: 
 
 TCFRTC 
 
 * 
 
 40HUM*3£ 
 
 am 
 

 THE GIFT OF 
 
 itog 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 i|irl«™. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 arW38461 
 
 The Gospel-message; or. Essays, addresse 
 
 3 1924 031 766 573 
 
 olin.anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031766573 
 
THE GOSPEL-MESSAGE. 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF ROBERT NEEDHAM CUST, LL.D. 
 From 1840 to 96. 
 
 ETON ADDRESSES TO KING WILLIAM IV. 1840. 
 HAILEYBURY OBSERVER CONTRIBUTIONS. 1840-1842. 
 CALCUTTA-REVIEW CONTRIBUTIONS. 1846-1894 (42 m 48 years). 
 HioTnRV OF COCKAYNE-HATLEY CHURCH. 1851. 
 MANUALS FOR GUIDANCE OF NATIVE OFFICIALS IN THE 
 
 URDU LANGUAGE. 1855 to 1859. 
 PANTAB REVENUE-MANUAL. 1865. TXTT , TA 
 
 REVENUE-LAW OF NORTH-WEST PROVINCES OF INDIA 1867. 
 LAND-REVENUE-PROCEDURE FOR NORTHERN INDIA. 1870. 
 MODERN LANGUAGES OF THE EAST INDIES. 1878. 
 LES RELIGIONS ET LES LANGUES DE L'INDE (French). 1880. 
 LA RELIGIONE ET LE LINGUE DELL INDIA (Italian). 1882. 
 LAS RELIGIONES Y LOS IDIOMAS DE LA INDIA (Spanish). 1884. 
 ©pij<TKeit£i icai Th&aaai ttjj- 'ivSias (Greek). 1884. 
 ♦MODERN LANGUAGES OF AFRICA. 2 Vols. 1883. Cloth, 18s. 
 LES LANGUES DE LAFRIQUE (French). 1885. (German. 1881.) 
 LE LINGUE DELL AFRICA (Italian). 1885. 
 MODERN LANGUAGES OF OCEANIA. 1887. (German. 1887.) 
 LES RACES ET LES LANGUES DE L'OCEANIE (French). 1888. 
 MODERN LANGUAGES OF THE CAUCASIAN-GROUP. 1887. 
 LANGUAGES OF THE TURKI BRANCH OF THE URAL-ALTAIC 
 FAMILY. 1889. (German and English.) 
 
 LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS. Series I. 1880. 
 "LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS. Series II. 1887. Cloth, 21s. 
 ♦LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS. Series III. 1891. Cloth, 21s. 
 ♦LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS. Series IV. 1895. Cloth, 21.5. 
 
 PICTURES OF INDIAN LIFE. 1881. 
 *THE ROMAN CATHOLIC SHRINES OF LOURDES, ZARAGOSSA, 
 LORETTO, Etc. 1885 and 1892. Cloth, is. 6d. 
 
 POEMS OF MANY YEARS AND PLACES. 1887. 
 
 SUMMER-HOLIDAYS OF AN ETON BOY. 1887. 
 
 THE SORROWS OF AN ANGLO-INDIAN LIFE. 1889. 
 ♦NOTES ON MISSIONARY SUBJECTS. 1889. Cloth, 7 s. 6d. 
 ♦BIBLE-LANGUAGES. 1890. Cloth, as. 6d. 
 
 ♦CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON, OR THE VARIOUS FORMS OF 
 RELIGIOUS ERROR. 1890. Cloth, zs. 6d. 
 
 BIBLE-TRANSLATIONS. 1890. 
 ♦AFRICA REDIVIVA, OR MISSIONARY OCCUPATION OF AFRICA. 
 1891. (French and English.) Cloth, $s. 
 
 ADDRESSES ON BIBLE-DIFFUSION. 1892. Cloth, 4$. 6d. 
 
 ESSAY ON THE METHODS OF EVANGELIZATION OF THE 
 WORLD. 1894. 
 ♦COMMON FEATURES, WHICH APPEAR IN ALL THE RELIGIONS 
 OF THE WORLD BEFORE ANNO DOMINI. 1895. Cloth, 5J. 
 ♦THE GOSPEL-MESSAGE. 1896. Paper, 6s. 6d. ; Cloth, 7 s. 6d. 
 
 ♦ Any of the above Books to which an asterisk (♦) is affixed may be had of 
 Messrs. Luzac & Co., 46, Great Russell Street, London, W.C., or of 
 Messrs. Stephen Austin & Sons, Hertford. All the other Publications are 
 Out of Print. 
 
THE GOSPEL-MESSAGE. 
 
 OR 
 
 lEssagg, aboregaes, Sugpssttatta, an ^ TOamtttfla on 
 tfre different 2(ssp«ta of 
 
 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS TO NON-CHRISTIAN 
 RACES AND PEOPLES. 
 
 ROBERT NEEDHAM CUST, LL.D. 
 
 HON. SEC. OF THE. CANTERBURY BOARD OF MISSIONS 
 
 A humble Student of the Philosophy of Missions, and observer of the 
 
 great work in the Field and the Committee-room of many 
 
 Churches and Denominations in the Mission-fields 
 
 of the world for half a century. 
 
 " Therefore every scribe, which is instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven, is 
 like unto a man, that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure 
 things new and old. " — Matthew, xiii, 52. 
 
 LONDON 
 LUZAC & CO., 46, GREAT RUSSELL STREET. 
 
 1896. 
 
 [All rights reserved.] 
 
HERTFORD 
 PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS. 
 
TO ALL 
 WHO TAKE AN INTEREST 
 
 IN THE 
 
 GREATEST MOVEMENT OF OUR EPOCH, 
 
 THE 
 
 EVANGELIZATION OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN WORLD, 
 
 THIS 
 
 FINAL EFFORT IN THE GREAT CAUSF 
 
 IS 
 
 ©eKtcateti. 
 
 February 24, i8g6. 
 jEtat 75. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Title- Page 
 
 
 
 Dedication 
 
 
 
 Contents 
 
 
 
 Introduction 
 
 
 
 ix 
 
 Classification 
 
 of Subject in Chapters, Sections, Sub-sections 
 
 
 Cap. I. 
 
 Motives and Duty 
 
 i 
 
 „ II. 
 
 Servants of the Lord 
 
 45 
 
 .. HI- 
 
 Incidents and Dangers . . 
 
 151 
 
 » iv. 
 
 Results 
 
 357 
 
 Conclusion . . 
 
 
 477 
 
 Poem 
 
 
 4S1 
 
 Alphabetical 
 
 [NDEX : 
 
 
 Cap. I. 
 
 Sections and Sub-sections 
 
 485 
 
 .. II- 
 
 Names and Subjects 
 
 487 
 
 „ III. 
 
 Quotations . . . . 
 
 493 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 My heartfelt desire is, at the age of seventy-five, to throw together 
 in a collective form my already published Addresses, Essays, 
 and Warnings, with emendations. and enlargements up to the 
 year 1895, and to add others on subjects not previously handled. 
 My criticisms must necessarily be severe and outspoken, because 
 I feel the necessity. The work of an Evangelist is a Divine 
 Call, not a mere worldly profession : it requires the consecration 
 in the morning of life of all the faculties, talents, time, and 
 Gifts, of the consecrated man or woman : they should not 
 descend to vulgar domestic cares until they have given one 
 decade exclusively to their Master's Service. It is throwing 
 words away to suggest reforms in a Missionary committee, 
 where nearly every member of committee or Secretary, has 
 relations, or connections, or intimate friends, who would be 
 affected thereby. Evangelization has become a great family- 
 concern. In the Middle Ages Monastic establishments by the 
 same gradual degradation fell down from the high Ideal, because 
 the members of those Associations failed to reform themselves. 
 Now is the time for Missionary Associations, many of whom 
 are about to complete their century of existence, to reform 
 abuses, and adapt themselves to the new requirements, before 
 ■the day of their visitation has passed, and they are absorbed 
 into a Church-organization, which will be totally unable to 
 conduct Missionary operations. 
 
 Some of these papers may be read with profit at Ladies' work- 
 parties : copies of the book will be sent to all Training Colleges. 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 They are written by one, whose whole heart for half a century 
 has been in the work, and whose reading in a great many 
 Languages has been very wide ; who is not afraid to call a spade 
 a spade ; whose intellectual stature is sufficiently high to look 
 over the fence, which separates Church from Church, and 
 Denomination from Denomination, Schools of Ecclesiastical 
 thought from their antagonists, Nation from Nation, dark- 
 coloured races from light-coloured, and Christians, real or 
 nominal, from non-Christians ; and to see nothing but Christ 
 Crucified, and Millions requiring a Saviour, and with dumb 
 voices calling out to the Western Nations for a Prophet, an 
 Evangelist, a Teacher, and a Guide. The Service of Christ is 
 of the highest and noblest kind ; but it should not be lightly 
 entered upon, performed perfunctorily, or lightly deserted, while 
 there is life and health, because it is a life-service, as Bishops 
 Sargent, Caldwell, Steere, Smythies, Hannington, Parker, found 
 it, and good John Newton of Lahore showed it to be, and 
 Robert Clark of Amritsar shows it to be still. No blessing 
 will follow the deserter in his English Home. 
 
 Some of my Chapters may suggest ideas to Deputations, 
 and help them to give a little variety to their addresses, and set 
 their audiences thinking : it is well sometimes to keep clear of 
 statistics, a little too favourable, and to abstain from laudation 
 of Agents a little too exuberant : one note runs through all my 
 pages, Pity and Love to all God's poor creatures, to whatever 
 stage of culture, or degradation of the Religious conception, 
 they may have fallen. Our ancestors in the time of Augustine 
 of Canterbury, and Columba of Iona, were on the same level 
 as the heathen are now : it was God's pleasure to leave our 
 ancestors in that state during the thousands -of years,' which 
 preceded the birth of those great Missionaries : it was God's 
 goodness that sent them to our forefathers. Is His Hand 
 shortened, or His Wisdom clouded, that He should not have 
 fixed the appointed time of Evangelization for the dwellers in 
 the extreme Orient also ? His Sovereign Will has its own 
 time fixed. 
 
 I expect and welcome the censure of this generation : perhaps 
 the next generation will see the matter from another point of 
 view. Sometimes even now I receive a letter from an unknown 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 Clergyman, who, having to speak at a Meeting, or preach his 
 Annual Sermon, had stumbled on one of my published Addresses, 
 and had derived assistance from the new point of view, in which 
 the Great Subject was placed ; and he wrote to thank me. 
 Sometimes I receive a letter from a Missionary in a distant 
 field expressing his concurrence in my sentiments. Sometimes 
 an honest antagonist blurts out: "What you say is quite true; 
 " but we cannot help it : we must make the best use we can of 
 " the indifferent material at our disposal." This may be true ; 
 but a great civil administrator in India takes credit for working 
 eifectively with indifferent material under careful guidance and 
 instruction. Men and Women are what they are taught and 
 trained to be by competent Superintendents. 
 
 Where narrow-minded, or imperfectly informed, persons fail 
 is in their inability to comprehend the grandeur of this great 
 enterprize, and at the same time its Human side. It is a 
 Divine enterprize, and men ought to apply to it all their 
 Labour, all their Knowledge, all their energy, relying on the 
 favour and guidance of God : they should recognize, that it 
 is their Duty, the highest possible form of Benevolence, the 
 greatest exhibition of Love to our fellow-creatures, and the 
 most satisfying of labours. It may be, that God worked by 
 Miracles in former Centuries. He certainly does not do so 
 now, at least outwardly in a material form ; but the greatest 
 of all Miracles ever recorded by Pagan, Jew, or Christian, is 
 the conversion of the Soul of a Sinner to God ; and of that 
 inward and Spiritual Miracle we have daily undoubted instances. 
 
 I have taken a great pleasure in surveying the whole field, in 
 groping through distasteful masses of sentences and words to 
 get at the golden nugget within. The attempt to convert and 
 retain in Christian Churches fifteen hundred Millions of the 
 Human species is one of the greatest enterprizes, that History 
 has recorded, or the mind of man can conceive. From one 
 point of view Religion seems to be to man a great snare, and 
 the folly of man to be beyond conception. From another point 
 of view it is the link, that connects the great Creator with His 
 poor creatures, and is a congenital portion of the Gifts, with 
 which He equipped them at their birth. 
 
 Now what are the features to be thought out and studied ? 
 
xii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A. The nature of the weapons to be used : 
 
 (i) Human speech, a humble and yet trained intellect. 
 
 (2) Bible-Translations. 
 
 (3) Healthy Religious and Secular Literature in the 
 
 Languages of the people. 
 
 B. The Geographical distribution of the forces employed : 
 
 the unoccupied, or imperfectly occupied, Regions : 
 
 (1) Asia. 
 
 (2) Africa. 
 
 (3) Oceania. 
 
 (4) America. 
 
 C. The Methods employed : 
 
 (0 Good. 
 
 (2) Not recommended. 
 
 (3) Bad. 
 
 D. The Agents employed : 
 
 (1) Men or Women. 
 
 (2) Ordained or unordained. 
 
 (3) Learned or ignorant. 
 
 (4) Lay or professional. 
 
 E. The Ancient Religious conceptions before Anno Domini, 
 
 and still in existence : 
 
 (1) Animistic. 
 
 (2) Polytheist. 
 
 (3) Monotheist. 
 
 F. The new Religious conceptions, which have sprung into 
 
 existence since Anno Domini : 
 
 (1) Based on Christianity, though hostile. 
 
 (2) Entirely independent of Christianity, but not 
 
 necessarily hostile, until the time of the death- 
 struggle arrives. 
 
 Now on each of these subjects I have tried by study to arrive 
 at some fixed opinion, and have fearlessly expressed it. I have 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xlll 
 
 had the advantage of ruling Oriental Nations for nearly a quarter 
 of a century with a firm and gentle Rule : living in their midst 
 without guards ; speaking their Language as my own, knowing 
 their sorrows, and well acquainted with their grievances, their 
 social customs, and their forms of Religious belief; standing in 
 their places of Worship, and listening to their prayers, uttered 
 in dead Languages, which I could understand, but which they 
 could not. To apply the term of the Kingdom of Satan to 
 the people of India in their hundreds of towns, and tens of 
 thousands of villages, amidst many of which I have daily moved 
 my camp, is a type of the Ignorance and folly, and utter want 
 of sympathy, of those, who utter such foolish phrases, and those 
 who print such nonsense in their reports. Non-Christian men 
 are still men of like passions, excellencies, and weaknesses, as 
 ourselves, and they are as their Creator made them, and left 
 them, for no Prophet or Evangelist sent by Him ever came to 
 them or their forefathers. He allowed them, as Paul puts it, 
 to follow their own ways. 
 
 My survey of the world was from the point of view of the 
 Geographer, Ethnologist, and Linguist ; noting the divergence 
 of their races, and customs, and Languages. I brought to 
 book the Languages of India, Oceania, and Africa in published 
 volumes. I had the materials ready for a classification and 
 enumeration of the Languages of North and South America ; 
 but, as time, went on, the importance of the study of the 
 Religious conceptions of Mankind was brought home to me. 
 Of the two congenital Gifts of the Creator to His poor children, 
 Language is the faculty conceded to Man of communicating 
 with his fellows ; Religion is the desire to feel for, and find out, 
 the great Power, which made and preserves him. So I turned 
 away from my linguistic survey of the non-Christian world, and 
 felt my way among the Religious conceptions, which existed 
 before Anno Domini, and the new conceptions, which have 
 come into existence since the Epoch-making event of the 
 Incarnation. These last-mentioned new conceptions are multi- 
 plying ; and, so long as the Gospel of Christ is brought to the 
 non-Christian world disguised in English, German, French, 
 and American environments, they will continue to multiply. 
 
 As regards Africa, I found that something more was wanting : 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 so I took up " the occupation of that Continent by Christian 
 Missionaries of all Nations and Churches," and in 1891 
 published my volume of " Africa Rediviva," with Maps and 
 Appendices. The necessity of my readings for the compilation 
 of "Africa Rediviva" made me familiar with the Methods of 
 Evangelization in force. A Euphemist, or one, who desired to 
 be popular, would have hesitated ; but I desired to be thorough 
 in my work, and my volume on "Missionary Methods" was 
 published simultaneously with the Missionary Conference of the 
 Church of England, 1894, and many, who read it, did not like 
 it : it contained too many home-thrusts, and exposures ; the 
 picture drawn was too true; it offended preconceptions, and 
 disturbed quiet satisfaction : however, I had administered great 
 Indian Provinces, and knew the importance of Methods as con- 
 ducive to Results. Our Judicial and Revenue systems would 
 break down, if we had not the best and well-understood Methods, 
 and avoided those which were bad. 
 
 Years of study of the Ancient Religions of the World roused 
 in my mind a desire, in the interest of Christian Missions, to 
 speak out on the subject of Religious conceptions in general. 
 In Cap. Ill, § 1, p. 342, I have given a brief sketch of the 
 Ancient Religions of the World before Anno Domini : full 
 details of each can be obtained in the admirable volumes pub- 
 lished by the S.P.C.K., and they are noticed by Bishop Westcott 
 in his excellent little volume, "The Gospel of Life." They 
 may be assumed now to be moribund, or in the last stage of 
 their existence, not in consequence of the assaults of the 
 Christian Missionary, but simply because they are out of touch 
 with the present Epoch : they are old-world conceptions, and 
 the mind of man, as he becomes civilized, and educated, has 
 advanced beyond them. To abuse them, or persecute those, 
 who still cleave to them, might have the effect of rousing up 
 dormant feelings in their favour, and prolonging their existence : 
 left to themselves they will die out, like the beautiful Religious 
 conceptions of Rome and Greece. The men of ancient days, 
 Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian, Zoroastrian, Brahman, 
 Buddhist, Confucianist, were not fools, or barbarians, devoid 
 of the Religious sense, but according to the measure of their 
 Gifts and opportunities wise, thoughtful, pious, and seeking 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 Holiness, and not unconscious or regardless of a Future of 
 Rewards and Punishments. Such phenomena of the Human 
 intellect should not be treated with contempt. They represent 
 the state, in which it pleased the great Controller to allow the 
 great, powerful, and gifted, races of those countries to remain, 
 till in the Fulness of Time He sent His own Son. He loved 
 all His poor creatures then as He does now. I have striven 
 in my volume on the " Common Features in all Forms of 
 Religious Belief," to bring together all the Phenomena, which 
 appear in all, such as Sacrifice, Prophecy, Miracles, Observance 
 of Days, Magical Rites, Priesthoods, Auguries, Dreams, Oracles, 
 etc. Such were the paraphernalia of all Religions of the elder 
 world : they have absolutely disappeared now. A Missionary 
 ought in very deed to know something of the fortress, which 
 he is preparing to assault. 
 
 In another volume, " Clouds on the Horizon," an Essay on 
 the various forms of Error, which stand in the way of the 
 acceptance of Christianity by Natives of Asia, Africa, America, 
 and Oceania, I have depicted the new crop of Religious con- 
 ceptions, which are coming into existence, full of life and 
 Human intellectuality and Morality, but essentially hostile to 
 Christianity : they represent the back -drift of Civilization, 
 contact with other Nations, and Education : they are the 
 most dangerous antagonists to the Christian Mission. 
 
 Thus came into existence the following volumes : 
 
 I. Languages of East Indies, 1878. 
 II. Languages of Africa, 1883. 
 
 III. Languages of Oceania, 1887. 
 
 IV. Africa Rediviva, 1891. 
 
 V. Missionary Methods, 1894. 
 VI. Common Features of all Religions, 1895. 
 VII. The Ancient Religions of the World, Cap. Ill, § 1, 1896. 
 VIII. Clouds on the Horizon, or New Forms of Error, 1890. 
 
 My never-failing attachment to the British and Foreign Bible 
 Society, the greatest and most Catholic of all Missionary 
 Societies, and my sense of the importance to the Missionary 
 of a supply of good Translations of the Scriptures, induced 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 me to turn my attention to this subject also, and to compile 
 and publish the following volumes : 
 
 IX. Lists of Bible Translations, 1890. 
 
 (1) Alphabetical, (2) Geographical, (3) Linguistic. 
 X. Essays on Languages used in the Bible and Transla- 
 tions, 1890. 
 XL Bible-Diffusion, 1892. 
 
 And now (XII) my last volume goes forth : " The Gospel- 
 Message," a collection of Essays, Addresses, Suggestions, and 
 Warnings, written in previous years, now corrected up to the 
 present date of my Knowledge, and grouped in Chapters, 
 Sections, and Sub-sections, presenting the subject of the Philo- 
 sophy of Missions from sundry and divers points of view. 
 
 Throughout all my writings I have been in the habit of 
 making large quotations from the published works of esteemed 
 Authors : when I am able, I give the name of the Book, and 
 reference to the page, but sometimes this information fails me 
 in my voluminous books of manuscript-extracts, culled in my 
 many-sided readings in many Languages ; and I habitually read 
 with my pencil in my hand. Sometimes I have appropriated the 
 sentiments of others, clothing them in my own words, and 
 adopting them as my own ; and this is the greatest compliment, 
 that I can pay to them : it is only by reading the Books of those 
 with whom you disagree, that you can form an. idea of the 
 reasons on both sides, and build up a sound opinion, such as 
 would be taken seriously in an ordinary argument by men of 
 the Nineteenth century, who know what they are talking about. 
 
 In the compilation of the above-named series of volumes I 
 have spent laborious hours, dedicating the autumn of my life 
 and faculties to this great Service. I have also spent hundreds 
 of Pounds to distribute free copies to Libraries and individuals 
 in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. My leading motive was 
 thankfulness, that my life had been spared, while so many, who 
 began life with me half a century ago, had fallen in battle, or 
 by mishap, or disease. Besides, I felt that I had a Message to 
 convey: I was called the "outspoken" in India, but I never 
 had any motive, but to let the Truth be known, and to call 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV11 
 
 a spade a spade. It is not everyone, whose character and 
 circumstances are sufficiently independent to allow them to pose 
 as a general critic. 
 
 I have lived long enough to see gross abuses trodden down 
 and bad habits of Officials and Associations corrected, and 
 honour conferred on the right persons : for instance, no Mis- 
 sionary Association took any notice of the Services of women 
 to the Great Cause until the subject was by me pertinaciously 
 brought forward : even now the absurdity exists, that, while 
 half of the population of the world consists of women, and 
 the number of Female Agents in the Mission-fields equals, 
 if not exceeds, that of the men, no woman, except in the 
 Zenana Societies, is allowed on any Religious committee ; and 
 my proposal to have a limited number on a Missionary 
 committee, and the Bible Society committee, was scouted, and 
 they are excluded still. Many Secular Associations are wiser, 
 and the presence of women is conspicuous, and of the greatest 
 importance. I am a member of eighteen Committees, Boards, 
 or Councils, nine Religious, nine Secular, and in my weekly 
 round at the age of seventy-five I pass from one to the- other : 
 the great distinction is, that the first nine commence with 
 formal prayer, exclude women, and have relaxed financial and 
 business habits ; the latter nine leave it to individual members 
 to solicit in silence a blessing on whatever they do, gratefully 
 admit the presence of their sisters, who labour much in the 
 Lord, in all departments, where their own sex is concerned, 
 such as Parochial Boards, Hospitals, Charity-organizations, etc. 
 Secular Associations never exceed the income supplied to them 
 by their fellow-citizens, and require their Secretaries, although 
 they are members of learned Professions, and good social 
 position, to occupy in silence their proper place, as trusted, re- 
 spected, salaried officials, whose duty it is to make statements, 
 reply to questions, and record orders, and not to take part in 
 the debate, or vote as members of the committee. 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF SUBJECT IN CHAPTERS, 
 SECTIONS, AND SUB-SECTIONS. 
 
