and
then sail the end cum.” To the then debated question of National
Education he gave his support with a confidence since fully justified by
the religious steadfastness of his countrymen. The narrow, the
sectarian, the purely ecclesiastical found no quarter from him. His
closing address was no less fair in the tribute to the lay elders of his
Church, and in the remark when alluding to the rationalism of the great
French scholar—“This I say, without accusing M. Renan of playing false
with his own convictions or depreciating his Shemitic scholarship.”
When the report on Foreign Missions was read he left the chair and told
the story of his life-work in words which concluded with the declaration
that, notwithstanding his forty-one years’ connection with India, if he
lived to the age of Methuselah he would consider it a privilege to
devote his life to its regeneration. The General Assembly of 1870
appointed the Rev. W. Robertson Smith, then fresh from the students’
benches but of great reputation, as Professor of Hebrew in succession to
Mr. Sachs at Aberdeen. Referring to the translations of the Scriptures
by the Rev. Dhunjeebhoy Nowrojee into the Parsee-Goojaratee language,
Dr. Wilson said:— “The missionaries know and take advantage of the
results of modern criticism; not of rash, but devout, intelligent, and
reverent criticism, knowing what passages have often been misunderstood.
We have to deal in Bombay with languages drawing all their technical
terms from the Sanskrit, one of the most wonderful of all languages in
regard to its power of expressing human thought. We have great need of
able men in India for biblical and other literary work; and if Mr.
Smith, who has this day been appointed a Professor of Hebrew, will come
out to India after he has obtained a few years’ experience at Aberdeen,
he will find there ample scope for his linguistic talents.”
If the duties, ecclesiastical and social, devolving on a Moderator are
not few during the ten days’ sittings of the General Assembly, those
which occupy or distract his year of office are formidable. Every cause
that needs the preaching of a popular sermon; every new church that is
founded or opened; every neighbouring Church to which a brotherly
deputation has to be sent, in England, Ireland, and on the Continent,
looks to the Moderator. To all this, and especially to his own more
special work of stimulating missionary zeal, Dr. Wilson gave himself up
with an ardour that taxed his waning energies, as time soon showed. The
charms of his talk and companionship in private life were universally
recognised with a delighted surprise, for who knew anything of Bombay?
Dr. Wilson was as ready to lecture to the theological students of the
Established Church in the University Association which he had founded in
1825, as to those of the three New Colleges. And not only to them, for
Principal Shairp induced him to delight the students of St. Andrews with
a lecture on the Literature and History of the People of India, intended
to stir them up to claim their share of appointments in the Services
which Scotsmen once almost monopolised.
This growing appreciation led to a movement for securing a portrait of
the philanthropist for his native country, since he persisted in his
resolution to return to much-beloved Bombay. On the 9th June 1871 he
thus wrote to Mr. David Maclagan, who had organised the matter—“ The
proposal has taken me by surprise, as I feel that I have no claim to be
an aspirant to the honours which you and other friends
desiderate on my behalf. In giving my grateful consent to that proposal,
I feel very deeply that it is the judgment of God and not that of man
with which I have mainly to do, and that I have many grounds for
personal humiliation in the divine presence in connection with my
ministrations in all the places in which they have been conducted.” The
portrait, painted by Mr. Norman Macbeth, has since adorned the common
hall of the New College, Edinburgh.
The Select Committee of the House of Commons, which began to take
evidence on the financial system of India in 1871, examined Dr. Wilson
on the subject of the opium cultivation of Central and Western India and
the excise laws. Almost from the year of his first landing at Bombay he
had, on the ground of temperance, memorialised Government on the
increase of drunkenness under our rule. He admitted, from the Yedas and
from the state of Poona under the Marathas, that intoxication had been
known in India, both from drugs and distillation. From his tours, in
Rajpootana especially, he gave much information as to the extent to
which the cultivation of the poppy is absorbing the best lands,
demoralising the people and killing off their chiefs. He urged an
increase of the spirit duties, the protection of native villages from
the invasion of the drink-sellers caused by our excise system, and—at
least—the conversion of the Bengal opium monopoly into the Bombay
system, for which the Government and the nation, as such, are not
responsible. He testified to the satisfaction of the natives with
British rule as contrasted with that of their own princes. That Select
Committee was not allowed to give in a final report on the voluminous
evidence which it took. The excise laws and opium monopoly remain
unchanged to this day, a blot on our generally benevolent administration
of India, excused but not justified by financial difficulties.
