There are many beautiful things in Hinduism, but the fullest light is from Christ . . . Hinduism has been digging channels. Christ is the water to flow through these channels.-Sadhu Sundar Singh

VIII

Christians Who Count

ONE of the most beautiful sections of India is the Malabar Coast country, which lies to the far southwest. About fifty miles inland rise the high, wooded mountains which cut this country off from easy contact with the rest of India. Parallel with the coast and protected from the sea by a long neck of land are quiet backwaters, through which our little steamer slowly glides as we come to visit this land of tropical luxuriance. It is a veritable Garden of Eden, with its many little rivers, its great groves of coconut and banana palms, and its pepper vines twined among the trees. Yet it is not the charm of the country which draws us here. It is the unique interest of some of its people, for this is the home of one of the oldest and most significant groups of Christians in the world.

In the summer of 1921 Christian Endeavorers came from all over America and beyond to New York for a great convention. A mighty and inspiring throng of sixteen thousand assembled there. It was a great meeting. But every year about thirty thousand of these Malabar Christians gather in a mammoth palmleaf pavilion in a dry river bed for a religious convention. And bear it in mind that, except as an invited guest, no missionary has anything to do with this convention. The Indians have entire responsibility for it. In Everybody's World Dr. Sherwood Eddy gives the following vivid description of the 1920 convention at which he was the principal guest and speaker:

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On the platform at our left are seated the white-robed priests of this ancient church, and upon raised seats on the right are the two bishops in their purple satin robes, with golden girdles and quaint headdresses. One is of the old school, looking like the ancient Nestorian patriarch of Antioch. . . . The other is a young man, modern, keen, alert, whom we knew as a college student a dozen years ago, when he decided, one night, to give up his future ambition in the law and to enter Christian work. After completing his education in Canada, he returned to spend his life in vitalizing this ancient church in which he was born. In front of the platform in this great pavilion the Christians are seated. They have been gathering from hundreds of distant villages, coming up like the tribes of old to the Feast of Tabernacles at Jerusalem. All are clad in flowing white garments and are seated on the dry sand of the river bed, the men on the right, the women on the left. As the people unite in intercession, you can hear a distant murmur rising gradually like the sound of the sea. A wave of prayer seems to sweep over the vast audience. The Bishop leads in a last prayer, and we begin the morning's address. . . . They are turning back to the primitive and simple Christianity of the early days, with an open Bible, fervent prayer, and simple witnessing to the glad news of abundant life. Here is an ancient Indian church, using its own forms of worship and expressing Eastern methods of devotion.

Let me tell you a little of the romantic story of these Malabar Christians. They call themselves Mar Thoma Christians, "the Saint Thomas Christians," because they believe that the Apostle Thomas himself founded their church. It is certain that long before Augustine and his little band of missionaries came to England in 597 A.D., Christian missionaries from Palestine had sailed across the Indian Ocean with their message of hope and joy and had founded a church.

Alfred the Great heard about these St. Thomas! Christians. In 883 A.D. he sent an embassy all the way from England to India "bearing the alms which the King had vowed to send-to India, to St. Thomas, and to St. Bartholomew." The embassy "penetrated with great success to India and brought thence many foreign gems and aromatic liquors." So you can read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. At the time when Alfred the Great sent his embassy, the Mar Thoma Christians were in great favor with the Rajah of the land. They had been given the standing of a high caste in the community and had settled down to a self-contained life much like that of the Hindu castes. Their worship was in the language of Syria, which few of them understood. Hence it had become a dead form. Under these circumstances, it was not strange that they sank into a sort of sleep for several centuries, until they were violently aroused by the coming of the Portuguese to Calicut in 1498.

Imagine the surprise and delight of the Portuguese when they discovered among the strange brown people of India a large body of Christians! And imagine the delight of the Indian Church in having powerful fellow-Christians from across the seas to encourage and help them! But the joy on both sides was short lived. The Mar Thoma Christians followed the ritual of the Eastern Church and owned allegiance to an Eastern Patriarch. This made them heretics to the bigoted Portuguese who thought that the only true faith was that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Portuguese at once set about to convert them to Rome, but these Indian Christians were obstinate enough to hold to

their own ways. Then the Portuguese, through a clever archbishop, undertook to compel them to obey. This archbishop had power and used it relentlessly. Three bishops of the Indian Church were tortured to death through the Inquisition, and the simple Malabar Christians were brought to outward submission which lasted for fifty years. But when one more of their bishops was arrested, their smouldering resentment broke into open revolt.

Great crowds of them gathered at the sacred Croonen Cross and there swore never more to have anything to do with Rome. All could not touch the Cross as they swore this oath. Therefore long ropes were attached to it; and they held these ropes as they together took the solemn vow which, as they well knew, might bring upon them fierce persecution by the Portuguese. It was a Declaration of Independence which took fully as much courage as that of the American colonies. Not all the Mar Thoma Christians joined in this declaration; indeed, about two thirds of them still recognize the Pope. But there are now about 300,000 members in the churches which broke from the Roman yoke at the Croonen Cross.

They did not become a strong Church at once. Indeed they clung to their old ways until a few decades ago. Then under the influence of a Church of England mission that had come among them at the invitation of their Metran, or bishop, a reform movement started. Whole congregations decided that they wanted to worship and read the Bible in their own language. New life came into the Church. Those who held to the old ways objected. Again there were persecutions. A bit