 MOTIVES AND DUTY. 
 
 Sub- 
 Cap. Section. Section. Headlines of Subject. Page 
 
 I A — The Great and Inestimable Gift of self-Sacrifice i 
 
 — B — The Duty of the Youth of Great Britain ... 15 
 
 — C — Reminiscences of the Missionary Congress of 
 
 London, 1888 30 
 
 — D — Language and the Religious Instinct ... ... 39 
 
 SERVANTS OF THE LORD. 
 
 II A — The Ideal Missionary 45 
 
 — — 1 Missionary Heroes in Africa 45 
 
 — — 2 The Hero Missionary, and Heroic Missionary 
 
 Society 54 
 
 — — 3 On the Duty of a Missionary in the Hour of 
 
 Personal Peril 77 
 
 — B — Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods in the Mission- 
 
 Field 82 
 
 — C — The Work of Women 96 
 
 — — 1 The Female Evangelist 96 
 
 — — 2 The Public Ministry of Women 102 
 
 — — 3 Proposal to admit Women as Members of 
 
 Religious Committees 106 
 
 — — 4 What Women have received from the Bible, 
 
 and what Services they can render inreturn 108 
 
 — — 5 Women's Work, and the Church of Rome ... no 
 
 — — 6 Work of Roman Catholic Women in British 
 
 India 112 
 
 — D — The Native Teacher 114 
 
 — E — Missionaries in Africa : concluding Chapter of 
 
 "Africa Rediviva," 1891 129 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF SUBJECT. xix 
 
 INCIDENTS AND DANGERS. 
 
 Sub- 
 Cap. Section. Section. Headlines of Subject. Page 
 
 III A — Worldly Obstructions 151 
 
 — — 1 A Wish expressed too late ... ... ... 151 
 
 — — 2 A word to those, who do not recognize the 
 
 Divinely imposed Duty of Evangelization ... 158 
 
 — — -3 Civilization without the Gospel is profitless ... 174 
 B — Want of Sympathy with the poor non-Christian 
 
 World 187 
 
 — — 1 The attitude, which a Christian Missionary 
 
 ought to assume to a non-Christian People 187 
 
 — — 2 A Plea for the poor non-Christian world ... 194 
 
 — C — Missions and Science ... 197 
 
 D — Extent of the Duties and Rights of the 
 
 Evangelist ... ... .. ... ... 208 
 
 — — 1 The Plain Duty of a Missionary Society ... 208 
 
 — — 2 On the Extent to which a Missionary has a 
 
 Right to Protection by the Civil Power ... 216 
 
 E — Arm of the Flesh , 218 
 
 — — 1 Religious Toleration ... ... 218 
 
 — — 2 The Relation of Missionaries to great Euro- 
 
 pean or Asiatic Governments 233 
 
 — — 3 The Relation of Missionaries to Barbarous 
 
 Sovereigns, or Petty Chiefs in Asia, Africa, 
 and Oceania 247 
 
 — F — Polygamy not possible to a Christian 263 
 
 — — 1 Paper circulated at Episcopal Conference in 
 
 1888 263 
 
 — — 2 Paper read at the Missionary Conference of 
 
 the Anglican Communion, May, 1894 ... 288 
 
 — G — Caste 291 
 
 — — I In the World ., 291 
 
 — — 2 In the Christian Church ... ... 302 
 
 — H — Difficulties of Missions 319 
 
 — — 1 General : Missionary Warning for the 
 
 Twentieth century ... ... 319 
 
 — — 2 African 336 
 
 — I — Religions of the Ancient World : Missionary 
 
 Warning for the Twentieth century ... 342 
 
 RESULTS. . 
 
 IV A — Native Episcopate 357 
 
 — — 1 The Adolescence of a Native Church in non- 
 
 Christian lands : Missionary Warning for 
 
 the Twentieth century 357 
 
 — — 2 Speech at the Missionary Conference of the 
 
 Church of England, 1894, in London ... 377 
 
 — — 3 Letter to the Secretary of the African Sub- 
 
 committee, March, 1892 380 
 
 — B — Native Place of Worship, School, Village ... 384 
 
XX CLASSIFICATION OF SUBJECT. 
 
 Sub- 
 Cap. Section. Section. Headlines of Subject. Page 
 
 IV — i The Native place of Worship 384 
 
 — — 2 The Native Christian Village and School ... 391 
 
 — — 3 The Mission-School ... ._ 394 
 
 — — 4 The Native non-Christian Village 397 
 
 — — 5 The National Festival 404 
 
 — C — The Trials to which Converts are exposed : 
 
 Missionary Warning for the Twentieth 
 century ... 412 
 
 — D — The Home-organizations of Missions 421 
 
 — — 1 The Committee-Room ... 421 
 
 — — 2 The Parting with the Outgoing and Welcome 
 
 back of Returning Agents ... 426 
 
 — — 3 Exeter Hall, May 1, 1888 431 
 
 — E — Prospects of the Future : Missionary Warnings 
 
 for the Twentieth century ... ... ... 434 
 
 — — 1 The Philosophy of Missions ... ... ... 434 
 
 — — 2 An all-round view of the Movement at the 
 
 close of the Nineteenth century 438 
 
 — — 3 Certainty of Progress of Christianity, if it be 
 
 real 442 
 
 — — 4 Agencies and Methods at work 447 
 
 — — 5 ( a ) Gradual dying out of Animistic conceptions 
 
 in races of low culture, and of the ancient 
 
 Book- Religions ... 456 
 
 (b) Substitution of new forms of Religious 
 conceptions in races of higher culture, Moral, 
 Spiritual, but non-Christian 456 
 
 — — 6 Enlarged capacity of non-Christian races to 
 
 understand a Religious conception, which 
 affects their Morals in this life, and their 
 Souls hereafter 460 
 
 — — 7 Christian Truth and Practice exposed to new 
 
 tests 
 
 — — 8 Exclusion of MissionariesfromcertainCountries 
 
 under certain Circumstances, not only neces- 
 sary but justifiable 470 
 
 — — 9 Form and Doctrine of Native Independent 
 
 Churches ... ... ... aji 
 
 466 
 
CAP. I. MOTIVES AND DUTY. 
 
 A. The Great and Inestimable Gift of self-Sacrifice. 
 
 B. The Duty of the Youth of Great Britain. 
 
 C. Reminiscences of the Missionary Congress of London, if 
 
 D. Language and the Religious Instinct. 
 
 A. The Great and Inestimable Gift of self-Sacrifice. 
 
 I rise up from my annual duty of carefully reading, noting in 
 the margin, and making extracts from, the annual reports of 
 a certain number of British, American, and Continental, Mis- 
 sionary Societies of the Protestant Churches, in the English, 
 French, and German Languages, and a feeling of sadness comes 
 over me, greater because the one feature, which is missed, is so 
 very evident in the Missionaries of the Church of Rome, how- 
 ever averse I am to the doctrines and practices of that Church. 
 
 Quoniam tales, utinam nostri ! 
 
 The feature, which is missing, is the heading of this Essay. 
 
 I find in these reports a great deal about the marriages and 
 birth of children of the agents ; of their leaving their duties, as 
 escorts to their sick wives ; as throwing up their life-vocation 
 entirely, because the climate does not suit their wife's health. 
 The compiler of the report dwells impressively on the sorrows 
 of parting, on the joys of meeting, and allows himself a poetic 
 license in describing the sweet picture of the beauty of European 
 family-life exhibited by these humble individuals in the jungles 
 of Bengal, and the cities of China. No doubt matrimonial 
 blessings are lawful ; for the compiler of the report to describe 
 them so gushingly seems out of place in the narrative of the 
 Evangelization of the non-Christian world, as it would be equally 
 in the report of a military authority occupying a foreign country. 
 We have no precedent in the Acts of the Apostles for such 
 domestic amenities, more suitable to the life of an English 
 banker's clerk than an Evangelist. 
 
( 2 ) 
 
 We must try to rise to a higher level, if we wish to go forward, 
 a level of "self-Sacrifice." I throw together, with a kind of 
 feeling of despair, a few remarks and quotations, the result 
 of long meditation. What we miss in Protestant Missionary 
 reports is the practical working-day evidence of "the great and 
 inestimable Gift of self-Sacrifice." 
 
 Some degree of this great Gift is the only real test of a man 
 or woman being in earnest ; some degree of entire devotion, 
 self-renunciation, Spiritual consecration. Altruism, as opposed 
 to egoism, is the only thing, which discriminates the Spiritual 
 man from the worldling. What is desired, the absence of which 
 is manifest, is more self-abnegation ; more Sacrifice of pride, 
 preferences, prejudices, personal comforts ; more casting down 
 of cherished idols of the home, of the flesh, of the environment ; 
 more laying of ourselves down on His Altar, in submission to 
 His Will. Does not each one recollect the time of his conver- 
 sion, of his call, when the Lord suddenly met him and made 
 Himself known, when a tongue of fire sat on the youthful head, 
 and the simple heart spoke within ? How many have forgotten 
 their first love ! The Lord has not failed in His promises ; His 
 servants have failed in theirs by only rendering half-service and 
 lukewarm Love, diluted with domestic anxieties, petty household- 
 cares, and wayward self-inclinations. Let us recall to our recol- 
 lection Columbanus the Briton, and Boniface the Anglo-Saxon, 
 men of our own nationality, in poverty, in labour, in life-exile, 
 in persecution, in celibacy, in self-denial, without murmuring or 
 complaint, without appeals for Gunboats, Armed Force, and 
 Railways, without letters in the Public Press, without wholesale 
 abuse of the Authorities, and the non-Christian residents of 
 the country, without frothy declamations on platforms, always 
 rejoicing to the last hours of their lives. Does no drop of their 
 blood, the ichor of their consecration, run in the veins of this 
 frivolous and self-indulgent generation ? 
 
 God's Wisdom rules, and man's unwisdom distorts that rule. 
 We dare not check the noble flame ; we would wish to guide 
 it : the consecration of life, talents, fortune, and anticipations 
 in early youth ; the laying of oneself down on the Altar, there 
 to remain for the term of this life, and crying out, " Lord, make 
 use of Thy poor creature as Thou thinkest best." Such things 
 cannot be despised. There is something in them of the ancient 
 Roman, purified by Christian Love. Many go abroad in the 
 naughtiness of their youth and strength to hunt the wild beast, 
 nobler than themselves, in Abyssinia; to collect shells in the 
 Indian Archipelago ; to develop new and baneful commerce 
 with unhappy Africa ; to cut down a few poor Africans for the 
 sake of diamonds or gold-dust. Why not do something to get 
 at the poor derelicts of the human race ? If life be not spared, 
 
( 3 ) 
 
 then to be with Christ is far better. If life be graciously pro- 
 longed to old age, what a gloomy retrospect to have done 
 nothing for one's fellow-creatures ! 
 
 Hear what Dr. Pierson, of New York, U.S., said at Mildmay 
 Hall, London, in 1893: "It does seem to me, that the whole 
 " Church, with the exception of a very small number, is yet 
 "in a state of apathy on the subject of Missions. I cannot 
 " sympathize at all with those self-congratulatory remarks, 
 " heard in crowded Missionary meetings, as to the good things 
 " done, great successes attained, great generosity, and great 
 " self-devotion. As yet there has been comparatively nothing 
 " done ; the few successes here and there, the conversions 
 " beyond what our efforts warranted us to expect, still leave 
 " immense territory to be possessed." 
 
 In his "Divine Enterprise" he writes: "The high office 
 " of a Missionary is not a learned profession, into which a man 
 '• may go at his option, to accumulate money or gratify ambition: 
 " such professions are highly honourable, but have no relation 
 " to Evangelization. There is a Divine voice, by which men 
 " are called, the voice of the indwelling Spirit, which qualifies 
 " certain persons to witness for God. All lower motives, all 
 " family-ties, must be brushed away. Cross-bearing is the one 
 " condition of discipleship. The Church, which ceases to 
 " evangelize, will soon cease to be Evangelical." 
 
 The Bishop of Calcutta writes as follows : " There is one 
 " thing about Missions, which often attracts attention. Com- 
 " plaints are heard, that the life of Missionaries too closely 
 " resembles secular life, and that their self-indulgence repels 
 " the religious instincts of an abstemious people. The Cowley- 
 " Fathers and the Universities' Brotherhoods have done much 
 " to remove the ground of these complaints. I have never 
 " thought, that the Missionaries, who take proper precautions 
 " for their health, have erred, but in every country it is necessary 
 " to accommodate oneself to the customs and ideas of the 
 " people. An example has been set, which must be productive 
 " of good, and has redeemed Missions from the aspersions cast 
 " upon them. In this age the world is suffering from self- 
 " indulgence. Civilization is teaching us practices, which we 
 " heartily wish could be swept away. We must seek an Ideal 
 " of a noble life sacrificed for the good of our fellow-men." 
 
 Hear the tiny cry of a woman-worker from one of the worst 
 climates, living in 1887 a solitary life of devotion to her Master : 
 " I would say to each one seeking happiness on earth, ' Give 
 " yourself to the Lord, all that you are, and all you have ' (and 
 " that is not much), that He may use you as He seest best, and 
 " earth may become a p'aradise, all so bright and fair, so full of 
 " Love and joy." 
 
( 4 ) 
 
 Hear General Booth of the Salvation-Army : " The Mission 
 ' of the future must and will be sustained by those, who are 
 ' possessed of the true spirit of Christian enthusiasm. We 
 ' must have Missionaries, who will be strengthened and stimu- 
 ' lated by the actual possession of the Spirit of Christ, the lack 
 ' of which is the chief reason for the lack of success in our day ; 
 ' only, when you have the spirit, purpose, and consecration of 
 ' the Apostles, can you hope for success. 
 
 " How far below this is the present standard ! The motives, 
 ' which prompt many, is little beyond a pastime ; they have 
 ' nothing on hand to occupy their time, so they will go on 
 • a Mission to the Heathen. With others the motive is duty ; 
 ' they feel, that they ought to do something for their Saviour, 
 ' and their generation. They owe much to God, and they hear 
 ' the Heathen calling out for some one to come over and help 
 ' them." 
 
 Another witness writes as follows: "The recognition and 
 ' realization of a Divine call to work, is one of the most powerful 
 ' motives ; it gives courage to know, that God has sent them 
 ' to be his representatives, and has promised His presence ; 
 ' nothing will terrify him, who goes at Jehovah's bidding, but 
 ' there is a sense of responsibility as well as of courage ; he 
 ' must work the work of Him who sent him. A most loving 
 ' Master has given His servant his appointed work. Many 
 ' workers of experience have felt the need of this Divine 
 ' Ordination, and the strength and encouragement which it 
 ' brings." 
 
 Hear the echo of the cries of men and women who have 
 passed beyond, collected at random : "I consecrate my life to 
 "Thee; I give up parents, the hope of husband or wife or 
 " children, the possibility of earthly wealth and fame. I count 
 " all lost for Christ. I think nothing of dress, food, home, 
 " equipages, except so far as is necessary, absolutely necessary, 
 " to keep this poor body in working efficacy. I think nothing 
 " of Society, of the fulsome adulation of Exeter Hall, of the 
 " penny-trumpet of the Missionary monthly Periodical. I am 
 " content with third-class deck-passages on Ocean-steamers ; 
 " I have no care for furloughs or pensions ; I am ready to be 
 " cast aside, if unfit for the duty, or to die at my post; in all 
 " things I wish to follow the example of Paul." 
 
 Hear what Dr. Butler, Dean of Lincoln, said in 1893 to the 
 students of the Missionary College of Burgh regarding Paul and 
 his companions: " Freely, faithfully, they had offered themselves, 
 " body, Soul, and Spirit, a reasonable, holy, and living Sacrifice, 
 " while He, whose they were and whom they served, Himself 
 " sustained them, was Himself their shield and their exceeding 
 " great reward. He whispered in their ears: 'It is I, be not 
 
( 5 ) 
 
 " afraid,' and to their Faith and Love He for His part added 
 " joy and peace." 
 
 Bishop Anson, of Qu'Appelle, Canada, in an address delivered 
 to the Lichfield Diocesan Conference, expressed his sense of 
 the great need of community-life in the foreign Missions of the 
 Church : " The Church needs in her Mission-work a more 
 " evident setting forth of entire self-Sacrifice in those, who are 
 " witnesses for a crucified Saviour, the want of which is 
 " frequently noticed by those, who have experience in India. 
 " Accustomed as many of that Nation are (historically and 
 " in every-day life) to witness acts of great self-denial and 
 " asceticism in their own Religions, the thing, which most 
 " chiefly appeals to their feelings, is a life of very evident self- 
 " Sacrifice for the cause that is advocated." 
 
 Sir William Hunter remarks that "for many centuries in 
 " India every preacher, who has appeale'd to the popular heart, 
 " has cut himself off from the world by a solemn act, like 
 " the great Renunciation of Buddha. He must be an ascetic, 
 " and must come from his solitary, or monastic, communing 
 " with God with a message to his fellow men. The English 
 " Missionary appears to the native as a charitable man, who 
 " keeps a good cheap school, speaks the Language well, preaches 
 " a European version of the Incarnation and Triad of the 
 " Creator, and drives out with his wife and a large family 
 " of children in a pony-carriage." 
 
 Let us ask ourselves whether Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Amos, 
 and John the Baptist, would have succeeded among an Oriental 
 people (and the Orientals change very slowly, if at all) if they 
 had appeared weighted with the impedimenta of a European 
 married Missionary. Bishop French in his Arabian Mission, 
 and the Missionaries of Rome, do more nearly recall the great 
 Ideal. There is no allusion to the relations of Paul in the New 
 Testament, except incidentally to his sister's son : is not this 
 an example to compilers of Missionary reports to exclude 
 from their Publications allusions to the parents, brothers, 
 and children, of the modern Missionary? Our thoughts are 
 with the individual. 
 
 General Gordon writes: "Where will, you find an Apostle? 
 A man must be everything ! everything ! everything ! No half 
 or three-quarter measures will do." The use of liquors, even 
 moderate, of tobacco, the presence of wife, children, of smart, 
 or at least decent, clothing, good animal food, comfortable 
 home, conveyances, social amenities, European notions, the 
 ideas of the so-called " gentleman and lady," all these things 
 appear to the Natives as stumbling-blocks, when they think of 
 a "man of God." General Gordon goes on: "He must be 
 " dead to the world, have no ties of any sort, be ready for 
 
( 6 ) 
 
 death, whenever it may please God to take him ; there are few- 
 such among the Protestants, very few, and yet what a field ! " 
 Hear from Livingstone the true view of Missionary Sacrifice : 
 For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice, that God 
 has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the 
 Sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in 
 Africa. Can that be called a Sacrifice, which is simply paid, 
 as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we 
 can never repay. Is that a Sacrifice, which brings ' its own 
 blest reward in healthful activity, in the consciousness of 
 doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious 
 destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and 
 with such a thought ! 77 is emphatically no Sacrifice. Say 
 rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, 
 now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences 
 and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the 
 spirit to waver, and the Soul to sink, but let this only be for 
 a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the 
 glory, which shall hereafter be revealed in, and for, us. I 
 never made a Sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when 
 we remember the great Sacrifice, which He made, who left 
 His Father's throne on high to give Himself for us : ' Who 
 being the brightness of that Father's glory, and the express 
 image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of 
 His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat 
 down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.' " 
 Let us consider the Evangelization of the world in its-outline : 
 
 (i) The highest form of benevolence, which a great con- 
 quering Nation can exercise towards inferior and 
 subject races. 
 
 (2) The bounden duty, and service, of every Christian, who 
 
 values the precious words and promises of his Master. 
 
 (3) The form of benevolence, which causes the workers the 
 
 greatest earthly joy, whether Church, family, indi- 
 vidual, whether the controlling authorities at home 
 or the agents in the field. 
 
 (4) The form of service, which causes, or seems to our 
 
 limited understanding most calculated to cause, glory 
 to our Master by redemption of Souls, and evidence 
 our own gratitude for the Salvation of our own Souls. 
 
 (5) The continuance of a work, which has been going on 
 
 since the beginning of the world, and which has 
 been manifestly blessed in its results. Where it 
 has failed, the human agent is to be blamed : at any 
 rate, there has been a re'flex-blessing on the Church 
 at home. 
 
( 7 ) 
 
 (6) A vivid realization of the value of even one Soul even 
 of a man of the lowest type, and the capacity of that 
 Soul for immortality. Time, influence, talents, Sacri- 
 fice of everything, even of life, seem small in com- 
 parison with the saving of one Soul. The Master, 
 and His followers, were prepared to Sacrifice, and 
 did Sacrifice, everything, that by all means they 
 might save one. 
 
 In the Serampur Mission-Rules of the Baptists we read the 
 following: "Finally, let us give up ourselves unreservedly to 
 " the Lord. Let us never think, that our time, our Gifts, our 
 " thoughts, our faculties, or even our clothes, are our own. Let 
 " us sanctify them to God and His cause." 
 
 The sacrificial character of this ministry, which is its great 
 strength, the desire, God-willing, to fill up what remains of the 
 sufferings of Christ, does not preclude the sanctification of mind 
 and intelligence, acquired talents and natural gifts, to the same 
 blessed service. God's service differs from man's service in 
 this : length of service does not count in apportioning the 
 reward ; we are accepted, not according to what we have done, 
 or left undone, but as to what we are. The law of self-Sacrifice 
 is the Divine life flowing through all the members of the 
 Church. 
 
 Hear Consul-General H. H. Johnstone's words : " A thoughtful 
 " study of human history makes me believe, that it is less the 
 " formula of belief than the practical purposes, to which Religion 
 " is put, which makes the Faith of an individual or a Nation 
 " beneficial or adverse in its effect." 
 
 Hear Dr. Muirhead of the L.M.S. of Shanghai : " I have lived 
 in China. I have worked in China. I am going back to die in 
 China." This has the true ring of the Apostle. 
 