The toil-worn man of sixty-five, the missionary of forty-three years’
service, might well have been pardoned if he had chosen to rest where he
was. But whether in Scotland or in India rest could not be for that
burning spirit, that busy mind, that active body. “ I go bound in the
Spirit to India to declare the Gospel message,” he wrote to Miss
Margaret Dennistoun, when about to step on board the ‘ Ceylon ’ at
Brindisi. “Nothing but this object sustains my heart. I am sure you will
all earnestly pray for me. My solace is in the Lord.”
“4th October 1871.—Took leave of my beloved friends at Lauder, who were
all deeply affected, not expecting again to see me in the flesh. Though
I felt much on parting with them, I was wonderfully supported by the
Lord Jesus. I read the 129th and 121st Psalms before engaging in prayer
in my own house with the surviving members of our family. They gave me
the convoy in the carriage till we got out of sight of the valley of the
Leader. Drove to Greenlaw, where I was received with much kindness by
Mr. and Mrs. Fairbairn, and Rev. Messrs. Cunningham, Fraser, and Spence,
whom they had invited to meet me. Addressed a meeting in the Free
Church.
“5th.—To Langton, where I addressed Mr. Logan’s congregation in the
evening. In the afternoon I visited Langton House, to renew my
acquaintance with the excellent Lady Hannah Tharpe, who gave me a very
kind reception. I had a long talk, too, on the grounds, with Lady
Elizabeth Pringle, who has done much for their improvement as well as
for that of the mansion. She is a most vigorous and intelligent old
lady.
“6th.—Driven by Mr. Logan to Dunse, to the Rev. Mr. Miller. After
calling on Dr. Ritchie of the United Presbyterian Church I left for
Selkirk by rail. I was recognised at Galashiels by Mr. Ovans, son of an
old friend, who took me to his house. I posted to Hare wood Glen, where
James Dennistoun and his family were delighted to see me.
“8th.—Driven to Selkirk and preached in the Free Church.” Then after a
day at Stow, with the Rev. T. N. Brydon, and a visit to Glasgow, he bade
farewell to Scotland.
Dr. Guthrie’s was the last “kent” face he saw in his native land.
Accompanied by his niece he followed his old route by the Rhine to
Munich, seeing Professor Christlieb at Bonn, and bitterly lamenting the
loss of “my grand walking-cane, the gift of Colonel Davidson.” At the
Bavarian capital he writes: “I renewed my acquaintance with Dr. Haug,
Professor of Sanskrit in the University, and he treated the two of us to
a right good German supper in the evening, at which we met not only his
wife and son, but Mr. "West (now Ph.D.) and Mrs. West, old Bombay
friends, much with dearest Isabella and myself. Dr. Haug offered to
introduce me to Dr. Doll-inger, the living lion of the place, but I
could not spare the needful time.” And so, after a day at Trent, and in
the cathedral and church of Sta. Maria Maggiore “ in which the famous
Council intended to defeat the Reformation was held,” the last week of
November 1871 saw him in the hospitable house of Dr. Yule, the consular
chaplain at Alexandria, and soon after on an excursion from Suez to the
Wells of Moses. At Aden he and General Irving, R.E., repeated the usual
five miles’ ride to the town and tanks. On the 9th December he was
welcomed back to Bombay by Dhunjeebhoy and the son of the Nawab of
Nasik, who boarded the steamer as it entered the harbour. |
