Near the "Footprint of Adam" in the Footsteps of Jesus: Benjamin C. Meigs
Ceylon has had a peculiar and an exceptional prominence, in tradition and in the history of missions, for a somewhat out-of-the-way corner of the earth. It is an island not quite as large as Ireland. Its population is about three millions. While it never had a controlling interest in any great people or country, various causes have combined to centre in it, at different times, the world’s religious interest and thought.
According to Eastern traditions, preserved in various of the sacred books of the different religions, Ceylon has been pre-eminent for ages. The Quran says that, when our first parents were cast out from Paradise, Adam landed in Ceylon, or Serendib, and Eve landed near Joddah, the port of Mecca in Arabia. After two centuries, (a short time for that stage of the world), Adam found Eve, and she went back with him to Ceylon, where the first children of earth were born. That is carrying history pretty well back. There is a lofty mountain-top in Ceylon called to this day “Adam’s Peak,” on which is shown a huge footprint said to be Adam’s. The Hindoos revere this footprint as that of Siva; and the Booddhists as that of Gautama-Booddha. But all unite in accounting Ceylon a primitive and sacred place. Many Bible scholars have counted Ceylon the Ophir of King Solomon’s day.
Muhammadan interest in Ceylon was not lessened, the world over, when Arabi Bey, or Arabi Pasha, who had been deemed by so many the expected Mahdi, was banished, when overpowered, by the British government to that sacred soil linked with so many of the traditions of the race. It became to Muhammadans like St. Helena to Frenchmen. Similarly the Dutch Boers of South Africa have, in recent years, a special interest in Ceylon as the prison-house of their captured soldiers transported thither by the English.
Within the last five centuries Ceylon has been an important field of Christian missions. This includes the missions of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, and the American. St. Francis Xavier preached among the Tamil fishermen of Ceylon, and baptized some four or five hundred converts. Under Dutch rule Protestant Christianity was dominant; and at least nominal converts were numbered by the hundreds of thousands. After the days of William Carey in India, there was an excellent work done in Ceylon by English Baptists. Dr. Coke, of the English Wesleyan Church, went there in advanced age, and then did good missionary service there while he lived; and his mission has continued to bear fruit to the present time.
As keeping up the history and traditions of Ceylon as a missionary centre, it is interesting to note that among the Boer war prisoners now held there are quite a number of zealous “student volunteers,” who have been in Christian correspondence with the Lord’s great army of student volunteers for the world’s conquest to Christ.
John R. Mott, the world leader in the sphere of Young Men’s Christian Associations, gives Ceylon a prominent place in his “Strategic Points in the World’s Conquest.” He says that to-day “in all parts of India there are Tamil teachers who were born and educated in Ceylon;” that from various reasons “Ceylon is destined to continue to exert a special influence on India and on Siamj” that, “at different times in the centuries that are past, multitudes of Booddhist missionaries have gone forth from this little island to propagate their faith throughout the vast continent of Asia. To-day in Ceylon there are ten thousand Booddhist priests.” Moreover, Mr. Mott says that the Church of Rome, realizing the importance of Ceylon as a vantage ground of missions, is working there most effectively, and that similarly “no effort should be spared to make the student Christian movement in Ceylon, in the present and coming generations, to raise up and send forth multitudes of volunteers to be witnesses for Christ unto the uttermost parts of the far East.”
As Jaffna College was founded by American Protestant missionaries, the Church of Rome has recently “opened at Columba the best-equipped college in Ceylon.... They have placed in charge of it a large staflf of Jesuits, educated in some of the leading universities of Europe.” A Roman Catholic priest who has been more than forty years a missionary in that island said to Mr. Mott concerning this new college that “the Church of Rome recognizes Ceylon to be one of the key positions in the entire mission field. Rather than retrench, their policy is to establish themselves even more strongly.”
American foreign missionaries have been in Ceylon from their earliest outgoing. In consequence of the reports and the appeals of Samuel Newell, before mentioned, five missionaries and their wives sailed from Boston for Ceylon in 1815. These were Messrs. Meigs, Richards, Warren, Bardwell, and Poor. They were stationed at the two points, Batticotta and Tillypally, at both of which places the former buildings, including the churches, of the Dutch mission were turned over to their use by the British government.
Benjamin Clark Meigs, going as a missionary to an island which had been such a centre of religious interest in the passing centuries, came from Litchfield County, Connecticut, which has been peculiarly a starting-point of American missionaries in the century just past. Samuel J. Mills, of “hay-stack” fame, who had so much to do with starting in America the revived interest in foreign missions, was the son of a clergyman in Litchfield County. Adoniram Judson, who had so much to do with making that new interest world-wide, was the son of another Litchfield County native and clergyman. Isaac Bird, who did excellent work as a missionary in Palestine, and who is still represented there in the second and third generation, was from that county. There was our first foreign missionary school, which resulted in the new life of the Sandwich Islands, and which itself sent seventeen mission workers to those islands. From the same county went David B. Lyman as a missionary to the same mission field, and Hiram S. Taylor as a missionary to India, nor were these all. Was not that a good place for such a missionary as Meigs to go from to such a missionary field as Ceylon?
After a while, in consequence of deaths and prolonged sickness of other missionaries, Mr. Meigs found himself alone in the pressing work at Batticotta, and Mr. Poor was similarly alone at Tillypally. Then the work for those who remained was harder and less encouraging. But like good missionaries they kept at work, and were blessed while being a blessing. In 1819 there came from America renewed help and strong men to the Ceylon mission. Miron Winslow came out with two other missionaries, and he was in himself a tower of strength. Then came Dr. John Scudder, with his medical skill and his rare devotion and earnestness in his work. The work done in God’s service by these good missionaries, in those and the following years, is telling in precious souls for eternity.
In 1822 the missionaries in Ceylon drew up a plan for an advanced school, or college, for the youth under their charge. After careful consideration of the plan the Board authorized the undertaking, and it was later begun. The educational side of the missionary work was from the beginning made prominent in this field. It was necessary for the English language to be known and used by those in government service, and the studies of Western civilization naturally grew in favor with the natives. A seminary was started at
Batticotta, which finally developed into Jaffna College.
But the evangelizing work of the mission was never lost sight of. The mission was blessed with a remarkable series of revivals, most of which began in the schools, in the years 1821, 1824, 1830, and 1834. In 1854, after nearly forty years of missionary service by Dr. Meigs, and not long before he was compelled to leave the field, there were eight missionary stations in the care of the American Board, twenty-four missionaries and assistant missionaries, thirty native preachers and catechists, 395 communicants, and 4,244 pupils in the schools. The churches were in large measure self-supporting, and their influence was extensive, far beyond their bounds in the island.
It was after twenty-five years of service in Ceylon that Mr. Meigs first came again to his home for a brief visit. It was eighteen years later, after forty-three years of missionary campaigning, that, in 1858, he was compelled to relinquish his work and return to America. It was at that time that I had the privilege of seeing and hearing him. Although unable to remain longer abroad, he was still able to plead for the cause he loved, and to inspire those who heard him, by his manifest spirit, with the preciousness of that work and of the high privilege of being engaged in it. The leonine head and the saintly face of that veteran hero, as his presence and words impressed me, have been as a precious and ennobling memory since I looked up and listened to him in my Connecticut home more than forty years ago; and I am glad to have had and to have that memory.