CHRISTIAN CHARITY IN ACTION

The charge has often been made that Portuguese missions were vitiated from the start by efforts to coerce people into abandoning their old faith and accepting the new. The charge can be substantiated or repudiated only on the basis of a careful study of the methods actually used by the Portuguese over a period of time for winning converts to the faith and for building up an Indian church.

We have earlier taken note of the Misericordia of Goa as one of the notable works of charity maintained in that city. This was directed only to the needs of the Portuguese, and had no specific function as an evangelistic operation. Yet we have the record of at least one Brāhman converted as a consequence of the good work that he had seen carried on there. This man had been in the employ of the Misericordia, and carried on its business and wrote its documents with as much credit and authority as if he had been one of the brethren. He affirmed that there were two causes of his conversion; first, seeing the works of charity which the Christians carried on among themselves with so much love and diligence; second, the reading of spiritual books, which had shewn him the truth and purity of the Christian religion and the ignorance and falsehoods in which the Hindus lived ensnared.