 Consider the great Sacrifice of our Lord, the nature and extent 
 of which we can hardly estimate ; of His Apostles, " Lo ! we 
 have left all and followed Thee"; of the early Christian 
 Missionaries ; of the Hindu and Chinese sages in all times ; 
 of men like Buddha and his company, who, 500 B.C., first taught 
 the principle of Altruism as opposed to egoism, who taught the 
 " Noble Way," and the idea of a Universal Religion, by which 
 all men might be saved. The Hebrews cared for themselves 
 alone. The others mentioned literally gave up everything : that 
 was the secret of their power. 
 
 I quote from the sermon of Dr. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, 
 at St. Bride's Church, May 1, 1895 : "The life of Christ, the 
 " head, is, I repeat, the life of the body, the Church. In Christ 
 " the Church is not only strong against all assailants, but assured 
 " of their final overthrow. Yet here, while we abate nothing 
 
( 8 ) 
 
 " from our largest hope, nothing from our most confident trust, 
 " we require to learn a lesson, which is hard and unwelcome. 
 " If the life of Christ is our life, His life must be the type of 
 " ours. If His strength is our strength, we must be strong as 
 " He was. We must accept His pattern of Sacrifice as the rule 
 " of our noblest service. We must seek to make His mind our 
 " own, who did not call down fire to consume His enemies or 
 " legions of angels to guard His Person, but 'emptied Himself, 
 " taking the form of a servant.' This Truth has an application in 
 " the Mission-field which is commonly overlooked. There our 
 " very advantages become a danger. For in spite of the con- 
 " sciousness of social and intellectual superiority, with which we 
 " are filled, in spite of the national force, which sets us as con- 
 " querors where we come as Evangelists, in spite of the distrust 
 " and suspicion, with which those who receive our Gospel are 
 " inclined to regard ourselves, we must loyally and lovingly 
 " remember that we come among them, ' not to be ministered 
 " unto but to minister,' yes, and if need be, to give our lives for 
 " those whom we serve. Sympathy was the mind of Christ, and 
 " sympathy is the Soul of Missions. The great word, 'Except 
 " a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself 
 " alone,' holds good of Nations and Churches and men.' We 
 " can see how Peter and Paul and John died to much that was 
 " dear to them before they did their work. May it not be that 
 " for some of us corresponding experiences may be prepared ? 
 " It is still true, that the way into the Kingdom of God is through 
 " many afflictions ; it is still true, that believers must fill up 
 " 'that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ' ; and yet we 
 " are tempted to believe, even as our Faith is most sure, that 
 " when we overthrow beliefs, which have had a longer sway than 
 " our own, we shall at once be received as benefactors ; that 
 " the Truth, which we declare, must at once be welcomed by 
 " those, who share the nature of the men who killed the Prince 
 " of Life. Do we not practically forget that ' a servant is not 
 " greater than his lord ' ? If men kept not Christ's Word, how 
 " will they keep ours ? There must still be the deaf ear, and 
 " the hard heart, and the pitiless will. There must be suffering 
 " for the teacher no 1-ess than for the taught, suffering which 
 " brings him nearer to his Saviour and to the springs of Divine 
 " Love, suffering in which he can learn to rejoice." 
 
 Either leave the work of the Mission alone, or do it thoroughly. 
 Look back in the long centuries since the Ascension, and cry 
 out, " Mea culpa : we are guilty concerning our brother." Read 
 the lives of Missionaries who have gone before, who have lived 
 on to a good old age, like Caldwell, Sergeant, John Newton, 
 Robert Clarke, or who have died like Sharkey, and Ragland, and 
 Philip Smith. Mark the dying words of Sharkey. I copied 
 
( 9 ) 
 
 these words in my notebook many years ago. He was taken 
 dying on board the steamer. His last words were : " I have 
 preached Christ's righteousness as the only ground of a sinner's 
 acceptance with God, and now I cast myself upon that right- 
 eousness." " Do you find it sufficient ?" said his friend. " Quite 
 sufficient; my mind is perfectly easy." Of such is the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. Read the dying words of many a Missionary of the 
 Church of Rome. 
 
 It is well stated in a monthly Religious Periodical : " It is 
 " impossible to limit man's duty to his own personal Salvation 
 " without regard to the welfare of the Souls of others ; each 
 " member of Christ inherits an immediate claim on himself to 
 " become Christ's ambassador to others, for we are all members 
 " of each other. This brings out the paramount necessity of 
 " absolute self-Sacrifice. Those who run in a course and desire 
 " to win, relieve themselves of all, that is superabundant, un- 
 " necessary, and likely to obstruct." 
 
 The annual report of the Universities' Mission to East Equa- 
 torial Africa does not tell us of marrying and giving into marriage, 
 as in the times of Noah, or of children being born or dying, but 
 contains the following words : " The Missionary, who gives his 
 " life to foreign Missions, strengthens the Church at home 
 " more than if he were to stay in England. The Church makes 
 " way not by its actual numbers, but by the loftiness of its 
 " Faith and the depth of its self-Sacrifice. It is not for us to 
 " analyse the reasons why Churchmen have been hitherto so 
 " lukewarm about Missionary-work ; let us roll away the great 
 " reproach from those, who profess a special enthusiasm for the 
 " Kingdom of God." 
 
 From the Baptists at Harley House, Bow, comes an echo to 
 the above cry: "In striving to evangelize the people of Kongo- 
 " land, we are simply obeying the command to preach the 
 " Gospel to every creature. Is it not better that some Mission- 
 " aries should die rather than that the Ba-Lolo should perish ? 
 " Are not some deaths gain ? " 
 
 Let Protestant Missionaries reflect on the self-surrender and 
 humility of the Missionaries of the Church of Rome, as evi- 
 denced in the Lettres 6difiantes : "L'unique grace, que je vous 
 demande, c'est de me donner tout ce qu'il y aura de plus p6nible, 
 et de plus mortifiant dans la Mission." 
 
 And again : "J'aurais souhait6, que vous ne m'eussiez pas 
 " laiss6 le choix d'aller en une ou en l'autre des deux Missions, 
 " mais que vous m'eussiez d6termin6. Je n'ai quitt6 ma patrie 
 " que pour ob6ir a Dieu." 
 
 Hear the dying words of another Missionary of Rome, who 
 passed away nearly half a century ago in West Africa, at a period, 
 when it was not so fashionable as now to be a Missionary ; when 
 
( io ) 
 
 there were no Exeter Halls as sounding drums, and no Missionary 
 Periodicals as tinkling cymbals : " Dites a ma famille, et mes 
 ' amis, que je suis heureux d'avoir tout quitt6 pour mon Divin 
 ' Maitre : si mon Sacrifice 6tait a refaire, je lui referais encore 
 ' mille fois : je ne changerai pas ma position pour tout le 
 ' bonheur du monde." 
 
 Hear Bishop Selwyn the elder's opinion of John Paton : 
 'Talk of bravery and heroism, the man, who leads a forlorn 
 ' hope is a coward compared with him who in Tanna, left alone 
 ' without a sustaining brother, regards it as his duty to hold 
 ' on alone in the face of all dangers. He might have found an 
 ' asylum in New Zealand, but he was moved by higher con- 
 ' siderations." 
 
 Hear John Paton's remarks on the above : " I feel confident, 
 ' that the Bishop would in like circumstances have done the 
 ' same. I was born in the Scottish Church, and am descended 
 ' from those, who suffered persecution, and I should have been 
 ' unworthy of them, if I had deserted my post for danger only ; 
 ' yet not to me, but to the Lord who sustained me, be all the 
 ' praise." 
 
 Hear Dr. Welldon's words : " We are met here to ask for the 
 ' Sacrifice of men's lives, and everyone, who makes such a 
 ' request, must ask himself first, whether the call is not addressed 
 ' primarily to himself, and whether he is so sure of the Faith, 
 ' which he professes, that he is justified in the sublime audacity 
 ' of the above-named request. 
 
 " Nothing on earth can shake the Missionary's call. It comes 
 ' to one and another : who shall say how ? It comes like the 
 ' breath of Heaven, takes the form of deep pity over the sins of 
 ' the world, and an intense longing to do the Master's com- 
 ' mand. It is accompanied by a feeling of personal responsi- 
 ' bility and thankfulness, and is irresistible, however it may 
 ' come." 
 
 Read the " Conversion of the World," of which I give an 
 extract : " Would you indeed win Souls to Christ ? Would you 
 " make your calling a reality, and not mere barren emotion, the 
 " effervescence of a passing moment, a sudden impulse, a sort of 
 " fancy, a romance which will not bear the strain of trial when 
 " it comes ? Then go forth in the Spirit of the Apostles. You 
 " must be constrained by the Love of Christ. You must make 
 "up your minds- to face dangers and difficulties. You must 
 " cast away from you much of that, in which the world, and 
 " many people also not of the world, harmlessly enough find 
 " content and happiness (for it is lawful to them, but not ex- 
 " pedient for you). You must be the soldiers of a crucified Lord. 
 "There, there is real zeal, which forgets and ignores all 
 " hindrances for the sake of that, which it undertakes, which 
 
( 11 ) 
 
 " suffers no earthly considerations to interfere with its actions, 
 " which puts Christ before father, mother, brother, sister, wife, 
 " child, and possessions. This brings Christ at once to your 
 " side ; and where He is. His servant cannot fail. Failure follows, 
 " when Love of self prevails, ruling where Christ alone should 
 " rule, where men aim at a comfortable home, a good station in 
 " Society, the pleasure of married life, a regular income, when 
 " every kind of inferior object traverses the great work for Souls. 
 " This is the reason, why so very many of our Missions fail. 
 " Many a Missionary is quite a decent and respectable person, 
 " kindly and friendly to all, a good husband and father, possibly 
 " a fair preacher, but he lacks the kind of zeal, the method of 
 " life, which dominate mankind. To raise the world men must 
 " live above the world, like all those, who at all times have 
 " stirred the heart of man, and lifted it to better things, and 
 " compelled men to come in and follow Christ. 
 
 " Go forth, altogether forgetting yourselves, determining to 
 " know nothing save Christ crucified, much indeed to know ; 
 " leaving, like the Apostles, home, brethren, sisters, father, 
 " mother, wife, children, lands, for Christ's sake. Make up 
 " your minds to put aside earthly honour, comfort, and wealth, 
 " looking through that atmosphere of earthly interests, and 
 " natural instincts, and loss of home and domesticity, and the 
 " like, which things envelop and crush out all intensity of service." 
 
 Take Brainerd as an example. In a letter to his brother, 
 1743, he writes : "This is the most lonely, melancholy desert, 
 eighteen miles from Albany. The Lord grant I may learn to 
 endure hardness as a good soldier." 
 
 In his diary we find: "God has renewed His kindness in 
 " preserving me one journey more, though I have often been 
 " exposed to cold and hunger, and have frequently been lost 
 " in the woods." 
 
 He took leave of all his friends on starting, solemnly dedicated 
 all his earthly possessions to the Lord, paid for the education of 
 a fellow-labourer, and died at the age of 33, unmarried. His 
 name will live as long as the English Language on both sides of 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 Hear what Hay Aitken says : " To what purpose is this waste ? 
 " Christ alone knows the full answer to that question ; but as 
 " the house was filled with the odour of that ointment then, so 
 " is the Christian world to-day redolent with the fragrance of 
 " such sacrificed lives. Pericles was right when he said, Of noble 
 " men every nation is the monumental tomb ; and the Church of 
 " Christ may equally say, that each successful Mission, each race 
 " or tribe or community brought from Heathen darkness into 
 " the light of the Gospel day, is an eternal monument to 
 " the men who, either by their martyr-like lives or by their 
 
( 12 ) 
 
 " martyr-like deaths, have contributed to the bringing about of 
 " this blessed result." 
 
 Henry Martyn visited Van der Kemp at Cape Town in 1806. 
 He asked Kemp, if he had ever repented of his undertaking. 
 The old man replied : " No ! I would not exchange my work 
 for a kingdom." He had often been so reduced for want of 
 clothes as to have scarcely any to cover him. The reasonings 
 of his mind were : "lam here, Lord, at Thy service ; why am 
 I left in this state?" It seemed to be suggested to him: "If 
 thou wilt be My servant, be content to fare in this way ; if not, 
 go and fare better." His mind was thus satisfied to remain 
 God's Missionary with all its concomitant hardships. 
 
 Hear General Booth once again: "The only men, who can 
 " grapple successfully with the Heathen difficulty aire those, who 
 " are full of the Love of Christ. With them it is a passion ; 
 " the same Spirit which consumed the very being of the Apostles 
 " has entered into them, and carried them forth from friends 
 " and home. Some call this ' the enthusiasm of humanity,' 
 " and men must have a Spirit of devotion, perseverance, willing- 
 " ness to sacrifice, capacity to love, in the face of scorn, hatred, 
 " prison, and death, which constitute the Spirit of enthusiasm, 
 " and proceed from Christ alone." 
 
 I quote the following from a letter to my address from the 
 Secretary of one of the Church of England Societies: "The 
 " cause of failure of Missions is the lack of the self-Sacrificing 
 " Spirit. The Protestantism that loves comfort, and tries to 
 " make the best of the present world, can with difficulty beget 
 " anything possessing the ascetic Spirit, and this is the spirit, 
 " that won Europe for Christ. We require a national protest 
 " against ' Luxus,' which is sapping and ruining the citadel of 
 " Protestantism. Contrast in India the Missionary of Rome 
 " with the representative of an English Missionary Society. 
 " The latter must have his home, his wife, and European 
 " luxuries, and the English social conventionalities, to sustain 
 " him in his fight for the Religion of the 'homeless' Christ." 
 
 But why such an outcry, such an appeal to treaties forced on 
 a weaker country, such dispatch of gunboats, while prayers are 
 being at the same time poured forth in great Halls ? Is not 
 Persecution one of the tests of Faith ? Is it any new thing for 
 a Christian to be put to death, following the steps of the Master 
 Himself, of Stephen and James, of Peter and Paul, and many 
 others, who counted not their lives of value. I read with great 
 satisfaction the following words uttered by a Chinese Missionary 
 in the Autumn of 1895 : 
 
 "It was something to be thankful for, that in this nineteenth 
 " century there were men and women to be found, who were 
 " perfectly ready to lay down their lives for the sake of Christ 
 
( 13 ) 
 
 " and for the sake of the Heathen in this and similar Societies. 
 " He did not say it boastingly, as anything to be proud of; 
 " but he was quite certain, that he could say for all who were 
 " working in China that, having to face such contingencies 
 " as these, they were quite ready, whenever God saw fit, to 
 " lay down their lives. He should like to add, however, that 
 " if he were called upon to give up his life for Christ in 
 " China, he should very strongly deprecate any great lamen- 
 " tation being made about it in England. People forgot, that 
 " Missionary- work was a worldwide warfare; that the smallest 
 " war engaged in in the world always entailed some loss, even 
 " to the winning side : they must not be over much surprised, 
 " if now and then they heard of such occurrences as these in 
 " the Mission-field. They ought to be very careful what they 
 " said with regard to those, who had done this dastardly deed. 
 " He was afraid that under circumstances like these words, 
 " which ought not to be spoken by Christian people, some- 
 " times escaped their lips. He did not think that by individual 
 " Christians or members of Missionary Societies one word 
 " of revenge or reprisal ought to be allowed to be uttered. 
 " They dared not speak and think as did men of the world. 
 " They had to be most careful lest, while they professed to go 
 " to these Heathen countries with their lives in their hands, 
 " they were really relying upon the Arm of Flesh, that is to 
 " say, the strong Arm of the British Government. His own 
 " course was quite clear. He believed the position of things 
 " was this, that when they went to China they were British 
 " subjects ; they could not divest themselves of their indivi- 
 " duality, and therefore the British authorities in China insisted 
 " on affording them protection and would not allow Missionaries, 
 " any more than other foreigners, to be murdered ruthlessly 
 " by the Chinese, without doing what, they could to prevent 
 " a recurrence of such atrocities." 
 
 The problem of converting the world has not changed ; it is 
 the agents in the great work that have changed. Let me judge 
 Britons by Britons, contrast Christians of the sixth century with 
 those of the nineteenth. Stand forth, Columba, Columbanus, 
 Aidan, Boniface, Gall ! Let us place aside the spurious halo 
 of mediaeval miracles, the outcome of a credulous age, and 
 consider the self-consecration, the crucifying of self, which 
 distinguish them. They had not behind them the appliances of 
 Civilization, the protection of a flag or of a Consul-General, 
 of a Treaty, of a gunboat, the paternal care and regular supply 
 of resources by a committee; but they grasped the idea, they 
 conceived the plan, they carried it out, and Europe represents 
 the result. Let this be our great example after Christ ! 
 
 They practised celibacy, they built an asylum, calling it a 
 
( 14 ) 
 
 monastery ; they went forth with nothing but the Gospel. The 
 Missionaries of the nineteenth century go forth with outfits, 
 and wives, and salaries, and a claim to be called gentlemen, with 
 foolish contention about the colour of their hoods. When we 
 think of Paul and Columbanus and Boniface, how very different 
 the methods seem ! Far be it from me to go to the other 
 extreme, the ostentatious poverty of the mendicant friar. If 
 once the principle of self-consecration and self-Sacrifice were 
 admitted, the comfortable way of doing the thing would dis- 
 appear, the effect of which is so chilling now to the enthusiasm 
 of the Church. The present system will never generate in the 
 Nation a desire to spend and be spent, and the same crave for 
 salaries and domestic comforts spreads to the Native agents. 
 Is such a state of things a reflex of the story of the Acts of the 
 Apostles in many fields of Mission ? In the Missions in the 
 islands of the South Seas the life of an Apostle was lived, and 
 the result is a crop of indigenous teachers content with a little 
 and ready to die. 
 
 Hear what Bishop Westcott says, 1887 : "But some will say, 
 ' We want those men at home' ; say it sadly, touched, it may 
 be, by sights which have met their eyes in coming here this 
 morning. We do want them at home, and therefore I say, 
 ' Send your legions abroad.' The work of Missions is our 
 work at home. The work of Missions is a revelation of 
 Sacrifice, of growing knowledge, of conquest, of unity." 
 It would be to the advantage of the great cause, if all young 
 aspirants to the great office of Evangelist were to study the lives 
 of the great Missionaries of all the Churches, whether of Great 
 Britain, Geneva, or Rome, and read the "Imitation of Christ" 
 by Thomas a Kempis. The dream of the pleasant manse, the • 
 sweet partner of the holy labours, the nursing of children, must 
 be reverently placed aside for at least one decade of service, or 
 longer ; the decade is the minimum of entire service. I have 
 not studied the subject in the field and the committee-room for 
 fifty years without arriving at the conviction, shared by many, 
 that a man cannot serve God and his family at the same time in 
 the Mission-field. 
 
 Religious Review of ReviewY, 1894, 1895. 
 
( 15 ■) 
 
 B. The Duty of the Youth of Great Britain. 
 
 Address to the Undergraduates of Oxford. 
 Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. — Virg., Mn. VI.' 
 
 I have been asked to give an address on the subject of Christian 
 Missions to the Mahometan and Heathen. You will understand, 
 that I am neither a Missionary, nor an ordained Minister of 
 any Church ; yet perhaps I have a greater and wider practical 
 and acquired knowledge of this subject than has fallen to the 
 lot of any but a few ; for my study has been ubiquitous, and in 
 the Map of the World I can lay my hand down on any point, 
 and tell you, what are the people there, what Language they 
 speak, and what Mission is working among them, if any be 
 working at all. 
 
 I am not in the least blinded to the numerous defects of the 
 systems, and of the individuals. When critics from the outside 
 attack Missions, critics from the inside can only rejoice, that so 
 many of their weaknesses are concealed, and time is given to 
 correct, improve, and modify : in fact, the great work of 
 preaching the Gospel was not entrusted to angels, but to weak, 
 erring men, many of whom have done what they could, and 
 earnestly desire to do better. 
 
 The very idea of Missions on the scale, on which it is now 
 conducted, is a new one. In 1838 and 1839 I came up to this 
 College to try for the Balliol-Scholarship. Lord Chief-Justice 
 Coleridge, Bishop Mackarness of Oxford, Canon Furse, and 
 Dean Bradley of Westminster, were with me, and Archbishop 
 Tait was one of the examiners : now, if anybody at that period 
 had asked us about Missions, or, if the idea had been suggested 
 to any of us, that the career of a Missionary was a grand and 
 worthy one, we should have been astonished : we and the Uni- 
 versity Dons knew as little of Missions as of Chinese Music. 
 
 I learnt my lesson in this way. I left England in 1842, and 
 had never heard of the subject, though my father was a Clergy- 
 man : but in Calcutta I made the acquaintance of Bishop Daniel 
 Wilson : it so happened, that I had a sum of ^~8o, awarded as a 
 prize for proficiency in an Oriental Language, to dispose of, and 
 Bishop Wilson suggested the profitable investment in the different 
 Missions, and he told me all about the Church Missionary 
 Society, and I took his advice, and a profitable investment it 
 has proved, paying me cent, for cent. : for I had a new world 
 opened out to me, and in the course of my Indian Service I 
 
( 16 ) 
 
 visited every Mission of all denominations in the North of India, 
 and for a quarter of a century the subject became a joy to me, 
 and since I have left India, it has become the leading object of 
 my very existence, for independently of its intrinsic value to my 
 Soul, it has led out to various studies, notably Language and 
 Comparative Religion ; it has taught me Geography, Ethnology, 
 and the various customs of the world ; it has introduced to me 
 scores of friends and correspondents, it has Opened out rich 
 mines of study, and unlimited vistas of thought. In such occu- 
 pation there are no rivalries, no jealousies, no seeking of pelf, 
 no ambition, no disappointments ; the very atmosphere is ele- 
 vating, the environment holy and pure. Without alluding to 
 the deep spirituality of the work, the intellect, the talents, and 
 the power of application and organization, find free scope. The 
 Platform, the Press, and the Council Chamber, present an un- 
 bounded field of interest. Enter one of our great committee- 
 rooms in London, such as that of the Church Missionary Society, 
 and the Bible House, and you will find an assembly of men of 
 all ages and callings : the Banker, the Lawyer, the General, the 
 Governor of Provinces, or the Heads of great State-Departments, 
 the Merchant and the Man of Business, intermixed with Bishops 
 and Deans, and Archdeacons, and the Clergy of the Metropolis, 
 and of the Country, and Missionaries on furlough. What- are 
 they doing ? They are administering the affairs of a Kingdom 
 greater than that of Queen Victoria. Dispatches come in, and 
 orders go out, to the ends of the World, to Japan, India and 
 China, to North America, Vancouver's Island, New Zealand 
 and Africa, Regions differing from each other in toto in Lan- 
 guage, in customs, in Religion, in culture, in their Political 
 situation, but united by one holy girdle. 
 
