PRESBYTERIAN MISSION

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 105, 25 July 1927, Page 14

PRESBYTERIAN MISSION

CAMPAIGN OPENED APPEAL FOR CHINA INDIA’S PITIABLE PLIGHT The missionary campaign, which is being conducted throughout New Zealand under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, was opened in Auckland yesterday, under the leadership of the Right Rev. George H. McNeur, Moderator of the General Assembly. With the Moderator were associated missionaries from China, India, the New Hebrides, and from the Home and Maori Missions. The party includes Rev. J. L. Gray (India), Rev. J. D. McKenzie (New Hebrides), Sister Jessie (Maori), and Rev. G. Budd (Home Missions). The Moderator is representing China. The pitiable plight of India’s 50 million outcastes and their reaction to the teaching of Christianity was the subject of a sermon by Rev. J. L. Gray, of the New Zealand Presbyterian Mission in the Punjab. The lowest strata were those of no caste, he said, who followed the menial occupations for a miserable wage of 2d a day, paid not in food but in kind. These were the “untouchables,” whose shadow polluted what it fell upon, who were segregated in settlements outside the villages and, who, if they ventured to draw water from the village well, were beaten, perhaps unto death. CHANCE OF ESCAPE “Christianity offers these people their one chance of escape from the thraldom of circumstance,” said the preacher, “Hinduism has its very roots in caste, and Mohammedanism is synonomous with fatalism. ‘lt is frustrating the will of Allah to raise these people from the lot to which they were born,’ say their overlords. ‘lf you educate them, who is to do our menial work ’ ”

“The outcastes are not in any way of deficient mental power,” said Mr. Gray, “but their oppression for generations has given them what might be termed a ‘slave mentality,’ and it is difficult to raise them from their crushed condition. The dux of our school at Kharar is . n outcaste. At this school we have 350 boys drawn from Sikhs, Hindus. Mohammedans, and outcastes, and the headmaster came from an outcaste home.”

“This is not our work, we are but your instruments, it is your work.” said Mr. Gray, “the work of the Presbyterian Church. This missionary campaign, the first of its kind in New Zealand, is to enlist your help and support in spreading the light of the Gospel among the downtrodden millions of India,”

Speaking in the evening Mr. McNeur, senior missionary at the Canton Villages Mission, where he was stationed for 25 years, outlined the work in that field from its inception 60 years ago. “China’s internal upheaval has helped, rather than hindered, our work,” he said. “Chinese antagonism is not to Christianity but to foreignism. and our aim all along has been to train Chinese teachers and preachers to spread the Gospel among their fellows.” CHINESE “PROGRESSIVES” He emphasised the fact that all through the difficult times in China the big hospital established by the Canton Villages Mission had been able to carry on, even when all other British hospitals had had to close. The Cantonese were the progressives of China, and from that crowded city Chinese went forth to the ends of the earth. By spreading th ' Gospel among them it was carried to the Chinese in tar distant parts. Mr. McNeur concluded with an elo- ,

quent appeal for the sympathy of the Christian Church for China. “Ratana has done more for the Maoris than the white people ever did,” declared Sister Jessie. If , Ratana was not all he should be, said the missioner, he proved at least that the natives were seeking a simple religion—the simple truth of Christ. There were now 32 women, 11 certificated teachers, 13 ordained deaconesses, six housekeepers and five men carrying on the work among the natives. They were all helping the natives spiritually and physically in the heart of the back blocks. A large body of baptised Maoris had renounced Mormonism, she declared, and were staunch Presbyterians.