 Now do you think, that any of these laymen in the period of 
 their lives, when they might enjoy well-earned repose, would 
 thus from week to week, until absolutely debarred by increasing 
 infirmities, spend hour after hour in a room in the City of 
 London, distant many miles from their homes, if they did not 
 consider the work real, profitable, and elevating ? I need scarcely 
 say, that there is no remuneration whatever, or pecuniary 
 advantage. I know that I should not. I have abundant employ- 
 ment for my time in various fields of literature and Science ; 
 but I share in the feeling entertained by many others, that the 
 ' least return, that we can make for health, and strength, and life 
 marvellously preserved, is to dedicate our remaining powers, and 
 unexhausted talents, to the Service of Him, whose hand has 
 protected us, and brought us safe home again. No one, more- 
 over, can have attended such committees, who does not feel 
 himself stronger as a Christian, and better as a man, from the 
 wholesome contact and ennobling environment. The Indian 
 
( 17 ) 
 
 Official has spent his life in the midst of realities, and anything 
 approaching to a sham, or an amiable job, or a deception, is to 
 him intolerable, and the greatest evidence to the reality of the 
 work in India is that those, who have seen it in the field, are 
 so willing and eager to support it in the committee-room. I am 
 notoriously very bold and outspoken, and never afraid to call 
 a spade a spade, and expose an amiable delusion, as well as 
 a pestilent fraud, or an abominable crime. I admit that I am 
 often and greatly tried by the unwisdom of many members of 
 the committee, and the arrogant domineering of some of the 
 Secretaries, but such things must be put up with. We are 
 dealing with poor, weak men, not with Angels: in spite of all 
 these human drawbacks, God's work advances. 
 
 In one particular the Missionaries resemble each other ; in 
 others they are totally different. They do not work for stipends, 
 or honours, or praise of men, but, impelled by higher motives, 
 the Service of their Master ; and in every part of the world they 
 have shown themselves to be the champions of the oppressed, 
 the reprovers of evil acts and evil customs, the protectors against 
 bad laws : the Missionary is never popular with the British 
 Colonist, or man of Commerce, because he stands up for the 
 Natives : it is his duty to do so, and the hearts of Britons are 
 with him in his often unequal and unsuccessful struggles. 
 
 As to the Methods, they vary. Jesus Christ is the same 
 yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; but the mode of presenting Him 
 to the non-Christian must vary according to the environment of 
 the particular tribe : injudicious conduct does hinder the work : 
 it can be done by preaching, or by teaching, by distributing 
 tracts, or portions of the Bible, by house-to-house visitation, 
 by Schools, by hospitals, by orphanages. All that Science 
 can suggest, all that Art can supply, the stored-up Wisdom of 
 the past, and the vaunted intelligence and forethought of the 
 present, are well consecrated to this Holy War. We offer to 
 the Lord the firstfruits of our intelligence, the choicest of our 
 flocks. The treasury of the Lord is for ever full, for it is the 
 Souls of His people. It is a privilege to belong to such an 
 Association, for it brings back rich blessings : it is thrice blessed, 
 blessing the poor non-Christian, blessing the Missionaries, and 
 blessing the Members of the Church, which supplies the means 
 and men, in their hearths and their homes, in their bodies and 
 their Souls. 
 
 Prayer, faithful, continuous, and nothing doubting, is the 
 lever which moves a Mission. Every Meeting of the committee 
 is begun, continued, and ended in prayer. If the walls of the 
 committee-room could speak, they would tell how, when any 
 question of sore difficulty, acute difference of opinion, humbling 
 of spirit, or sad despondency arose, recourse was had to the 
 
 z 
 
( 18 ) 
 
 Throne of Grace, and often before the call was made has come 
 the answer. Like the dew, which rises up to. Heaven, and 
 descends in fructifying showers, so the prayers have brought 
 down rich blessings on the work and workers. Those, who 
 manage the affairs of Evangelization, must themselves live as 
 in the continual presence of the Almighty, striving day by day 
 to qualify themselves to be chosen instruments of His Will : 
 they, and their Missionaries, must be converted men themselves 
 first, before they commence the task to convert the Heathen ! 
 
 Another thing must be remembered : the Missionary must be 
 brave as well as good : he must have counted the cost and be 
 ready to offer his life, if it be called for. We may feel for, and 
 pray for, our Missionaries, who are in peril, but we dare not invoke 
 the Arm of the Flesh in their favour : our weapons are not 
 carnal. And again, the Missionary must not raise his hand 
 under any provocation against a Native, except in the extreme 
 case of Life and Female Honour. Whatever the Traveller or 
 the Merchant may do, he at least must remember, that he came 
 to save the Souls, not to flog the bodies, of the Natives. That 
 Missionary must have imperfectly read the Epistles of Paul, 
 who would thus forget his holy calling. 
 
 The Missionary must be trained to his life-vocation. Who 
 would trust a Medical man who was not trained ? Does not 
 this also apply to the physician of Souls ? To quote the words 
 of an advocate of Missions : " He must bring mind and intelli- 
 ' gence to bear on the particular problem he has to solve. That 
 ' was a truth that had not been learned all at once. It would 
 ' be remembered how, not so many years ago, the heroic 
 ' character of Missionary-work, in the very strength of its 
 ' sacrificial character, was considered to be able to dispense 
 ' with mind and intelligence. But the mere sense that a Mis- 
 ' sionary had made a great Sacrifice was not enough to carry 
 'a Mission to success. Again, people might think that the 
 ' very greatness of the work seemed to make it independent 
 ' of the indispensable intelligence, that was needed to carry it 
 ' out. Surely, it used to be said, a work so great, so glorious, so 
 ' close to God, would make everything else almost unnecessary. 
 ' So it was that through those concerned having taken no pains 
 ' to bring to the task human intelligence, and calculation, and 
 ' method, the Missionary-cause had been turned into folly and 
 ' contempt. Reaction followed. People felt that into the 
 ' greatest work in the world we had taken no trouble to put 
 ' good workmanship, and had treated it as child's play." 
 
 The Missionary-cause is now a great and powerful one. 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the history of the cause, the 
 biography of the great Movement. It was first conceived by 
 earnest men, who conveyed the notion to others : they prayed 
 
( 19 ) 
 
 over it, and at length some bolder one attempted it: these 
 bolder ones were the "Moravians." The first attempts were 
 small, and therefore in the eyes of men contemptible : the 
 period of derision had to be passed through : but, strange to 
 say, the infection spread : a great gust of opinion passed over 
 the country :• more and more were convinced. 
 
 Truth sinks into a man by its own weight. . Perhaps in the 
 petulance of Youth some one may have sneered at Missions : 
 but as he grows older and wiser, he thinks over it, and some 
 day he wakes up like a man converted in his sleep : there is 
 something in it. The earnest man talks of it with his' fellows, 
 and at length it becomes the Law of his life, the one object of" 
 his existence. He ascends a tower in his mind, and looks out 
 upon the world, its Nations, its tongues : Geography, History, 
 Ethnology, Reading, Travel, Conversation, all drive the fact 
 into him, that he is in possession of a treasure, which has 
 made him and his people wise and strong, and that this 
 treasure has been denied to others. The generous feelings, that 
 underlie the character of each one of us, are aroused, and set 
 into motion. 
 
 Our Lord twice parted with His disciples, and on each occa- 
 sion gave them departing injunctions : 
 
 (i) The Institution of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper: 
 
 " Do this in remembrance of Me." 
 (2) The great Commission : " Go ye and teach all Nations ; 
 
 and lo ! I am with you always." 
 
 Forty years ago there was a deficiency of facts ; now there 
 is an abundance : not the heated and coloured accounts of 
 enthusiasts, fanatics, and pietists, but the testimony of 
 Governors, Statesmen, Men of Science, Men of Commerce, 
 who have seen with their eyes, touched with their hands, not 
 in one part of the world, but all round the Globe ; not only 
 among the civilized races of Japan, India, and China, but the 
 barbarous tribes of North America, Africa, and Oceania. It 
 is brought home to our consciences, that in this Nineteenth 
 century there are still some races in the lowest depths of 
 degradation, others on a low round of culture : cannibals, poly- 
 gamists, sacrificers of human beings ; slaves of frightful lusts, 
 and abominable customs ; murderers of their parents, murderers 
 of their own children, murderers of their wives, lending them- 
 selves to horrible magical rites, tortured by the wildest of ideas. 
 Still God has not forgotten them : no sooner does the 
 Missionary land among them, than he is able, as it were, to 
 exorcise them, to bring out their natural goodness, to teach 
 men to be brave without being cruel, and the women to be 
 
( 20 ) 
 
 loving and tender, and yet not immodest. I have such a deep 
 conviction of the goodness of our Heavenly Father, that I 
 cannot admit the idea, that He has made such a difference 
 betwixt the races of the Human family, that all cannot come 
 to Him, if the call reaches their ears. The Soldier cannot do 
 this great work, nor the Merchant, nor the emigrant, nor the 
 Governor; there must be a class of men, sent out with the 
 wondrous desire of saving Souls, who count not their lives worth 
 having, if they fail in doing their best to accomplish their great 
 desire. 
 
 The annals of our country tell us, that for the last century 
 this has been going on, and has now assumed enormous propor- 
 tions, that cannot be overlooked by the Statesman or the Scholar. 
 The two great Universities have not been wanting. I do not 
 speak for one section of the Church of England, or one denomi- 
 nation' of the Church of Christ. I am bold to say that, if there 
 could be found a motive power outside of Christianity, I should 
 hail it : but it is not to be found. Search History, ancient and 
 modern, and you will find, that for such peaceful conquest, such 
 benevolent warfare, such Soul- controlling Government, the only 
 motive power is the Love of Christ, the only armoury, that can 
 fit you for the battle, is the Bible. The true-hearted Missionary 
 does not approach these barbarous tribes with Dogma, and 
 Ritual, and Shibboleths, and Canons of the Church. He is dressed 
 as an ordinary white man, and his Native assistants as ordinary 
 Natives, but he sets an example of a Christian life : he astonishes 
 them by words of kindness and Love : the Female Evangelist 
 gets access to the women : they collect the children : suspicion 
 gradually disappears. Nothing so entirely astonishes the Bar- 
 barian, as the fact, that men and women undergo suifering and 
 peril, and are ready to die, not for their own profit, but for the 
 welfare of entire strangers. It seems to their untutored minds, 
 that gods, benevolent gods, have come to the earth ; and, as 
 the Missionary masters the Language, he communicates to his 
 hearers the first elementary notions of Christianity : respect for 
 Human life, continence, and purity of Morals, sanctity of the 
 Marriage-contract, the existence of a God, the homogeneity 
 of mankind, and the proper Worship of God. In due course 
 follow prayer, and praise, and reading of the Bible, and the 
 great mystery of the Incarnation and the Atonement. 
 
 Schools, and Chapels, public and private prayers, a sensible 
 improvement of the Moral tone of the community, an abandon- 
 ment of Idol-temples, an abandonment of bad customs, are the 
 sure and certain. consequences. Search and read, and in Germany, 
 in the United States of North America,, in Great Britain, you 
 will find the same story, narrated with impossibility of collusion 
 or mistake : the light is not hid under a bushel ; the story is not 
 
( 21 ) 
 
 of sanctimonious deaths, but of consistent lives. The object is 
 not to make Britons, or Germans, or Americans, but Christians, 
 still wearing their own dress, adhering to their own ancient 
 customs, living after their own way, called by their own names, 
 managing their own Churches, ministered to by their own 
 countrymen, but living new lives, in temperance, soberness, 
 chastity, and Faith in the Redeemer, by which Faith alone they 
 can be converted, and sustained in their new departure. 
 
 But neither the Native Pastors nor their flocks are angels : 
 they, like the Missionaries, are only erring men : if we wish to 
 seek out Christians, who do not live up to the level of their 
 Faith, we need not go out of our own island. We read and 
 hear of much, which we deplore. Paul in his Epistles to the 
 Corinthians has told us what we are to expect ; there are spots 
 on our vestments, there are terrible failings, which remind us, 
 that we are mortal. But the proportion of Evil is as nothing 
 as compared with the amount of Good, the steady progress, the 
 gradual elevation of character, and softening of manners, under 
 the marvellous influence of the Grace of God. In my old age 
 I can testify to the mighty change, which my eyes have witnessed. 
 Mr. Wilkinson, of Mildmay, remarks : "The world is not to be 
 " converted in this dispensation, but it is to be Evangelized. 
 " It is the plain duty of all Christians to take their share in 
 " the work by personal service, prayer, money, help ; in some 
 " cases in all." 
 
 And even, if all that is narrated were a fable, a dream, a mere 
 beautiful Poem, like the "Odyssey" and"jEneid," there is another 
 consideration. We have done our duty. It was our bounden duty 
 and service to plant ; it is the Lord that giveth the increase. 
 Why have we at this period of our National life such a vast 
 expansion of our direct and indirect influence ? Why are the 
 ends of the world, Regions which Caesar never knew, of which 
 the Prophets and Evangelists never dreamed, laid open to us ? 
 We go out and come in like Kings and Rulers. 1 myself at 
 the age of twenty-five ruled over a district with a population 
 of a quarter of a Million, alone without guards, clothing the 
 iron hand in the velvet glove, and swaying my people by a Moral 
 influence. Our Merchants have a sweep far exceeding that 
 of Tyre : wherever our cottons can go, our Bibles must go also. 
 Each ship and each camel must have its due proportion of 
 clothing for the body, and clothing for the Soul : wherever our 
 soldiers and sailors can go, our Missionaries must go also : it is 
 not a question of policy or possibility, but of duty ; it must 
 needs be, that we preach the Gospel : woe unto us if we do not ! 
 Some Nations have the will, but not the means and the oppor- 
 tunities ; other Nations the means, but not the will : but God 
 be praised, that we have both : it is no effort to us to send out 
 
( 22 ) 
 
 one thousand Missionaries, and to maintain and support them; 
 it elevates, it spiritualizes, the Church that sends them. A 
 Missionary Spirit is the articulus stantis aut cadentis Ecclesia, and 
 Now is the Time. We cannot say how soon our arm may be 
 shortened, and our Sun begin to set : " our Commerce may fade 
 like the Tyrian dye, and our ships moulder like the Venetian 
 Palaces " : if we are driven out of India, we ought to leave in 
 independent, self-supporting, self-governing, Native Churches, 
 a monument more enduring than brass, and breathing stone, 
 and it will be said of us hereafter, that Great Britain in the day 
 of her might gave of her best, her very best, to her subject- 
 people, and that best gift is the most enduring one. 
 
 Count not by numbers, but my fitness and qualifications. 
 Remember the story in the Old Testament of the number of 
 warriors elected to go down to fight being thinned. Withdraw 
 from the field, those, who have no stomach for the fight, those 
 who leave their shields behind them, who hurry home with their 
 womankind, or hide themselves in the stuff. And do not grudge 
 the loss of life. Death rides behind us in every profession 
 at home or abroad. Our young men perish, and perish proudly, 
 in our battles. We hear of the last words of some : 
 
 " Dulce et decorum pro patria mori ! " 
 
 And Missionaries, male an,d female, are never wanting for the 
 holy war. Some die early : so it is with our Statesmen, our 
 Scholars, and all that are really great. No true life is long : 
 their career reminds us of the half-hewn stones, which we find 
 in quarries, just about to be used for some great temple, when 
 the work was broken off and the workmen left the quarry : but 
 there is this difference, that our work is not broken off, for it 
 is continuous, and the half-hewn stone, left in the Lord's quarry, 
 has done the work assigned to it ; and no one can do more. 
 
 It seems a bathos to descend from the high prowess of the 
 Missionary, and to allude to Science ; but let us reflect, how 
 much Science owes to the Missionary, how much Philology, 
 Geography, Zoology, Ethnology, Medicine, have been advanced 
 by the Missionary. It was not his proper work, but incidentally 
 in his progress he has let light into dark places. Where would 
 our knowledge of the 2000 Languages of the world be, but 
 for the Missionary ? In his luminous path through the forest, 
 or the swamp, and the desert, he leaves a trail of light; he 
 sends home some precious Text or Vocabulary, or Grammar, 
 revealing new forms of structure, new word-stores, new and 
 wonderful combinations of the logic and symmetry of the 
 barbarian, that cause astonishment in the study and the class- 
 room of the great Linguistic but untravelled Scholars. 
 
( 23 ) 
 
 The first text is the Bible. At the Congress of Orientalists 
 at Vienna, September, 1887, in a Hall full of Roman Catholics, 
 I presented to the Congress Translations of the Bible, or of 
 portions, in one hundred and four Languages of Asia, Africa, 
 America, and Oceania, spoken by two hundred millions, and all 
 prepared at the expense of the great Bible-Societies. I told 
 them what they were. My present was received with applause, 
 and placed on the Shelves of the Library of the University of 
 Vienna. 
 
 God has created all things for Himself. We take credit for 
 the discovery of a new Island, or River-Basin, teeming with 
 thousands, just as the Conchologist vaunts of having found 
 a new species, a variety of shell, or the Astronomer of having 
 found a new Planet ; and yet God has had His eye on all these 
 His poor children for ages past, and it is by His Will and 
 pleasure, that they are now revealed to Western Nations. The 
 Angels of Heaven have been watching over them, as much as 
 over us : they are as precious in His sight, and the Saviour 
 looked down from the Cross on them, and died and rose again 
 for them. We are but instruments, imperfect instruments, 
 in His hand to carry the saving Truth to these races, long lying 
 in darkness, but as strong, as capable, as noble, as brave, as 
 ourselves. If they were Cannibals, it is because there was an 
 absence of the beasts of the field, which were a necessity for 
 food ; if they were guilty of Human Sacrifices, it is because they 
 believed in the existence of a Deity, and the power of that 
 Deity, and they wished to conciliate that Deity with the offering 
 of their best. To the persons sacrificed they had no ill-will : 
 they considered them as their Messengers to God. If they were 
 driven to crime by Sorcerers, it is because they were Priest- 
 ridden, and had not learned the true liberty of the Children 
 of God. 
 
 In my far-off Eton- days, the boys used to talk about some 
 of our number becoming Generals, or Bishops, or Senators, or 
 Judges, and such has proved to be the case ; but the idea never 
 rose in the mind of those ancient Heroes, Dr. Goodall and Dr. 
 Keate, of any Etonian being a Missionary : it was beyond their 
 conception, that there was a higher walk, that some of the 
 Public School -boys hereafter would be Evangelists, Pioneers of 
 Christ, the Conquerors of new Spiritual Kingdoms, and yet 
 it has proved so : men like Selwyn, Father and Son, Steere, 
 Patteson, Mackenzie, Hannington, and many others, have been 
 found ready to die not only for their own people, but for the 
 poor, benighted Heathen : a new Epoch of Crusaders has been 
 opened out : Knights-errant go forth in the panoply of Faith, 
 not to rescue the Sepulchre of the Crucified, but to tell the 
 Nations of the Risen Saviour. , • 
 
( 24 ) 
 
 Some of your numbers may achieve greatness, .may administer 
 the affairs of great subject Provinces, as in my youth I have done, 
 or be present in great battles, as I have been ; but how can any- 
 thing of this kind be weighed in the balance with the saving of 
 Souls? Some of our great Governors have found a Province 
 a den of wild beasts, and left it a smiling garden : but over the 
 grave of some Missionaries it is recorded, that, when they landed 
 in a certain Island, there were no Christians, and when they 
 died, there were no Heathen ; that when they landed, the people 
 were naked, savage, and illiterate, and, when they died, they 
 were clothed and in their right mind, living chastely in cottages, 
 clustered together in villages, learning the way of holiness in 
 Schools, congregated together in Chapels, looking forward to 
 a holy rest in a consecrated God's acre : they had the whole or 
 portions of the Bible translated into their own Language, with 
 such skill, that no single loan-word was required to represent 
 a new idea, as the unbounded wealth of combination of their 
 own vocables was equal to every requirement ; and, moreover, 
 these Translations were printed by reformed Cannibals, or 
 children of Cannibals, in the Mission-Press, and used in the 
 Mission-Schools, while the precious Promises therein contained 
 were twined round their converted hearts. 
 
 If any of you are destined to the Church or the Senate, consider 
 the awful questions of the future of the populations subject, 
 directly or indirectly, to the power and influence of England. 
 Are they to be swept off the face of the earth ? Are they to be left 
 in their degradation, adding European vices to their congenital 
 depravity ? What machinery can be applied to save them ? By 
 an inexorable law of Nature, some of them seem to be dwindling, 
 and will soon disappear ! Is their blood to be laid at our door, 
 for in very deed we are their keepers ? The Governor, the 
 Merchant, the Soldier, the Colonist, are unable to grapple with 
 this problem : they are rather, in spite of themselves, the cause of 
 the intensity of the evil. As the Assyrians, and the Babylonians, 
 and Persians, and Greeks, and Romans, in former times, so in 
 modern times we Anglo-Saxons, in our grand march over 
 Continent and Island, displace, destroy, and swallow up, and 
 assimilate, the indigenous races : our very touch is dangerous 
 to them, for we bring with us Rum, and Gin, and Gunpowder, 
 and loathsome diseases previously unknown. Each year we add 
 to the sum-total of our National sins by killing more Africans on 
 the East, or West, or South, of that unhappy country : it is well 
 to have a Giant's strength, but not to use it as a bully. Nobody 
 but the Missionary, the man of capacity, devotion, and love, 
 can be of use in such a terrible crisis. We dare not say that, 
 because these races, by the inscrutable will of Providence, have 
 been left so many cetituries out in the cold, out of the orbit of 
 
( 25 ) 
 
 the revolution of the Sun of the Gospel, as it were God-forgotten, 
 for no Prophet or Evangelist ever came near to them, we dare not 
 say, that they must still have no opportunity of being saved, if 
 they will. Some have had lying Prophets, debasing conceptions, 
 forced upon them ; cruel customs have sprung up, and practices 
 contrary to Nature. 
 
 Still by His stripes they can be healed. Still the shadow of 
 the Cross has been projected over them : we still find in their 
 Sacred Books, where they exist, a penumbra of the Truth, a 
 constant feeling after God, if haply they could find Him. We 
 find in ever}' Nation under the Sun a desire to Worship a Power 
 dimly seen and imperfectly understood : we must not say, that 
 this state of affairs can be allowed to last. God's means are not 
 limited. There is no corner, no cellar, so dark, to which His 
 blessed rays of light cannot attain. His greatness encompasses 
 our littleness. His strength supplements our weakness. The 
 stillness of the Past is broken by the sound of a Movement, 
 Moral, Material, Intellectual, Spiritual, and ours is the fortu- 
 nate race permitted to lead it, and chosen to be the heralds of 
 Salvation. Perhaps among my hearers there are some, who forty 
 years hence will have achieved a reputation greater than that of 
 a Classic or Mathematician, and whose name will be worthy to 
 be classed with those of Henry Martyn, Livingstone, Ragland, 
 John Williams, and Selwyn. 
 
 It is not reasonable that the Briton, in his insular angularity, 
 and in the precisely arranged costume of his country, should 
 despise the naked Hindu Fakir, smeared with cow-dung, who 
 sits with his chaplet of beads repeating his Mantra; he does 
 not well to laugh at the Buddhist with his prayer-wheel, and 
 the " Om Mani Padmi Horn " ; he may fail to understand the 
 merit of the Mahometan Moulavi, who knows every word of 
 the Korah by heart: but the subject of Religion is too deep and 
 solemn to be lightly dealt with, and what we see is only the out- 
 ward sign of the thoughts of generations, the belief of Millions, 
 the hope of dying men, which a countless multitude have held 
 as dearer than life from their cradles to their funeral pyre or 
 their grave. 
 
 We must not fall into the error, that the origin and practice 
 of all non-Christian Religions are necessarily debased, debased 
 beyond hope, because the outer crust, which presents itself to 
 our observation, is so grossly contrary to Morals and Spirituality. 
 The same might be said of the Roman and Greek Churches, 
 though we know that their hidden basements are founded on the 
 Rock. The degree of elevation of the higher minds is not to 
 be measured by the debasement of the vulgar herd of ignorant 
 devotees. At the bottom of all, even of the Fetichism of Africa, 
 and the Nature-worship of the South Sea Islanders, is a Great 
 
( 26 ) 
 
 Truth, which Man, taught by God, has found out, and cannot free 
 himself from, the Existence of a Power greater than himself. He 
 sees Him in different forms, according to the development of his 
 own intellect, but he sees Him still, and he tries to conciliate 
 Him. The hearts of all men seem to turn to God like a sun- 
 flower turns to the Sun, but they do not seek Him rightly, 
 because they have never had a teacher sent from God. We 
 must not treat superciliously his methods, his legends, and his 
 Faith, but thank God, that we have had our intelligence aided 
 by Revelation. 
 
 Besides this, in those inhospitable climates the children of 
 the soil are brought so much nearer, and more directly in contact 
 with, the Elements, with the fearful power of Nature, which they 
 worship : the Sea with its changeable caprice, the vast Forest, 
 the deadly swamp, the fearful desert, the hurricane, the thunder 
 and lightning, the earthquake, the volcano, the pestilence, the 
 famine, and the flood ; they cannot understand it : they try to 
 conciliate the evil Spirits : even when they have become 
 Christians, they cannot divest themselves of the idea, that the 
 Powers of the Evil One claim their hecatombs, for Nature- 
 worship clings to the skirts of their clothing. A belief in 
 Witches, Fairies, and Ghosts has hardly yet died out in . Great 
 Britain. 
 
 The Epoch for the simple-minded ignorant Missionary is past. 
 God's battles must be fought with arms of precision : it requires 
 the highest intellect, the profoundest knowledge of Religion in 
 all its forms ; the acutest power of dialectics to cope with error, 
 error rendered more deadly by the fresh venom gathered in 
 European pest-houses ; and all these gifts must be seasoned with 
 Christian Love, indomitable patience, tender pity, and Faith able 
 to move mountains. Think not that such contests, though with 
 a naked Brahman, or a pig-tailed Chinese, or a painted Islander, 
 are unworthy of the highest intellect trained in this University. 
 In India, China, and Japan you will have to cope with foemen, 
 worthy of your steel. If your study of the words of Aristotle and 
 Plato, and Paul, and Christ, have been of any profit, you will 
 have occasion to use them ; you will have to leave in your rear 
 the palisade of the Dogmas of Schoolmen, venture out into the 
 open, and grapple in a Death-struggle with the great problem 
 of Human existence. You will find that Secular Education is 
 a dangerous ally. It is a fearful statement to make, but I do 
 make it, that, if Religion is a safeguard of Morality, and such 
 a binding of the Soul by Rules, as will make a man prove worthy 
 of life, and more fitted to die, a false Religion is better than 
 the great No Religion, Agnosticism, Theosophism, and Atheism, 
 which loom before us. 
 
 The Asiatic has no sense of Inferiority: he deems himself the 
 
( 27 ) 
 
 heir "of an ancient Civilization : it is admitted on all hands, that, 
 if one Language can exceed another in symmetrical beauty and 
 multiform structure, it is Sanskrit, and Sanskrit is the type of 
 the highest development of the Indian mind, and the vehicle of 
 its wondrous literature. At the Oriental Congress of Vienna in 
 1887, at which I was present, Pandit Bhandarkar of Bombay, 
 in the dress of his country, delivered an address on an intricate 
 subject in the English Language with all the dignity of a Pro- 
 fessor, and an aplomb and absence of self-consciousness, to 
 which few Englishmen can attain. A question arose as to the 
 translation of a Chinese Proper-name, and a young Chinaman 
 with his blue dress and pig-tail, stepped into the rostrum, and 
 with the chalk in his hand explained it in elegant French, 
 looking with fierce contempt on the assembled Scholars of 
 Europe, who presumed to dabble with his ideograms. An 
 Arabic School-Inspector from Egypt gave an address in Arabic 
 on the progress of Education in Egypt from the time of the 
 Arab Conquest until now, and no doubt proved to his own satis- 
 faction, that the Arab system was far superior to the present 
 new-fangled Instruction of Europe. 
 
 These are the men, with whom the undergraduates of Oxford 
 will have to cope, if they have leisure from their Gymnasia, 
 their Stadia, their Naumakhiai, their Hippodromoi, and their 
 Symposia, to prepare to cope at all, if their whole strength be 
 not played out in Cricket, and Rowing, and Football, and 
 Golfing, and Lawn-tennis, and Bicycling. 
 
 Think what a vista is opened out to those, who with reverent 
 curiosity attempt the study of Comparative Religions with a view 
 of arming themselves for the fight in the cause of the one true 
 Faith. Mark the piety of the elder races, how they attributed 
 their victories to their god : the Monuments of Assyria and 
 Egypt bring before us those great Monarchs trusting to Ashur 
 and Amen Ra. In India to this day they appeal to and trust in 
 their ancient divinities. It will not do for the European to rush 
 in, and sweep away all these beliefs. Far better to place his 
 foot on adamantine Truth, which is the basis of all Religion, 
 and build upwards, removing gently the decay and accumulation 
 of ruins of centuries, and pointing out the better way. God 
 has not left any of His poor children without a witness, if the 
 Missionary be skilful enough to find it : how gently Paul dealt 
 with the Athenians in the market-place of Athens ! It is a 
 lesson to all Missionaries to be merciful to the intellectual and 
 moral failings of the Heathen, to be gentle, and not press the 
 heel too heavily on the new converts on the Niger, and not 
 expect to find angels in India of a type, which is not found in 
 Great Britain ; not to describe the great Empires of India and 
 China as the Kingdom of Satan, but by their consistent lives 
 
( 28 ) 
 
 and gentle reasoning to win Souls to Christ, and not to alienate 
 by arrogance, and raise up a hostile spirit by overstrained and 
 unworthy prejudices. 
 
 There are sublimer and sweeter motives calculated to influence 
 you, which will be explained to you by those, who are com- 
 missioned to instruct you from the Pulpit. I allude to the 
 Glorifying of Christ by the enlargement of His Kingdom. I 
 restrict myself here to pointing out to you, as the result of 
 personal experience of half a century, the reflex blessing on our 
 hearts, our hearths, and lives, the satisfying feeling, that here 
 at least we are unmistakably doing the work of our Master. 
 It is not sufficient to raise the tone of our private lives, to 
 provide for the wants of our parish, or the adornment of our 
 place of Worship : we can do this, and yet not leave the other 
 undone. The plain, distinct, parting command of the Risen 
 Saviour applies to each one of us now, just as much as it did 
 eighteen hundred years ago to the Apostles and Disciples 
 assembled on Mount Olivet ; and this thought pressed upon me, 
 as I stood in 1885 on that blessed spot, and looked across the 
 brook Kedron into the town of Jerusalem, still in captivity. 
 Thirty- years before I had stood on the same spot, and my 
 convictions had only been strengthened by the. wide experience 
 accumulated in the interval. 
 
 The Missionary is not, as some would have it, the enemy and 
 opponent of the Trader and Merchant, but their Pioneer and 
 best friend. He will not indeed sit quietly by, and see the 
 Natives plundered and ill-used, and their young men cajoled by 
 nominal service-contracts, and carried off into real Slavery. He 
 will not look calmly on, while the young girls of the Mission- 
 School, just budding into womanhood, are seduced by the Ship- 
 Clerk, or assistant trader, to be their temporary companions; 
 he will not be silent, when rum and gin are poured into the 
 country, and the day's wage, and the reward of toil, are repre- 
 sented by a bottle of liquor. But the Missionary, if he rightly 
 understands his high position, will preach Christ in such a way, 
 as to make his hearers more fit to die as believing and repentant 
 sinners, and more fit to live as sober, industrious, intelligent 
 citizens of the world, compelling the earth by their labour to 
 give a greater increase, developing new Arts, and storing up for 
 export new products, and receiving in return all that the Art and 
 Science of Europe and America can bring to their coasts to 
 make life more cheerful, homes more comfortable, bodies better 
 clad, and Souls more ready for the great change, that must 
 surely come. 
 
 There is a higher consanguinity than that of the blood, which 
 runs in our veins : that of the blood, which makes our hearts 
 beat with indignation, when we hear of suffering, with pity, when 
 
( 29 ) 
 
 we read of Ignorance, and glad joy, when we hear of noble men 
 and women giving their lives to relieve that suffering, and to 
 enlighten that ignorance. The heart indeed beats high, when 
 we read of such unselfishness and greatness of character, as has 
 distinguished the Missionary Heroes of Africa, who were not 
 afraid to die for the Negro, and the sublimity of simple Faith, 
 which marks the career of the Polynesian Native Teachers, who 
 with their lives in their hands went from Island to Island on 
 their voyages of Mercy, until the whole Archipelago was brought 
 under Christian influence. Surely it is a cause of pride to think, 
 that there is a brave and strong man, one of our own kin and 
 language, and a woman too, in the darkest corner of the Earth, 
 where his and her influence is most wanted. 
 
 And there is a higher Nationality than that of being of one 
 race, and speaking one Language : it is that we owe allegiance 
 and filial duty to our Common Father, and ought to feel Love 
 and pity and sympathy for all His children, and the greater Love, 
 the more degraded that we find them. 
 
 Had the light, which sprang up to lighten the Gentiles in 
 Galilee, flashed Eastward and Southward instead of Westward, 
 and left us sitting all these dreary centuries in Heathen darkness, 
 what should we have thought, if the Nations of Asia and Africa 
 and Oceania, had not found their hearts burning within them to 
 carry to us the Gospel ? And shall we, who have been pre- 
 destinated to such early blessings, now fail in our duty to those, 
 who by the inscrutable Will of God have been less favoured ? 
 
 If then we have talents, the best use, that we can make of 
 them, is to enlarge our Master's Kingdom, and, when our lives 
 come to an end, the best tribute, that we can have offered, is 
 that of redeemed Souls, better than the victories of the Soldier, 
 or the learning of the Scholar, or the discoveries of the secrets 
 of Nature made by the Philosopher. No brave Missionary 
 fights and dies in vain. 
 
 Ut moriens vivat, vixit ut moriturus. 
 
 Balliol College, Oxford ; 
 
 Nov., 1886-1895. 
 
( 30 ) 
 
 C. Reminiscences of the Missionary Congress of 
 London, 1888. 
 
 The Social and Political Condition of the World a Hundred Years 
 Ago and Now, 
 
 Brother Wright has shown you the progress of the Bible-work 
 in a century. Brother George Smith has exhibited the progress 
 of Christian Missions in that period. I wish to show how the 
 Almighty has ordered the affairs of men so as to advance the 
 coming of His Son's Kingdom. 
 
 Brother James Johnston, the Secretary of this Congress, has 
 just put forth a volume as a " Century of Social Progress," which 
 I recommend to your notice. 
 
 Every political change has worked in the same direction : the 
 independence of the great North American Republic, the world- 
 wide expansion of British Colonies, the consolidation of the 
 German Empire, the Constitutional Kingdom of Italy, the 
 break-up of Turkey, the Conquest of India, the opening up of 
 China and Japan, the re-discovery of Africa, and the revelation 
 of the South Seas, 
 
 The spread of Education and Science has subserved to our 
 purpose: Geography, Philology, Electricity, and Steam, have 
 been our handmaids. Commerce has accompanied us, very 
 often, however, owing to the perverseness of men, as an ac- 
 companying evil. 
 
 Still more wonderful has been the century's change in the 
 Moral World : how the hearts of men have been softened ! how 
 their sympathies have been enlarged ! how deeper far is our 
 insight into the meaning of Scripture ! We wonder, how, our 
 Grandmothers sat unmoved by the cries of the Slave, how 
 our Grandsires read and talked about the destruction of the 
 aborigines like vermin, and ho one to cry out to God in their 
 behalf. Did the Clergy of that period believe, that God had 
 made all men in his own likeness, that Christ died for all : how 
 could they read to their flocks the parting injunction of the 
 Saviour to preach His Gospel, and yet never practically apply it ? 
 We do not judge them : their eyes were blinded : we rather the 
 more thank God, that He has opened our eyes to see our duty, 
 and that He has given us the Grace of the will and means to 
 serve Him. 
 
 To the Anglo-Saxon Race has been given to lead in this great 
 Movement. Honour be to the Danes of Scandinavia, and the 
 Moravians of Germany, for setting us the example ! Honour 
 
c 
 
 31 ) 
 
 be to the brethren of those great countries, who now work with 
 us ! But of the great Anglo-Saxon Race it can be said, that 
 to them in this century have been entrusted the oracles of God, 
 and that they have been chosen to be the Ambassadors of Christ. 
 
 We have learnt many lessons in this Century: (i) That 
 Freedom always accompanies the Gospel ; (2) that the State 
 has nothing to do with Evangelization. We ask not the protec- 
 tion of pious Queens, or bloody-minded Kings : " Not by might, 
 not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts." 
 
 No longer is it sought to drive ignorant thousands to Baptism : 
 our progress is made by individual conversions : we do not 
 point to holy deaths, but consistent lives. We have learned to 
 look over the Human fences of Churches, and Denominations, 
 and see nothing but the awful face of Christ ; we have learned 
 to listen to nothing but the unhappy one calling to us. We 
 have learned to love each other first, and then to teach that Law 
 of Love to the Heathen. 
 
 A great change has come over the feelings of the Laity. The 
 Missionary is no longer an object of ridicule to the worldly, but 
 an object of wonder, of admiration, and reverence, if he walks 
 humbly and consistently, keeping to his own duties, minding 
 the things of God, and not meddling with the things of Caesar. 
 Many a layman looks at a Missionary with a sigh, and wishes 
 that he had the qualification, and the Holiness, and the 
 steadfastness, to share his lot. Many a Missionary has turned 
 his back to the plough, and discredited his vocation. 
 
 We have called the other sex to our assistance, and Women 
 are forward in fighting the Lord's battle. With them have come 
 the Medical man, to minister to both Soul and body, and the 
 Teacher of Human knowledge sanctified by Divine Grace : with 
 them are all the appliances of Art and Science, of accumulated 
 Wisdom, and stored-up experience : the one object is the 
 healing and teaching of the Soul. 
 
 When the Lord has given such opportunities, such openings, 
 such helps, such supplies, what shall His poor creatures render 
 in return ? More self-consecration, more entire abnegation of 
 self, more Sacrifice of pride, prejudice and personal comforts, 
 more casting down of cherished Idols, more laying of ourselves 
 on His Altar, and submission to His Will. The Lord has not 
 failed in his promises : He is with us : but His servants have 
 failed by rendering only half service, and lukewarm Love. I do 
 not ask you to go back to the Roman Calendar of Saints for 
 examples ; do not go beyond the limits of these little Islands. 
 Let each Missionary read the lives of Columba of Iona, of Aidan 
 of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, of Columbanus of Bangor, 
 of Boniface of Exeter. He will know what Britons did more 
 than one thousand years ago to spread the Gospel, in poverty, 
 
( 32 ) 
 
 in labour, in persecution, in celibacy, in self-denial, without 
 complaint, and without boasting, and always rejoicing, up to 
 the last hour of their lives. We have the same blood in our 
 veins : it is the same Gospel : let us do likewise. 
 
 Speech at Missionary Congress in Exeter Hall, June, 1888. 
 
 A Synopsis of Protestant Missions. 
 
 With the reception-ceremony of Saturday began one of the' 
 most remarkable gatherings in the recent history of Protestant 
 Missions. For more than a week Exeter Hall was given up to 
 the exhaustive treatment, in private conference and public 
 Meeting, of nearly every main problem, and field of labour, 
 associated with foreign Missionary enterprise as conducted by 
 Protestant agencies. There is, perhaps, some ground for fear, 
 that the extraordinary fulness of the programme may in a sense 
 distract the public attention ; nor are we quite certain, that the 
 conference has made its coming known quite as fully as could 
 be wished. But the opportunity is so remarkable, and so full 
 of promise, that we sincerely hope it will be widely accepted 
 amongst Churchmen and Nonconformists alike. Little, perhaps, 
 is known in many quarters as to the Protestant organizations 
 already at work. I have done my best to make the extent of 
 the field and its divisions more apparent. During the last year 
 I have given from week to week, under the title of the " Mission 
 Field and its workers," a brief account of foreign Missionary 
 agencies, compiled upon one principle by the same hand, with 
 a careful abstinence from all denominational bias, but with a free 
 distribution of praise or blame on particular methods. I present 
 to-day a conspectus of all the Missionary enterprises of the 
 Christian world, excluding those of the Church of Rome, which 
 may be separately considered upon some future occasion. Those 
 only have found a place, which are directed, entirely or in part, 
 against non-Christian populations, Jews, Mahometans, Idolators, 
 or Nature-worshippers. Every Association formed solely for the 
 purpose of proselytism, or the benefit of Christians, is rigidly 
 excluded. The material collected is grouped according to 
 nationality and denomination, and in a special column the 
 character of the enterprise is described, according as it is 
 formed for evangelizing or for medical, woman's work, educa- 
 tional, publishing, or training, or whether it is a substantive 
 Society, or an auxiliary Home or Foreign Aid Society. An 
 attempt, subject to correction, has been made to indicate the 
 fields occupied by each Society; but all allusion to income, 
 
( 33 ) 
 
 number of agents, converts, or adherents, is omitted, as this 
 must be the subject of a careful separate study after it has been 
 ascertained, whether each Society prepares its statistics upon 
 the same principles. Until this is known, all comparison is 
 profitless. 
 
 Missionary operations are conducted either by " lay Asso- 
 ciations," specially formed for this particular purpose, or by 
 the collective body of a particular Denomination, which is 
 conventionally styled a " Church." A good many fallacies 
 surround this distinction. In the case of a small Denomina- 
 tion, such as the Seventh Day Baptists, the Primitive Methodists, 
 the original-Secession-Presbyterians, the Church is the Asso- 
 ciation, and the Association is the Church. In the case of a 
 National Church, such as that of England, with several millions 
 of members, the conduct of Missionary operations by the 
 collective Church would be impossible, and the dream of its 
 realization is only a mischievous delusion. The Church of Rome 
 has avoided falling into such a snare, and distributes her Mis- 
 sionary operations among independent Congregations with their 
 assigned fields of labour. Where a moderately-sized Denomina- 
 tion, such as the Church of Sweden, or the Free Church of 
 Scotland, conducts Missionary operations, it is a matter of 
 internal convenience only, whether the control should rest with 
 an independent Lay Board, or a Committee of the General 
 Assembly. The shoe pinches, when within one Church there 
 are two shades of theological thought, in which case there will 
 certainly come into existence an Association outside the Church, 
 as in Sweden, Holland, Norway, and Germany. 
 
 There is, however, a distinct danger in too much subdivision. 
 If the battle of the Lord is to be won, it must be fought in 
 battalions, not in corporals' detachments. It is a cruel thing 
 to settle down amidst a Heathen people, open Schools, make 
 converts, and then, owing to sickness or death, to abandon the 
 poor sheep to any chance wolf, possibly to the mercies of a 
 Roman Catholic Mission party. Again, it is sheer folly to talk 
 of " self-supporting " Missions in a non-Christian Country. 
 And yet the work ought to be conducted with much greater 
 economy than is practised now. Men and women with private 
 means should be induced to come forward in much larger 
 numbers. The native Church from the very first must be com- 
 pelled to support its own Pastors and Teachers, but not the 
 alien Missionaries. Home - contributions must supply their 
 needs. To ask spiritually-minded men to support themselves 
 by agriculture, keeping mercantile stores, maintaining secular 
 Schools, or any trade, is to degrade the Missionary, and to 
 withdraw him from his proper duty. Funds must be supplied 
 by Christian Churches ; men and women should not be exposed 
 
 3 
 
( 34 ) 
 
 to the perils of starvation, and unsuitable accommodation, which 
 will only end in sickness, or the loss of valuable lives. 
 
 Of none of the enterprises now reported can it be said, that 
 they are supported by the State for political purposes, or in any 
 way privileged, or protected, or encouraged, for State-purposes. 
 Individual Missionaries may, perhaps, in a moment of weakness, 
 bluster about their rights, as subjects of some or other great Power, 
 but practically nothing comes of it, and the idea of avenging the 
 death of a Missionary would be entertained neither by a Society, 
 nor a Government. It would be a fatal policy for Missions, if 
 they depended on the Arm of Flesh. Their independence 
 would be jeopardized, and independence of the State is essential 
 to the life of a Missionary enterprise. Nor can Missionary 
 Societies be mixed up in commercial, industrial, or agricultural, 
 speculations without a sure destruction of their Spiritual life. 
 On the other hand, a well-conducted Mission in a barbarous 
 country is the certain advance-guard of a prosperous Commerce 
 from the cessation of inter-tribal strife, and the advance of the 
 populations in Morals and Civilization. 
 
 The Record, London, June, 1888. 
 
 The Proceedings Slimmed up. 
 
 With the Valedictory Meeting on Tuesday evening the pro- 
 gramme of the Congress was worked out ; all subsequent 
 Meetings were accretions to meet the idiosyncrasies of par- 
 ticular persons. On the whole it was a great success, at least as 
 far as the numbers of persons present, and of Meetings, indicate 
 success. It cannot be said, that any new suggestions, methods, 
 or ideas, are the result, at least to the experienced members. 
 No doubt a large number of persons have received their first, 
 ideas of a Missionary gathering, and we must trust, that the 
 impressions will be permanent. They will recollect the par- 
 ticular period, when the tongue of fire sat upon each of them, 
 and their hearts spake within them, marking a new departure. 
 
 One thing has been made evident without doubt, the solidarity 
 of the Evangelical Churches. Between us and our Continental 
 friends the barrier of Language is no longer an impediment ; 
 between us and our friends from America the Atlantic no longer 
 exists. That Ocean can no longer appear in the Missionary' 
 Atlas. We are one army of the living God, differentiated in 
 separate regiments, but under the same Captain of our Salvation, 
 the same banner of the Cross, marching on, marching on to the 
 conflict and to victory. This is no mere flight of rhetoric ; it is 
 
( 35 ) 
 
 the deliberate outcome of our judgment. Talk no longer of the 
 unity of the Church of Rome under one Pope. The Protestant 
 Churches have a more enduring unity, though not uniformity, 
 under the Headship of Christ. Over and over again in the 
 different Meetings this great fact was proved by the incidental 
 remarks and the bearings of the speakers. 
 
 A second feature was the entire disappearance of the offensive 
 manifestation of denominational differences. It, indeed, was 
 difficult to find out whether the sweet and intelligent Christian 
 in our company was a Congregationalist, or a Baptist, or a 
 Methodist, or an Episcopalian, or a good Plymouth- Brother ; 
 not that anyone was lax in his convictions, or unsettled in his 
 Church-views ; but that each and all looked over the barriers of 
 human and historical difference, and saw nothing but the face 
 of Christ, and heard nothing but His parting words on Mount 
 Olivet. And surely there is more real Christianity in this than 
 in the Papal or Mediaeval High Church arrogance of a monopoly 
 of preaching the Gospel of Salvation based on a doubtful 
 Apostolical succession. 
 
 A third feature, and a remarkable one, though confessedly on 
 a lower platform than the preceding, was the wondrous fact, 
 that within the walls of Exeter Hall were collected men and 
 women, who spoke a greater variety of Languages than had ever 
 been collected under one roof in ancient or modern times. And 
 the object of acquiring those forms of speech, and the use of 
 those forms of speech, were solely and entirely to spread the 
 Gospel of Salvation. The Philologist might well bow his head 
 in reverence ; the Ethnologist might well reflect on the passage 
 in Holy Writ, " Seek ye first His kingdom and His righteous- 
 ness, and all these things shall be added unto you " ; the States- 
 man might well ponder upon the appearance of a new factor in 
 politics, a Republic of enthusiasts, who will not be diverted 
 from their object ; a Parliament of men of diverse nationalities, 
 but recognizing one Law, one King, and one hope of everlasting 
 life ; a federation of the greatest benefactors of mankind. 
 
 A fourth feature was the sweet forming, and the still sweeter 
 renewal, of friendships. There is something in the personality, 
 the expression of countenance, the utterance of words of an 
 American, that attracts and conciliates friendships. They are 
 not as we are in Great Britain, but there rests in their choice of 
 words, and formation of sentences, something of the archaic 
 peculiarities of our common ancestors, and a nobility of pre- 
 sence, and an independence of bearing, which in good, holy 
 men (and we had in this Congress no others) is peculiarly 
 fascinating ; their eloquence is all their own, and, in spite of the 
 obvious peculiarities of expressions and tones, goes to the heart. 
 Some of their speeches, such as those of Dr. Pierson, of New 
 
( 36 ) 
 
 York, Dr. F. W. Taylor, of the same city, and Dr. Ellinwood, 
 were simply magnificent, and can never be forgotten by those, 
 who heard them. 
 
 There is no doubt, therefore, in the opinion of those, who 
 took part in the management of the Congress of 1878 at Mild- 
 may, and in Exeter Hall in 1888, that there has been an advance 
 along the line ; indeed, my Conspectus of existing Missionary 
 enterprises, which the Record most opportunely published on 
 June 8, and which was much appreciated, marks the advance 
 and the high-water line of 1888. On the whole, great praise is 
 due to the Executive Committee, and to the indefatigable 
 Secretary, the Rev. James Johnston, for the conception and the 
 arrangements. Many men, who were mere dummies, were put 
 forward to make speeches and held a prominent position, who 
 had really done nothing; but it is well known, that to a small 
 body of determined men who worked well and continuously for 
 more than a year, the success must be attributed, and they have 
 in that success their full reward. 
 
 In all human affairs there is a certain amount of failure, arid 
 this Congress was essentially human ; there were many weary, 
 ill -chosen, ill-conceived, papers read, and good men were 
 totally forgotten ; that miserable period of five minutes, which 
 egotism desires, but which Common-sense rejects, wasted half 
 the time of each of the Meetings in the Lower Hall and Annexe. 
 Men, who came long distances, desired to have their voices 
 heard in the assembly; anyone can speak for twenty minutes; 
 it requires a wise and collected man to utter anything worth 
 hearing in five minutes. The inexorable bell paralyzed the 
 intellect. A great deal of inept nonsense was spoken in those 
 miserable periods, quite irrelevant to the subject of discussion, 
 garnished with Scripture-quotations, as vague and unprofitable 
 as a summer shower of rain-drops. What was desired was 
 totally absent : when a serious question was discussed, such as 
 the Baptism of Polygamists, we desired to hear sound and solid 
 reasons for or against by selected speakers, who had experience ; 
 as it was, no one single subject was thrashed out. As a 
 Congress of Experts, collected to arrive at approximate agree- 
 ment on certain moot subjects, this Congress was an entire 
 failure. 
 
 Missionary Societies have entirely failed in obtaining the con- 
 fidence, or even the toleration, of the ruling classes, the nobles, 
 the scientists, the aristocrats, the demagogues, the men of un- 
 demonstrative piety, the ordinary good citizens, and the general 
 public. Whole families, both wealthy and powerful, give not 
 one shilling. Those, who heart and soul have given themselves 
 up to this service, this best of services, for more than fifty years, 
 feel this neglect keenly, but do not wonder at it. For why is it 
 
( 37 ) 
 
 so ? The foolishness of a section, only of a section, of the 
 Missionary parly causes this disfavour. In the great gatherings, 
 with the exception of those members of the House of Lords 
 and Commons, who have avowedly thrown in their lot with us, 
 the leaders of public life were absent. Yet it is a subject of the 
 deepest regret, and is caused by the folly of a minority, who 
 neglect the noble work of preaching the Gospel to the Heathen, 
 and alleviating the burden of the suffering, to take up fads, 
 miserable crazes, about subjects totally out of the orbit of pure 
 Missionary-work. They might as well call for a blue moon as 
 suppose that their miserable penny-trumpets would influence the 
 counsels of the Parliament of Great Britain, or the Government 
 of British India. 
 
 It was distressing to hear the crudity of some remarks, for 
 some spake with the air of Prophets just descended from the 
 mountain with a new revelation. It seemed as if each man had 
 a peculiar subject on his brain, and the whole world was to be 
 altered to meet his wishes. There was often a want of sobriety, 
 a want of humility, a want of self-distrust and self-abnegation. 
 What can a man, who has been for years in Japan and China, 
 understand of the wonderful mechanism, which controls the 
 revolution of European feelings, and the policy of European 
 Governments ? And yet an American born in the State of 
 Ohio, and a German from Westphalia, and twelve years residing 
 in China, undertook to tell an assembly of miscellaneous men 
 and women what the British Parliament ought to do, and the 
 foolish assembly clapped and stamped in token of approbation, 
 of what, it is obvious, they could not understand. 
 
 As regards the Missionary, many things came out, which sad- 
 dened the heart : the want of entire consecration to the cause 
 of the conversion of the Heathen, the forgetting of their first 
 love; the early marriages, perhaps at the age of twenty-three 
 (when no young lawyer, doctor, or professional man, would 
 think of such things), thfe heavy charges to the Society for 
 passage-money and maintenance, the crowding of the Home of 
 Missionary Children, the diverting of the sacred funds con- 
 tributed to evangelize the Heathen to the lower objects of 
 maintaining Schools for Missionary children and pensions for 
 widows, when neither widow nor child ought to have come into 
 existence, as the Missionary ought in his youth, in his strength, 
 to have had no thought but the necessity laid upon him to 
 convert the Heathen. He cannot have read the Epistle of Paul 
 rightly, if he could think of earthly love with the cry of the 
 Heathen ringing in his ears. As a reaction against such things 
 come the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the High Church 
 party, the haphazard system of Mr. Hudson Taylor sending out 
 men to take their chance of a sufficiency, and the extraordinary 
 
( 38 ) 
 
 system of Bishop William Taylor sending out men, women, and 
 children to live on nothing. All these things make a thoughtful 
 student of the Missionary problem very, very anxious for the 
 future. The only course is to bring it to the Lord. Lord 
 Radstock rightly remarked, that in these matters we too often 
 forget the Lord. 
 
 The Report of the great Congress will be published, and 
 mark an epoch in our Missionary annals. Some may live to be 
 present at the next great gathering at the end of the nineteenth 
 century. Some words of this Congress are not to be forgotten. 
 Dr. Ellinwood, of the United States, in his valedictory address 
 spoke of gratitude, fellowship, kinship, and love to the British 
 people; he said that he had almost forgotten his country, and 
 that to-night we were all Englishmen, because we were all 
 Christians. These precious words should live in our memory. 
 Dr. Sutherland, of the Dominion of Canada, spoke of the 
 essential oneness of Protestant Christianity. Oh, let us cherish 
 this ! all the world over, Christ is all ! The Church is prepared 
 to enter on a new work with new enthusiasm, for the love of 
 Christ constraineth us. M. Rappart, of St. Chrischona, re- 
 marked, that the Holy Spirit still clings to its work. Canon 
 Fleming remarked, that all the members of the Congress would 
 go back to their home, distinct indeed as the billows, but one 
 as the sea. These are but samples of the noble expressions 
 uttered by noble men, in the presence of vast assemblies of men 
 and women, who desired holiness, even if they did not attain to 
 it. It was well for each one of us to hear such sentiments, and 
 better still to feel the heart beat high, and to appropriate such 
 sentiments as our own. Many of those present will never meet 
 again, but they have looked into each other's faces, they have 
 heard each other's words, they have recognized each other's 
 graces, and the contact has not been in vain. Such Congresses 
 are' the direct replies to the Ecumenical Councils of Rome. 
 The Protestant Churches are in evidence, one in Christ, differing 
 in Church-Government ; one in essentials, divided in matters of 
 less moment. If the increase of volume, and weight, and influ- 
 ence is as great in the next decade as it has been in the last, 
 the High Church section of the English Church will feel, that 
 they have made a mistake in abstaining from taking a part in a 
 great movement, which has united the holiest aspirations of the 
 British, American, and German, people to advance the Kingdom 
 of Christ. If they have stood aside, they will not share the 
 blessings. 
 
 The Record, June 20, 1888-1895. 
 
( 39 ) 
 
 D. Language and the Religious Instinct. 
 
 The present generation is the heir of all the ages, and lives 
 in an environment of stored-up Light, the result of researches 
 commenced in former ages, carried on in our own, but to be 
 completed hereafter. We must not be hard on our mediagval 
 ancestors : they did what they could, and confessedly their 
 environment was limited : they had not the strength which 
 we possess, or the opportunities open to us. We should try to 
 do what we can : now is our time, our great innings in the great 
 game of World-enlightenment, and it must be admitted, that 
 our powers are unlimited, if only the Will, and the resources, 
 are not wanting, not without Holy Wisdom and Sanctified Self- 
 control. At any rate, we know exactly what is wanted : we can 
 indicate the gaps, that have to be filled up; the lines of study 
 that have to be extended, and the great Comparative network, 
 that has to be thrown over each Region. We know in what 
 quarter Translation of the Scriptures into fresh Languages, or 
 enlargement of the store translated already in old Languages, 
 are required : and this leads me, to whom only one thing is 
 dearer than Linguistic Research, to indicate what that thing 
 is: "Evangelization of the non- Christian World, and the 
 bringing of Souls to God." 
 
 It has been wisely remarked by an American Author, that the 
 " Religious Instinct," like the Language-making Faculty, is 
 a part, and an indispensable part, of the mental outfit of the 
 Human race. On this occasion our thoughts aire directed to 
 the latter element only. Let us think it out. The animal- 
 world live and prosper, grow fat and multiply ; they dwell 
 together in herds and flocks, and in some cases in dwellings 
 appropriated to a single couple ; they resist their common 
 enemies, and go out on the warpath against their weaker 
 neighbours : (so far not unlike the European Political free- 
 booter, the Scientific Geographical Explorer, the Commercial 
 Land Pirate, and wholesale dealer in alcohol, now under the 
 protection of flags of Christian States, let loose upon poor, 
 unhappy Africa.) Some of the animal-world construct places of 
 residence, to which they periodically resort : they erect per- 
 manent structures which resist the elements : without the help 
 of the compass, or knowledge of the Stars, they traverse the 
 Continent, and the Ocean: they exhibit the highest forms of 
 intelligence and industry in the Ant and the Bee, the imitative 
 powers of the Monkey and the Parrot : they develop various 
 
( 40 ) 
 
 forms of subtle and deadly treachery, quite worthy of the Human 
 race : they do all this from generation to generation, and yet 
 have no power of articulate speech : they have no Language : they 
 do not seem to want it : they get on well without it, as far as 
 this world is concerned, which comprises all their desires, their 
 fears, and their wants. Man, the Lord of the Universe, the 
 only animal, which can exist under every variety of climate, 
 and condition of existence, was no doubt in the early period of 
 Geology a speechless biped, "aOwXos avrjp" : "mutus homo": 
 but he was gifted with brain-power, with a Soul yearning after 
 the Creator, as the sunflower turns to the Sun, and a capacity of 
 handing on to younger generations the accumulated experience 
 of the past : thus he developed the art of issuing articulate 
 sounds varying under the different circumstances of each par- 
 ticular environment, sometimes polysyllabic, sometimes mono- 
 syllabic, sometimes inflective, sometimes agglutinative, in forms 
 and on principles entirely irreconcilable with the idea of a 
 common seedplot. That old-world idea must be laid aside. 
 
 Why, then, was Language given to the "genus Homo" and 
 the Language-making Faculty, except as a vehicle and an 
 instrument of Worship, or the Religious Instinct ? Men even 
 in their barbarous savagery had Immortal Souls, and they were 
 formed in the Image of God. God spake unto men in ancient 
 days, and the spoken Word of God was entrusted to them in 
 the form of perishing sounds, written characters, words, and 
 sentences. How could the experience of the past, the wisdom 
 of the present, and the hopes of the future, those attributes 
 which distinguish the "genus Homo" from the brute beasts that 
 perish, have been recorded except by the sounds, that issue from 
 the labial, lingual, dental, palatal, and guttural, -apparatus of the 
 Mouth, and the cunning symbols, which the hand has learned 
 under the teaching of centuries, to convey by the apparatus of 
 up and down strokes, curves, dots, and dashes, to the material of 
 stone, clay, papyrus, parchment, and a fabric of soaked and 
 prepared rags ? 
 
 The Missionary finds Languages and written characters to 
 be the only, but the sure, instrument for getting to the hearts, 
 ears, and eyes, of every population under the Sun, none of whom 
 have fallen so low, and been left to lie so long in hopeless 
 ignorance of the Arts of Man, and the Will of God, as the 
 poor African. 
 
 The Art of the Pencil, of the Painter's Brush, and of the 
 Photographer's lens, has done much to make the careless world 
 familiar with the woes, and wants, of the African. Familiar to 
 everyone is the picture of the Slaver's caravan wending its way 
 with its daily diminishing train from a region of burnt home- 
 steads, and slaughtered villagers, to the Coast ; the sick, and 
 
( 41 ) 
 
 the useless infants, left at each camping-ground to be devoured 
 by the more merciful wild beast. Another kind of picture the 
 present decade reveals: the Christian Missionary on the march, 
 struggling on through forest, through marsh, across unbridged 
 Rivers : a scant supply of personal comforts, but a sufficiency of 
 medicines, and an abundance of translations of the Bible, of 
 Hymns, of Prayer Books, of educational helps in the several 
 Languages, in which the barbarous tribes are to be brought out 
 of their heathen ways into the path that leads through Faith to 
 Morality, Holiness, and to God. Soon spring up the School, 
 and the Chapel, and Language, the exclusive speciality of the 
 Human race, conveys to the astonished tribe their first ideas of 
 Human sympathy, of gentle words, the forerunner of kind actions, 
 and the new conception of Love, a word with difficulty supplied 
 with a vernacular rendering, in a form of speech, where 'A^aTrtj 
 and Caritas had no intellectual or material existence : Love 
 casting out fear, which has led both male and female youths of 
 European and American culture and origin to forsake their 
 homes, and die for the welfare of men and women, their 
 brethren and sisters on the Niger, the Kongo, the Zambezi 
 Rivers, and on the Lakes of Victoria, Tanganyika, and Ny&sa. 
 
 Under the Grace of God the great heaven-sent gift of articu- 
 late speech has done this. The Legend of Orpheus tells us, 
 how the strains of music dominated the intelligence and the 
 savage nature of the beasts, but here there is something more : 
 those, who were degraded lower than beasts, come under the 
 influence, by which ideas are conveyed from mind to mind, and 
 from soul to soul ; Souls are roused from a state of godless sleep 
 to a new life, to prayer, and to praise ; eyes are opened to the 
 wondrous capacity of reading, understanding, and being moved 
 by the Bible in a barbarous Language, formerly full of words of 
 cruelty, and indecencies, and now sanctified by the Holy Spirit 
 to become the censer, containing the daily offerings of converted 
 Souls to their Creator and Saviour. This is the work, which we 
 have seen performed before our very eyes during the last quarter 
 of a century by the Missionary. 
 
 The debt of Science is great to the long train of Missionaries, 
 who have studied and placed on paper Grammars, Grammatical 
 Notes, Lexicons, Vocabularies, and Texts in the Language, 
 which they used in their daily lives ; still greater the debt, from 
 a scientific point of view, to the succession of great Scholars, 
 who have examined the truthful, the unscientific, works pub- 
 lished by the men on the spot, and who have instituted orderly 
 and scientific comparison of Language with Language, Group 
 with Group : thus, gradually out of a confused heap of bricks 
 brought from the brick-kiln, a wall has been erected, or a fabric 
 devised, the plan of which has been thought out by some great 
 
( 42 ) 
 
 diviner: the bundle of feathers has been examined, and each 
 feather has been arranged in heaps according to colour, shape, 
 and conformation. Africa, with the exception of the valley of 
 the Nile, has no works of Art and Science to show as the out- 
 come of long, silent centuries, and dark Millions, who have been 
 born, lived, and died since the time of Herodotus, or the dim 
 unknown centuries before the epoch of the great Greek Traveller ; 
 but the existence of the great Negro Group, with its scores of 
 isolated and totally distinct forms of speech, conterminous with 
 the great Bantu Family with its scores of kindred Languages, 
 though differentiated in vocabulary and phonetics still clothed 
 on the same backbone and skeleton of the Bantu Grammatical 
 organism, is an unparalleled record of the Power of Human 
 Intellect, acting unconsciously, spontaneously through the 
 agency of Barbarians: some of these Languages will live for 
 ever. 
 
 Twenty years ago there was a rebellion against the tyranny of 
 Indo-European and Semitic Scholars,, who attempted to cut 
 down all Languages to the Procrustes-bed of the only type, with 
 which they were acquainted, and on this narrow basis built 
 towers of speculation on the origin of Language, as fabulous 
 and misty as the Tower of Babel. This great problem cannot 
 even now be approached until the secrets of the Languages of 
 Africa, Oceania, and America have been revealed, and have 
 passed under the touch of the great Comparative Scholar, in 
 order that the lessons taught by the study of each may be con- 
 sidered with reference to the linguistic phenomena of the whole 
 world ; and this work will be accomplished neither in this 
 century nor by this generation. 
 
 It may reasonably be assumed, that not one of the adventurers 
 on the last scientific warpath to relieve an Austrian Jew (who 
 did not wish to be relieved, and who after his unwelcome relief 
 went back to die on the spot, whence at the cost of the lives of 
 many hundred poor Africans he had been relieved) knew one 
 word of the Languages of the tribes, through whose Region 
 they forced themselves : their instrument of communication was 
 the stick, the whip, the rifle, the hangman's rope : they did not 
 teach the Ten Commandments, but gave in their own conduct 
 object-lessons of the breach of them, especially of the Sixth and 
 the Eighth. The Agents of the great Commercial Company, 
 who enabled the so-called Political Protestants Jo slaughter 
 their fellow-Christians of the Church of Rome, knew nothing of 
 the Language of either the slayer, or the slain : the bullet, the 
 Maxim-gun, were their modes of expressing ideas, or carrying 
 conviction. The Alphabet of the Liquor-Dealer consists of 
 demijohns of gin, and his mode of conveying Love and Peace is 
 the conventional " Dash " of Alcohol. The Epoch of the Slave- 
 
( 43 ) 
 
 Trade was bad : is not the present Epoch worse ? Our grand- 
 fathers stole individual Africans from Africa, and somehow or 
 other their descendants have developed into nine Millions of free 
 citizens of the United States : our contemporaries steal Africa 
 from the Africans, reducing to Political bondage barbarous, but 
 at least independent, populations, who are to be exploited by 
 a Nubian soldiery. A bitter cry is rising up from all sides of 
 Africa against the great Commercial Companies, the Sellers of 
 Alcoholic Liquor, the importers of Arms and Gunpowder, and 
 that great Partition of Africa among European States, not for 
 the benefit of the poor people, but for the advantage of specu- 
 lators, manufacturers, and adventurers, for shooters of wild 
 beasts, and mowers down of African men, women, and children. 
 
 Leave the Missionaries alone: let them not lean, as in 
 U-Ganda, on the carnal arm of the flesh : " Peace has her 
 victories, no less renowned than war: " let the arm of precision 
 be the School-primer, the simple Gospel sold for the cost of 
 one Banana, the maps on the walls of the School-House, the 
 slate and pencil on the desk, the Industrial School, the gentle 
 word of the Teacher, the loving Language of the Preacher, the 
 great example exhibited by the white man in his own life, the 
 great and inestimable gift of self-Sacrifice. How puny seem 
 the traditions of ancient History regarding patriotic and re- 
 ligious devotion ! the Roman, who leaped into the yawning abyss 
 to save his country ; the forlorn hope, that died at Thermopylse, 
 so that Athens might not be plundered ; the Jewish matron, who 
 went down alone in her chaste beauty into the camp of the 
 alien invader, and slew their Chief on his own bed : how in- 
 significant, weighed in the great scale of Human littleness, and 
 Divine greatness, of Human possibilities, and Divine guidances, 
 appear such stories compared to what, with bated breath, 
 sparkling eye, and heaving breast, we read of the great 
 European and American Nations, who for an unselfish motive 
 higher than that of Patriotism, armed with weapons, that cut 
 deeper than the sword, and yet are steeped in Love, only Love, 
 step out from their quiet homes to die for the Spiritual welfare 
 of an African tribe, because the Master has so ordered it, and 
 has set the great example : 
 
 " Scarcely for a righteous man will one die : yet peradventure 
 " for a good man some would even dare to die. But God com- 
 " mended His Love to us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 
 " Christ died for us." Romans, v, 7, 8. 
 
 A prolonged study of many years, and the sympathy and 
 collaboration of men in every part of Africa, without reference 
 to their nationality, have enabled me to throw together in two 
 treatises all that is known of African Languages and African 
 Missions. I stand at the bar awaiting the judgment of the 
 
( 44 ) 
 
 Court of Appeal in the next generation, who will stand, as it 
 were, on our shoulders, availing themselves of our knowledge, 
 and pardoning our errors, on account of our good intentions. 
 
 And after all, the Commerce of thought is the greatest and oldest 
 form of Commerce, that the world can ever have known, and no 
 manufacture is older, or more widespread, or more ingenious, 
 or representing more definitely the line betwixt man and beast, 
 than the Manufacture of Words and the Marshalling of Sentences, 
 which have been going on without ceasing, ever since the power 
 of articulate speech was acquired. In the course of examining 
 the words of an African's Vocabulary, the 100 or 200 words, 
 which represent the requirements, and environment, of his- 
 simpl& life, we obtain, or think that we obtain, a standard of 
 comparative Chronology, and Progressive culture, in the History 
 of the world. How far advanced in ideas, and the minted coin, 
 which represented ideas, was Abraham the Father of the 
 Hebrew Race, in the nineteenth century B.C., above the 
 African Barbarian, of the nineteenth century A.D., who is now 
 introduced as it were per saltum by the Missionary to the Divine 
 knowledge, 'H 'A7/17 ~S,o(pla, which Abraham might have desired 
 to obtain, but failed, but which we are told by One, who cannot 
 err, that he saw afar off, and was glad. 
 
 Essay on African Philology, Chicago Congress, U.S. ; 
 
 Sept., 1893-1895. 
 
( 45 ) 
 
 CAP. II. SERVANTS OF THE LORD. 
 
 A. The Ideal Missionary. 
 
 B. Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods. 
 
 C. The Work of Women. 
 
 D. The Native Teacher. 
 
 E. Extracts from " Africa Rediviva." 
 
 A. The Ideal Missionary. 
 
 i. Missionary Heroes in Africa. 
 
 2. The Hero-Missionary, and Heroic Missionary Society. 
 
 3. On the Duty of a Missionary in the hour of Personal Peril. 
 
 1. Missionary Heroes in Africa. 
 
 Address delivered at Steinway Hall, London. 
 
 The Lord said unto me : Say not, I am a child, for thou shalt go to all that 
 I shall send thee, and whatever I shall command thee, thou shalt speak. Jer. , i, 7. 
 
 My subject on this occasion is not so much Africa, its people, 
 its customs, and its misfortunes, as the Christian pioneers and 
 their work, and to this I restrict myself. The Missionaries 
 cannot speak of themselves : it is the last thing, that they would 
 wish to touch upon, except to describe their own shortcomings. 
 A particular Church or Society cannot speak of the whole class 
 fairly, as of some they know too much, and of others nothing 
 at ail. We see them in the committee-room, when they are 
 young and ardent for the fight, scarcely knowing the difficulties, 
 with which they have c to contend. We see them a few years on 
 more thoughtful, more subdued and chastened, yet not less 
 earnest ; we see them still later on, broken down, unequal for 
 further service in the field, yet still longing to laugh at the 
 doctor, and go back to their life's work. Some we never see 
 again, for they remain where they fell. Many of them are men 
 of high talent, who in secular professions might have achieved 
 wealth and fame, or in the Home-Church might have risen to 
 
( 46 ) 
 
 dignity and influence, but, smitten with the wondrous love of 
 saving Souls, they have gone forth, and fresh candidates for the 
 holy office are never wanting. What is their motive ? A simple 
 Faith in the Word of the Lord, who bought them. Wishing that 
 my readers may carry away something, that may cling to their 
 memory, I ask them to think of the famous eleventh Chapter of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which are traced back to Faith 
 all the great events in the history of Israel, and I ask leave 
 reverently to adapt this argument to the history of the pioneers 
 of African Missions. 
 
 By Faith the United Moravian Brethren at Herrnhut in 
 Germany, more than a century and a half ago, were stirred up 
 to send out a Missionary to the poor Hottentots, who were 
 treated as dogs by the Dutch Colonists. By Faith George 
 Schmidt at once offered himself to go out, and suffered hard- 
 ship with a persecuted race, and having been blessed by the 
 conversion of a few, was forbidden to baptize them, and sum- 
 marily sent back to Europe by men, who called themselves 
 Protestants, and who were jealous of their own liberty. By 
 Faith, fifty years later (1792), the United Brethren sent out 
 three more Missionaries, who founded the illustrious Mission 
 of Genadendal, or Vale of Grace, on the very walls of the ruined 
 house of George Schmidt, seven years after the great Patriarch 
 of African Missions had been called to his reward, dying, like 
 Livingstone and Krapf, on his knees. 
 
 By Faith the London, and Wesleyan, Societies, the Estab- 
 lished Church of England, the Free Church of Scotland, and 
 the American Board of Foreign Missions, took up a share in the 
 blessed work amongst other raoes of South Africa ; and out of 
 their ranks by Faith Moffat undertook to translate the Bible into 
 the Language of the BeChuana, Wilder into the Language of 
 the, Zulu, and Boyce, Appleyard, and others, into the Language 
 of the Ama-Xosa, or Kafir ; Languages deemed at the time to 
 be incapable of expressing simple ideas, but which, deftly 
 handled, proved to be apt exponents of every variety of Human 
 thought, with an unlimited Vocabulary, and an unsurpassed 
 symmetry of structure. 
 
 By Faith Moffat's son-in-law, Livingstone, abandoned his 
 home, his Chapel, and his School, and started off on his great 
 Missionary progress, which was destined to illuminate all Africa 
 South of the Equator. By Faith he bore up under the perils, 
 the fatigues, the opposition, and the bereavement of his dear 
 wife, who sleeps on the shore of the Zamb6si. By Faith he 
 worked his way to Benguela, on the West coast, Kilimani on 
 the East, and Nyangwd on the River Kongo to the North, dis- 
 covering new rivers, new lakes, new tribes, and new Languages. 
 From the drops of sweat, which fell from his limbs in those 
 
( 47 ) 
 
 great travels, have sprung up, like flowers, Christian Missions, 
 founded by men of different Denominations, and different views 
 of Church-Government, but united in the fear of God, the Faith 
 in Christ, Love of Africa, and veneration for Livingstone. To 
 the impulse, given by this great Apostle, must be attributed the 
 Missions of the Established Church of Scotland at Blantyre, the 
 Free Church of Scotland at Livingstonia, the London Society 
 on Lake Tang&nyika, and the Universities Mission at Zanzibar 
 and Lik6ma. To these must be added the Missions of the 
 Church of Rome. In an interview, which some years ago I had 
 at Tunis with Cardinal Lavig6rie, to implore him to locate his 
 Equatorial Missions at a certain distance from stations occupied 
 by Protestants, to which he agreed in word, though the practice 
 of his Missionaries has been different, he spoke with admiration 
 of Livingstone. But to this servant of God it was not conceded 
 to see one single fruit of his labours. He saw no Mission spring 
 up ; like Moses, he only beheld the promised land from Pisgah : 
 he died without knowing of the secret of the source of the Nile 
 and the Kongo. But even after death he seemed to have power 
 to charm, and to conquer, for by Faith his bones were conveyed 
 by his faithful Africans to the sea-shore, from Ilala on Lake 
 Bangweolo, where he died, along a route never traversed before, 
 as if the great discoverer had power to add to Geographical 
 knowledge after his death, and the great philanthropist wished 
 to leave a lasting proof, that the Natives of South Africa can be 
 faithful and loyal, and capable of high enterprises, if they are 
 kindly treated. 
 
 By Faith Krapf and Rebman sat year after year al; the watch- 
 tower of Mombasa, waiting till the day should dawn, calling to 
 each other, "Watchman, what of the night?" writing home 
 descriptions of vast lakes and snow-capped mountains on the 
 Equator, causing themselves to be derided, both as Missionaries 
 and Geographers ; yet they lived to be honoured in both 
 capacities, they lived to see the day dawn at last, to hear of 
 - Frere-Town being established as a station for released Slaves at 
 Mombasa, to hear of those internal seas being navigated, and 
 the snow-capped mountain being visited. In his old age Krapf 
 in tearful gratitude read Henry Stanley's challenge, which rang 
 with trumpet-sound from the capital of U-Ganda, and was 
 gallantly answered by the Church Missionary Society, and he 
 lived to hear of the great Apostle's Street, which by Faith he 
 had suggested, being carried out from Zanzibar to the Great 
 Lakes, to be extended westward down the Kongo, until hands 
 are shaken with the Baptist Missionaries working up that River 
 from the West. 
 
 By Faith the good Baptist Society established themselves in 
 the island of Fernando Po, and, driven thence by the intolerance 
 
( 48 ) 
 
 of the Spaniards, they crossed over to the mainland, and found 
 what seemed once, but, alas ! is no longer, a more enduring 
 inheritance in the Kamerun Mountains. By Faith here Saker 
 lived, laboured, and died, translating the Holy Scriptures into 
 the Language of the Dualla, but leaving his work to be revised 
 by his young daughter, opening a new field for the talent 
 and zeal, of woman. Hence in fulness of time by Faith Comber 
 started to conquer new Kingdoms on the Kongo, making, alas ! 
 the heavy sacrifice of the life of his wife at San Salvador, before 
 he reached Stanley Pool, with the great heart of Africa open to 
 his assault; for in their hands the Baptist Missionaries had 
 carried gentle Peace, and their vessel with that name carried 
 them onward on their blessed and peaceful enterprise. 
 
 By Faith our good brethren in North America were among 
 the first to send out their agents to West and South Africa, to 
 pay back the debt, which they owed, and to atone for the wrong, 
 which their forefathers had inflicted. The Sun was thus taken 
 back to the East, to lighten those sitting in darkness. Each 
 and every one of their Churches by Faith have vied in the desire 
 to found strong Missions, translate the Scriptures, and to press 
 forward the work of freedom, Education, Civilization, and 
 Evangelization. 
 
 By Faith the Holy and humble-hearted Protestant Churches 
 on the Continent of Europe, less amply endowed in material 
 resources, but more richly in Intellect, industry, and self conse- 
 cration, have, sent forth a golden stream of Missionaries from 
 the centres of Basle and Canton de Vaud, in Switzerland ; of 
 Barmen, Bremen, Berlin, Herrnhut, and Hermansburg, in 
 Germany; from Norway, Sweden, Finland, and France, to hold 
 the fort in the most exposed situations, to suffer imprisonment, 
 to achieve great literary works, to found living Churches, and 
 attract to themselves the affections of the African. The names 
 of the devoted men and women, who have lived and died for 
 Christ, may not be known to the world, but are written in the 
 Book of Life. 
 
 By Faith Samuel Crowther was rescued from the captivity, 
 into which he, like Joseph, had been sold by his brethren, was 
 restored to his country, to be no longer a Slave, but a Teacher, 
 a leader, a benefactor, and an example ; by Faith he was set 
 apart to give the lie to the enemies of the African, to stultify the 
 idle taunt, that a Negro is incapable, by his nature, of culture, 
 piety, honesty, and social virtues ; by Faith he was raised up to 
 mark an Epoch in the sad chronicle of his persecuted race, and 
 to be the firstfruit of the coming harvest of African pastors and 
 Evangelists. By Faith his son Dandison Crowther, Henry 
 Johnson, and James Johnson, were blessed with the great 
 Grace of being allowed to tread in his footsteps. 
 
( 49 ) 
 
 If any of my readers desire to know the real worth of the 
 African Missionary, let them read the lives of Mrs. Hinderer at 
 Ibadan, and Mrs. Wakefield at Rib6, and of many other noble 
 men and women, of whom this self-seeking world was not 
 worthy, who left comforts at home to labour among the 
 Africans; who, in spite of overpowering maladies, have been, 
 like Hannington, unwilling to leave the country of their choice, 
 and determined to return in spite of the warning voice of their 
 doctor, or who, like him, have died as good confessors, counting 
 not their lives worthy, but to fill up what remains of the suffer- 
 ings of Christ. Such lives, in their simple eloquence, cannot 
 fail to chasten the proud heart, to drive out selfish egotism, and 
 to sustain the sinking spirit ; they leave a ray of tender light 
 behind them, showing that the age of chivalry, and of self- 
 Sacrifice, has not entirely passed away ; that the nineteenth 
 century, in spite of its worldliness and infidelity, is still able to 
 supply crusaders to fight the battle of our Master. 
 
 We read often in Secular books, and too often in Missionary. 
 Biographies, how our Heavenly Father is supposed on some 
 occasions to have graciously interposed to save the life of one of 
 His poor children : in Roman Catholic accounts this benevolent 
 interference is attributed to the Virgin Mary, or St. Theresa. 
 Not a sparrow indeed falls without His command ; but if such 
 interference is presumed, when a good man's life is saved, how 
 shall we account for the absence of this Providential care, when 
 a good man is cruelly killed, or cut off by premature disease ? 
 Such is but a narrow view of God's Providence. His ways are 
 not our ways : He has chosen His servants for particular 
 service : some to honour ; some to dishonour. Some are 
 selected to live and work, to others is conceded the peculiar 
 Grace to die nobly, and set a glorious example. Deaths are re- 
 quired as well as Lives to complete the picture of the New Life. 
 Some may follow the steps of our Lord in a life of beneficence 
 and mercy ; to others is granted the sweeter lot of filling up that 
 which is behind of His Sufferings. And in the last struggle 
 how by Grace they have been sustained, doing nothing common 
 or mean in the last memorable scene of their earthly passion, 
 but sealing their Faith by their manner of meeting death ! 
 
 I quote a noble passage from the Chronicle of the London 
 Missionary Society: "It is no light thing to be a link in God's 
 " chain of causes, to have a Mission from God to discharge in 
 " the world, however low the office and the duty may be. It is 
 " better to recognize this Mission, and diligently to cultivate 
 " qualifications for it, and still better persistently and faithfully, 
 " and always for God, to strive to fill the place and do the work 
 " of this Divine commission." 
 
 Hear some of the dying words of these soldiers of Christ. In 
 
( 50 ) 
 
 the hour of death all things are terribly real. There is no room 
 for deception or false enthusiasm then. I have selected these 
 words without distinction of country or Denomination, but their 
 number might be multiplied indefinitely. 
 
 Arrhenius, the Swede, had only a few months of labour in 
 the Galla country after years of preparation for his duties : his 
 last words were: "Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me! Amen." 
 Praetorius, the Swiss, was sent out for a few months' inspec- 
 tion of the Missions on the Gold Coast : he called upon me on 
 his way out, and promised to call again on his return ; but after 
 a few weeks in Africa he fell. His last words were : " Is it true 
 that I am going home to-day ? " 
 
 Of all the smaller English Associations, Harley House, Bow, 
 was cpnspicuous for its overflowing of zeal, and life, and 
 promise, and of all its agents McCall was the brightest ; but he 
 was struck down in mid- work. His last words were recorded 
 by a stranger, who visited him on his solitary death-bed. Let 
 each one of us lay them to our hearts : " Lord, I gave myself, 
 " body, mind, and soul, to Thee. I consecrated my whole life 
 " and being to Thy service, and now, if it please Thee to take 
 " myself, instead of the' work, which I would do for Thee, what is 
 " that to me ? Thy will be done ! " He had hoped that his 
 destined course might have been among the brave and strong, 
 to toil with high purpose for the welfare of the African ; but 
 God had chosen another part for him, and as a true Christian, 
 he recognized, that God had chosen it well, and no weak 
 murmurs escaped the lips of one who was ready to live or ready 
 to die. And think not, Reader, that such sentiments are 
 peculiar to a Servant of God dying young and in Africa. 
 Dean Farrar thus writes of Bishop Lightfoot, of Durham : 
 " He was called upon to face death at an age comparatively 
 " premature, when years of fruitful work lay before him, but he 
 " rose up at the call of God, and left his unfinished work, and 
 " accumulated materials, not only without a murmur, but with- 
 " out so much as a sigh of regret, or a single backward glance." 
 He had made use of the talents lent to him : that was enough 
 for him. Oh ! let us all be ready, waiting for our call ! 
 
 Golaz, of the French Mission to Senegambia, as well as his 
 young wife, died within the year after their arrival : his farewell 
 words were : "Do not be discouraged, if the first labourers fall 
 in the field. Their graves will mark the way for their successors, 
 who will march past them with great strides." 
 
 Pinkerton, of the American Mission in Zululand, was ordered 
 to lead a new Mission into Umzila's Kingdom : he conveyed his 
 wife and children to North America, and returned joyfully to his 
 task. . He met with many obstacles and rebuffs, but at length 
 found himself well on the road. His last written lines were to 
 
( 51 ) 
 
 his wife : " The future will bring its needed light, and work, and 
 solace. My thoughts turn sadly to you and our children. All 
 well. We go right on." It was to him, indeed, all well, for in a 
 few days he breathed his last sigh alone in the African jungle : 
 he had gone right on into Glory. On the other side of Africa, 
 Bagster, of the same Mission, had been sent to found a Mission 
 among the A-Mbandu : a few months before his death he had 
 proposed to write on " The Missionary's Joys." In the last 
 page of his Journal we find : " We hear His voice of cheer : Go 
 " forward: one man of you shall chase ten thousand: the Lord 
 " your God has promised you the good land, which He has 
 " given to you : most joyous is the service of our King ! " 
 
 Thomson, of the Baptist Mission in the Kamerun country 
 (that famous Mission which during 1885-6 was uprooted and 
 destroyed by the late German Emperor), a few weeks before 
 his death in December, 1884, unconscious of the ruin, which 
 was soon to come upon the scene of his labours, on his Chapels, 
 and his Mission-Schools, wrote as follows : "I am sustained 
 " and upheld amid many and heavy anxieties by the growing 
 " conviction, that the dear Master is in His great condescension 
 " using me here for the settlement of many difficulties ; and 
 " I look forward to the future with more hope than I have 
 " known for years. I believe that the work here will soon assume 
 " a better and brighter aspect, and my heart glows within me, 
 " as by Faith I see the time. Oh for more and more of Grace 
 " to cast all our burdens upon the Divine burden-bearer ! Our 
 " hope and trust are in Him alone ! " 
 
 With such men (and these few are but types of many) Africa 
 and the whole world can be conquered. Such deaths are great 
 Victories. Such words tell us, that some portion of us is im- 
 mortal. These confessors saw the promises afar off, and were 
 persuaded of them, confessing that they were strangers and 
 pilgrims, and desiring a better country, that is a Heavenly. 
 
 Still, they were men with like weaknesses, and cravings for 
 Love, as ourselves, and it is with heavy heart, that I read of the 
 last moments of such servants of God, dying sometime without 
 the solaces of Religion, with no fond breast to lean upon, with 
 none of the ordinary necessities of civilized life, to sustain and 
 comfort, and smooth the path to that bourne, which men call 
 Death, but which indeed is the portal to everlasting life. The 
 last Journal of Hannington (who was present, when I read this 
 address in 1888) brings this point of view vividly before me. 
 I can see that faithful Christian in the midst of his sad environ- 
 ment, oppressed with anxiety for the future of the work, to 
 which he had consecrated himself, still sustained by the daily 
 reading of, and meditation upon, the Book of Psalms. We find 
 in these pages, so wonderfully preserved, no religious murmuring, 
 
( 52 ) 
 
 no cries for Vengeance, no appeal to the Arm of the Flesh. 
 Still, as he lay tossing on his unsavoury heap of straw, before his 
 feverish eyes, during those sad days and weary nights, no doubt 
 rose the vision of the peaceful home, the pleasing duties, the 
 loved companion, the little children, whom he had voluntarily 
 left, obeying the call to serve his Master; and not in vain, for 
 a still voice would whisper to him : " It is the Lord's will : 
 " obedience is of the essence of true courage, and true Love. 
 " The battles of the Heavenly King are fought in suffering as 
 " well as doing, and in dishonour, in prison, and in a shameful 
 " death, as truly as in the Mission Chapel, the Mission School, 
 " and the centre of a Christian village." 
 
 The following were the dying words of a Missionary in 1890 : 
 his last words, uttered with great difficulty, were : " I — have — 
 made — it — my — purpose — through — life — to — follow — Christ." 
 At the age of 74 I may humbly express a wish to die with these 
 words on my lips. 
 
 We seem at this period of the History of our Missionary 
 Churches to be living over again the trials and persecutions 
 of the early Christians in the second century. Do we not seem 
 to hear the echo of the words of the Virgin-Saint, who at Aries 
 in France was slowly let down feet-forward into a vessel of 
 boiling oil, because she refused to deny her Master? "Jesus 
 " Christ, help me ! Praise be to Thee ! Lord Jesus, grant me 
 " patience! I suffer for Thy name's sake: I suffer for a little 
 " time only: I suffer of my own accord: Jesus, let me never be 
 " confounded ! take me ! take me ! " 
 
 Time would fail me to tell of Schlenker, and Reichardt, and 
 Schon ; of Goldie and Edgerley ; of Casalis, Mabille, and 
 Coillard, of James Stewart of Lovedale, and his namesake on 
 the Nyasa ; of Grant and Wilson ; of Ramseyer and Christaller ; 
 of Mackenzie, the Bishop, who died on the River Shire' ; of 
 Steere, the Bishop, who sealed up the Translation of the last 
 chapter of Isaiah ready for the printer, and then fell asleep at 
 Zanzibar ; of Parker, the Bishop, wise and gentle, holy and self-- 
 restrained, who was called to his rest on the shores of Victoria 
 Nyanza ; of Hill, the Bishop, whom the Lord called to Himself 
 on the day of his landing in Lagos to take up his duties ; of 
 dear Maples, the Bishop, who was drowned in Lake Nyasa ; of 
 Mackay, who for ten years held the fort at U-Ganda, and died 
 at his post ; of Wakefield and New ; of Stern and Mayer ; of 
 Southon, who died at U-Rambo ; of Mullens, who could not 
 hold himself back from the fight, and who sleeps in U-Sagara ; 
 of many a gentle woman's grave, for women have never been 
 found wanting to share the honour and the danger of the Cross. 
 
 I have seen and known so many of them. A few weeks 
 before we were holding sweet converse, and then the tidings of 
 
( 53 ) 
 
 the death of some one of them came floating back by letter or 
 telegram. They had indeed all gone into a far country, and 
 to me they seem to be all. there still : and, when I am musing 
 about Africa, or studying some point connected with that 
 country, and I look up from my paper to my African library, the 
 forms of departed friends seem to enter at the open door, and 
 I seem to see their faces again, and to ask them their opinion. 
 Young Riviere, a Jesuit priest, who had been turned out of 
 Algeria, and taken refuge in North Wales, used to correspond 
 with me about Africa. One day he called upon me in London, 
 and told me, that he had received his orders to start at once to 
 the Zamb6si Mission-field, to take the place of a dead colleague. 
 He promised to write to me from T6t6, and to clear up many 
 questions for me ; but he never reached his destination, for he 
 sank under his first attack of fever at the mouth of the Zambesi. 
 Differing as I do from the Church of Rome in their Dogma and 
 practice, and detail of their system, I can still recognize and 
 thank God for the zeal, and love of souls, and total abnegation 
 of self, which distinguish her Missionaries. Oh, when they 
 are such, would that they were ours ! 
 
 I often think of that famous scene in one of Walter Scott's 
 romances, where the clansman and his seven sons all fell for 
 their chieftain, stepping forth, one after the other, gladly into 
 the gap, and crying, " One more for Eachim ! " So it is with 
 the reserve forces of Missionaries. " One more for Christ ! " 
 And how much better to have young lives and treasure spent by 
 the Missions in trying to save African souls, than wasted by the 
 British nation in slaughtering the unoffending and undaunted 
 freemen of the Sudan, for the purpose of maintaining an imagi- 
 nary prestige of having the strength of a giant without the Grace 
 of knowing, how to use that strength as a Christian. I quote 
 Bishop Westcott's words : " The clergy have their functions, 
 but the bearing abroad of the Message of the Gospel belongs to 
 the believer as believer, whether laity, or ordained." Wherefore, 
 seeing that we are compassed about with so great a cloud of 
 witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and press forward more 
 and more upon our bounden duty and service to evangelize 
 Africa. We owe this debt to those, who have gone before, that 
 they should not have died in vain. The Missionary is indeed 
 the most glorious outcome of the nineteenth century ; the 
 honest, God-fearing man in the darkest corner of the earth, 
 where he is most wanted, to represent the highest type of 
 Christian patience and Morality. 
 
 Oh ! that we now had there 
 But one ten thousand of those men in England, 
 Who do no work to-day. 
 
 London, 1 884-1 895. 
 
( 54 ) 
 
 2. The Hero-Missionary, and Heroic Missionary Society. 
 
 Address to the Undergraduates of Cambridge. 
 
 Quem virum, aut heroa, lyra, vel acri 
 Tibia sumis celebrare, Clio ? 
 
 Horace : Odes, I, xii, i . 
 
 As a lifelong observer of the Mission-field, I am not likely 
 to undervalue the plodding, day by day, and year by year, of the 
 simple-hearted Missionary, who, like Rebman and Krapf at 
 Mombasa in East Africa, and William Smith and Leupolt at 
 Banaras, worked on from year to year, and only left the scene 
 of their quiet labours, when failing powers compelled them to 
 do so. Such uneventful lives do not strike the imagination so 
 much, as that of the Hero-Missionary, whose career is short, 
 but brilliant : it may seem unjust, but it is so, always : the brave 
 man, who leads the forlorn hope, or gains the Victoria Cross by 
 risking his life, obtains a niche, and his career is an incentive to 
 others; the faithful old soldier has nothing but the feeling of 
 duty done to reward him, and the thought of him will not rouse 
 others to deeds of valour. 
 
 My subject is the Hero-Missionary, and the Heroic Missionary- 
 Society. It is hard, that the man must die to be deemed a 
 Hero, but so it has been at all times from the days of Achilles 
 to our own times. Death throws a halo round the departed one. 
 Some examples have been brighter in death than in life : it is 
 another illustration of our Lord's remark about the corn of 
 wheat, " If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." I have 
 selected three great Characters, Allen Gardiner, Coleridge 
 Patteson, and John Williams, as types of the Hero-Missionary, 
 and the Moravian Missionary Society, as the type of the Heroic 
 Mission. 
 
 Life is such a tangled web, that it is only as he approaches 
 the end of his career, that the worker can see the pattern of 
 the web, at which he has been working all his days : he has 
 had only one portion of the pattern exposed to his view, but 
 he has been permitted to work at that faithfully and patiently, 
 though it may be only a leaf or a flower, and he is able to do 
 it truly, strongly, and firmly: but the Hero-Missionary seems 
 in his youth, or in the early part of his career, to have grasped 
 at some purpose unseen to all but himself: he wishes to 
 accomplish something, which the world will not let die ; and to 
 some few this is granted. In others the one only life, which the 
 
( 55 ) 
 
 worker had to offer, is not sufficient : but the Master accepts 
 the will for the deed, as young McCall said on his early death- 
 bed, " If the Lord's will be to take myself, and not the work, 
 which I would do for Him, His Holy will be done." 
 
 Ovs 01 Qeoi (piXovtri, OvqaKovai vioi. 
 
 Heroes, being men of marked character, are deemed by the 
 general public to be eccentric : their very superiority prevents 
 their being duly estimated. The circumstance of their death 
 shakes weak Faith, but the true Christian through death to life 
 sees clearly, how God of seeming evil works lasting good. To 
 die for one's country is a great gain ; to die for one's Saviour, 
 to fill up what remains of His sufferings, is sweeter. Such was 
 the life of Allen Gardiner : no doubt he was thought at the time 
 to be an enthusiast, and crazed, and a bore ; but the opinion is 
 now changed. His story is simple : he was an officer of the 
 Navy, who lost his young wife early : he thus went per crucem ad 
 lucem, and thenceforth consecrated himself to the Missionary- 
 Service heart and soul, and he kept his vow: to be a pioneer- 
 Missionary to the most abandoned Heathen was the great 
 object of his life. He was neither qualified for ordinary 
 Missionary-work, nor would it have satisfied him to have reaped 
 the harvest, which others had sowed : his was a harder and 
 more thankless task, but none the less blessed. 
 
 He tried many countries, but could find no opening : his 
 Missionary spirit, like a dove let loose from the ark, wandered 
 about seeking a place of rest : at length he definitely chose 
 South America as his field : he was prevented by the Roman 
 Catholic Priests from settling among the wild tribes on the 
 Continent : he found at length a spot, where even the Spanish 
 Priests would not care to follow him, at the most Southerly 
 point of the island, separated from the Mainland by the Straits 
 of Magellan, within a short distance of the Antarctic Circle, 
 the island of Tierra del Fuego. 
 
 The possibilities of the Human family are not to be found in 
 one single race, or at one particular Epoch, or in one Region of 
 the world. Grace is sufficient for them all, and the Missionary, 
 who brings captive to the feet of his Master the poor Eskimo, 
 the half-brutal Fuegian, the Cannibal of Melanesia, or the short, 
 stunted races of Australia, glorifies his Saviour by showing, that 
 the Gospel-Message was designed for all, can be understood by 
 all, that Christ died for all, and that there is no other way of 
 Salvation, but through Him. The Message is so Divine, and 
 yet so clothed in universal Humanity, that it finds its way to the 
 Spiritual necessities of all, and satisfies the heart's cravings. 
 The Student of Missionary chronicles has added this new 
 
( 56 ) 
 
 weapon to the armoury of the Theologian. Darwin, one of the 
 gentlest and wisest of Philosophers (though he, that is least in 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, is greater than him), when he saw the 
 inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, declared, that their intellectual 
 improvement was beyond the efforts of man : but he lived to 
 replace that hasty opinion by the following : " The lesson of the 
 Missionary is the enchanter's wand." 
 
 Both Nature and Man were against Gardiner. The climate 
 rendered the country most dreary and inhospitable : the sky 
 rarely cleared ; rainy squalls in summer alternated with the snow 
 and sleet of winter ; the winds were ferocious. The people 
 belonged to the Patagonian race, of a dark colour, with long 
 black hair ; they had low foreheads, flat and thick noses, scanty 
 clothing, wretched habitations, and they were arrant thieves, 
 cruel, and, when brought to bay, furious wild beasts : the women 
 possessed some traces of gentleness, but were treated as slaves. 
 Gardiner's first attempt to land and house himself on land was 
 a failure : the conduct of the natives was such, that he had to 
 retreat, and return to England. Nothing daunted, he deter- 
 mined to have a floating home, and to keep his reserve-stores at 
 the Falkland Islands. He could not collect sufficient funds to 
 buy a suitable ship, so he supplied himself with two decked 
 boats: two catechists and three pious sailors accompanied him. 
 The Ocean-Queen Steamer deposited the boats and men with 
 provisions for six months at Banner Bay in Tierra del Fuego : 
 they had given up all the ties of home for Christ's sake, but they 
 were called upon to make a greater Sacrifice, even of their lives, 
 and none of them were ever seen alive again. It reconciles us 
 to our common Humanity, that men are always found, when the 
 cause of Christ requires it, to face the greatest danger at His 
 bidding. These men all died of starvation, Allen Gardiner 
 being the last survivor. When, months later, the frigate, sent 
 out to make inquiries, arrived, their dead bodies were found, 
 and their Journals and letters : one by one they had died, but 
 there was no despair, no imputation of blame to others : " Poor, 
 " weak though we are, our abode is a very Bethel to our Souls, 
 " for we feel and know, that God is here. Asleep or awake, 
 '' I am happy beyond the power of expression." 
 
 Allen Gardiner penned a farewell letter, expressing his un- 
 clouded joy in the Lord, his perfect resignation to His Holy 
 Will, but earnestly imploring, that the Mission should not be 
 abandoned, and sketching out a plan for future operations, 
 which was acted upon. In his death he anticipated the coming 
 of his Master's Kingdom. He rejoiced to see the day-dawn of 
 the Gospel : he saw it, and was glad. 
 
 His last words were : " Great and marvellous are the loving- 
 " kindnesses of my gracious God unto me. He has preserved 
 
( 57 ) 
 
 " me hitherto, and for four days, although without bodily food, 
 " without any feeling of hunger or thirst ! " 
 
 Here the Journal ends ; but one letter was dated a day later : 
 " Yet a little while, and through Grace we may join that blessed 
 " throng, to sing the praises of Christ to all eternity. I neither 
 " hunger nor thirst, though five days without food : marvellous 
 " loving-kindness to me, a sinner 1 " 
 
 I remember the news of this sad tragedy reaching India 
 in 1852, and many a sigh was wafted from India to the South 
 Pole. His life was not given in vain : the Pioneer's work was 
 done : and the Lone-Star-Mission was established, which has 
 worked Northwards into the mainland of South America, and is 
 now spreading itself among the Heathen of Paraguay. Bread 
 cast on the waters is found after many days. 
 
 Humanly speaking, but for Allen Gardiner's determination, 
 and the interest excited by the sad end of himself, and his noble 
 companions, this footing would never have been made good. 
 When Nations and Tongues are assembled before the great 
 White Throne, Allen Gardiner will be there with his savages : 
 " Lord ! behold, with the talent, which Thou gavest me, I have 
 gathered these poor sheep into Thy fold ! " 
 
 Differing in everything, in methods, in gifts, in training, in 
 result, but with the same spirit, that of lowly and entire self- 
 Sacrifice, was the career of Coleridge Patteson, Bishop of the 
 Islands of Melanesia, which lie 120 to the West, and in a more 
 Northern latitude. I knew Patteson as a boy at Eton, and he 
 had the advantage of a University-Education, and I well re- 
 member Bishop Selwyn the elder going out as Bishop of New 
 Zealand. He also was of the Hero-type, strong, brave, wise, and 
 determined : he had established the Mission in the New Hebrides 
 and the Solomon Islands, and he chose Coleridge Patteson to 
 be his coadjutor, and his successor : there is something sad 
 and solemn in the details of the selection .of the lad by the 
 Bishop, and the surrender of him by the parents : the mother, 
 like Hannah, consecrated her son to the Lord, and the grand 
 old Father made the great Sacrifice of his eldest boy, for he 
 never saw his face again. How foolish, and even wicked, seem 
 the efforts of parents to retain their children, when the Lord 
 has unmistakably chosen and called them, and when they are 
 fitted for the office ! Every act of this beautiful life stands out 
 in the pages of his biography : whether in his solitary ship- 
 cabin, or lonely hut, he was a great writer of letters, and they 
 tell us unconsciously of his exalted character. He had no 
 settled home, but he had a settled plan, devised by Bishop 
 Selwyn, and worked out by himself. He had to deal with 
 a black, woolly-haired Negrito race, savage, inhospitable, 
 cannibal, not so low down in the scale of humanity as the 
 
( 58 ) 
 
 natives of Tierra del Fuego, for they possessed some arts, and 
 they spoke numerous distinct languages. The Training School 
 on Norfolk island, the Mission-Ship taking up, and putting 
 down, lads at the different islands, thus accustoming the people 
 to his presence, acquiring a knowledge of their languages, and 
 creating a confidence in his kindness : these were his methods. 
 As his blessed ship passed from island to island, it left a track 
 of light, of mercy, and loving-kindness, and his plans seem 
 to be realizing. We read in his Journal : " I think of the 
 " islands, and see them in my dreams, and it seems, as if nothing 
 " had been done ; but when I think of what they were a very 
 " short time ago, oh ! I do feel thankful indeed, and amazed, 
 " and almost fearful." 
 
 He was so far more blessed than Allen Gardiner, for he saw 
 some fruits of his labours and brighter prospects of more fruit : 
 the harvest was ripening : labourers, both European and Native, 
 were gathering round him : the time for putting in the sickle 
 was at hand. " Hundreds of people crowded together, naked, 
 " armed, with uncouth cries and gestures. I cannot talk to 
 " them but by signs : but they are my children now. May God 
 " enable me to do my duty by them ! " 
 
 The great Controller of the lives of men had provided him 
 fellow-labourers from an unexpected quarter: lads, whom he 
 found on Norfolk island, descendants of the Mutineers of the 
 " Bounty," who, having married native women of Tahiti, left to 
 their offspring a legacy of the blood of Europe and Oceania 
 united in their veins in a mixed stream ; these lads were en- 
 dowed with singular sweetness of character, and ardent Faith. 
 Two were killed by poisoned arrows during the lifetime of the 
 Bishop : one died with him. It is well known, that the Bishop 
 was killed at the island of Nikapu : I need not tell the sad 
 story : he died for the sins of others, so closely did he tread in 
 the steps of his Master : a boat floated out containing his body 
 with a palm-branch laid upon the five wounds : and at the age 
 of 46 his warfare was accomplished, his Hero-life was ended. 
 The poor lad, however, lingered a few days in intense agony 
 under his wounds, and made the following remarks, when he 
 saw his leader's body, showing the Spirit, which had been 
 imparted to him by his contact with a Hero: " Seeing people 
 " taken away, when we think, that they are most necessary 
 " to do God's work on earth, makes me think, that we often 
 "think, and talk too much about Christian work: what God 
 " requires is Christian men. He does not need the work: He only 
 " gives it to form a perfect character of the men, whom He 
 ''' sends to do it. It is all right now. Do not grieve about 
 " it, because they did not do this thing of themselves, for God 
 " allowed them to do it. It is very good, because God would have 
 
( 59 ) 
 
 " it so, because He looks after us, and He understands about us 
 " and now He wills to take away us two (me and the Bishop) 
 " and it is well." 
 
 The poor lad's knowledge of the world was limited to Pitcaim 
 island and Norfolk island. His Faith had not been weakened 
 in the schools of learning. The Bishop had by his own Hero- 
 life brought Christ home vividly to his imagination, and in his 
 simple eloquence, with dying lips, the poor lad sought to palliate 
 the offences of the ignorant savages, who had killed him in 
 revenge for the wrongs, which they had suffered at the hands 
 of others, and to justify the ways of God to Man. Who can say, 
 that Coleridge Patteson lived and died in vain ? If you seek 
 his monument, read the annals of the ever-expanding Mela- 
 nesian Mission, spreading from tribe to tribe, and from island 
 to island. 
 
 John Williams belonged to an earlier generation. He had 
 accomplished his course, while Patteson was an Eton boy, 
 before Allen Gardiner had conceived his great idea. He was 
 indeed an iiva.% avSpwv, and seems to have been specially brought 
 upon the scene by a wise Providence at a moment, when his 
 peculiar gifts were required. Oh ! if we could only understand, 
 and be satisfied, that we are all of us but pots in the hands 
 of the Potter, made suitable for the work, which is laid upon us ! 
 Williams' education, intellectually and even religiously, had been 
 very defective : the hour of his call came at the appointed time : 
 as he was going to a tavern to meet worldly companions, he was 
 overtaken by a woman of his acquaintance in the streets, who 
 persuaded him to accompany her to a place of Worship, and 
 this chance event was the commencement of his great change 
 of life : he had energy of character, strength of Faith, ardent 
 desire to preach the Gospel, and a* wonderful power of con- 
 ciliation : he could, moreover, turn his hand to anything in the 
 smithy, or carpenter's shop ; he proved his capacity to build 
 a seaworthy vessel ; he could saw timber or teach in a school : 
 his object was to rouse the people to the duty of introducing 
 new arts, and reasonable requirements. Such was the man, 
 who was sent out to preach the Gospel in the island of Tahiti 
 in 1816; early in his career he wrote to his mother, that he 
 prayed, that he might be faithful unto death, and his prayer 
 was heard, for it was so ; he had a heart too large to wish to 
 keep the duty of evangelizing the vast Region of Oceania to 
 one Denomination of Christians; he invited all the Churches 
 of Protestant Christianity to take their part in the holy Crusade. 
 
 Early in his career he conceived the idea of evangelizing 
 the whole Region, and he lived to see great progress in carrying 
 it out. His plans were bold and original, but always practical, 
 and which would work. There was nothing in him Utopian, 
 
( 60 ) 
 
 sentimental, or illusory, and success crowned all his endeavours, 
 though he did not live to see it, and half a century's experience 
 has confirmed the justice of his views. He could not rest 
 satisfied with the tiny populations of Raiatea, and Rarotonga 
 (of which island he was the first discoverer) : the fervour of his 
 spirit led him to desire, in spite of the inadequacy of his means, 
 to go on from island to island, and plant a living Christianity ; 
 for he formed and carried out the bold conception of training 
 converted Heathen to become Teachers and Evangelists in 
 other Heathen islands, a truly Divine method, and blessed 
 beyond his utmost dreams. It seems almost fabulous, if sub- 
 sequent years had not proved the reality. He came, he saw, he 
 conquered : like a giant he strode over leagues of sea, and 
 anticipated difficulties seemed to vanish before him. 
 
 There were no Steamers then, and few sailing-vessels; but 
 he built his own, the " Messenger of Peace," and he dauntlessly 
 navigated the vast realm of Oceania, dotted with many hundred 
 isles ; in the last year of his life his exertions in England enabled 
 him to provide a better and larger vessel, and the Steam-Mis- 
 sionary Ship has long superseded his slow means of progress. 
 After his return from England in 1838, he made his first attempt 
 to evangelize the black races in the New Hebrides ; he landed 
 with success in 1839 on the islands of Futuna and Tanna : on 
 the island of Erromanga he was killed and devoured by those, 
 whom he came to save and bless. His last words in his Journal 
 before he started on this fatal voyage were : " None of these 
 " things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so 
 " that I finish my course with joy, and the Message, which I 
 " have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of His 
 " Grace." The last sentence written by him on the preceding 
 evening was: "This is a memorable day." And almost his 
 last words : " Oh, how much depends upon to-morrow ! " 
 
 The darkness, which for a time shrowded Erromanga, was 
 like the darkness before day, the preceder of an exceeding light, 
 which has overshadowed the New Hebrides. The man, who 
 murdered him, was converted, and two sons of this man became 
 leading Teachers in the Mission-School, which was erected close 
 to the spot, where he had fallen half a century before. 
 
 John Williams had been unwilling to build on another's 
 foundation, for he was a pioneer, and the settled desire of 
 his Soul was to preach the Gospel in Regions beyond, and 
 not to boast in another man's line of things made ready to 
 his hand ; but he paved the way for others. It is a wonder, 
 that he had been spared so long from fever, shipwreck, the 
 poisoned arrow, or accident by land and water : for twenty- 
 three years, he had been permitted to carry on his work, his 
 blessed work, the beginning and continuation and ending of 
 
( 61 ) 
 
 which had been predestinated at his birth : if he died at the 
 age of forty-three, he had accomplished a work left undone 
 since the beginning of time, the linking of these scattered 
 islands together in one blessed chain. Love to his Saviour, 
 and Souls of men, Faith in the veracity of the Divine Promise 
 as to the universal diffusion of the Gospel, conviction, that the 
 Gospel was suited to and intended for the wants of the most 
 debased of mankind, and the only cure of Human ills : these 
 were the great principles of this Hero-Missionary. 
 
 John Williams is described as having no personal interests 
 apart from his people. A Missionary, who is unable to identify 
 himself with the people, among whom he labours, cannot under 
 any circumstances be an efficient labourer, and, if he has any 
 other object in view but this to identify himself, he has mistaken 
 his vocation. To be the bearer of every man's sorrow, the 
 comforter of every man's grief, the strengthener of every man's 
 weaknesses : to do this, and to do it until death : it has been 
 rightly said that this is the object and duty of a Missionary. A 
 man, who never allows himself to forget, that the people are not 
 his equals according to his European notions, though in the sight 
 of God they are in very deed his equals, and some in very deed 
 his superiors in knowledge of Christ for the saving of Souls ; 
 who cannot overlook the fact, that they are rude, noisy, naked, 
 and in some outward matters even offensive ; who cannot admit 
 them at all times into his own simple habitation, but treats them, 
 as if they were servants, and confines his intercourse with them 
 to the hours of his public duty : such a man is destitute of the 
 one great qualification of a Hero -Missionary : such a man will 
 not bring Souls to Christ ; his name will not sound stirring in 
 the legends of the converted tribe ; he will not be hailed as a 
 Father, on his return, and wept for, as a Father, when he dies : 
 the mention of his name will not stay the attacks of wild 
 Heathen tribes, as it is reported in the Biography of John 
 Williams, that they spared a village for his sake. 
 
 The Hero-Missionary, with his supernaturally enlarged and 
 enlightened powers of vision, looks over the barriers, which 
 limit the power of the less gifted. He admits indeed, that 
 segregation from the civilized world, want of opportunity, 
 a different climate, a difference of race, an absence of culture, 
 have made men different, but not necessarily inferior : he 
 recognizes the innate weaknesses of the genus Homo, which, if 
 uncontrolled, turn men into devils, and the germs of innate 
 goodness, which exist in all, and which, if developed by the 
 touch of the Holy Spirit, can transform some, whether their 
 skins be white, black, brown, yellow, or red, into Angels. It has 
 shocked me to hear how depreciatingly some Missionaries speak 
 even of their own flocks. As regards the people of North 
 
( 62 ) 
 
 India, I can certify, that they are good and lovable ; and in my 
 old age I have learnt to love, and esteem, and honour, men 
 of pure Negro race, who appear in some matters to be even of 
 a higher type than my own countrymen. No doubt Paul was of 
 the highest type of gentleman, and scholar, of his period ; yet we 
 find in his writings no assertion of a superiority over his converts, 
 some of whom were slaves, and yet dear brothers ; we find 
 in him, though a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and a Roman citizen, 
 no assertion of Caste over the Galatians ; he came in contact 
 with all, men of Europe, Asia, and Africa, Jew, and Greek, and 
 Roman, bondmen and free, but none were to him common and 
 unclean. Alas ! how far below this standard many of our 
 Missionaries fall ! 
 
 I now pass to the Heroic Missionary Society. I take as my 
 type " the Moravian, or the Church of the United Brethren " ; 
 for the Church and Society are identical. It was the offspring 
 of a bitter persecution by the Roman Catholics in Moravia : 
 a small remnant fled across the boundary of Austria, into Lusatia, 
 and settled on the estate of Count Zinzendorf, and founded their 
 city of Herrnhtit. I have visited it, sat in the Council-room, 
 conferred with the leaders of the community, visited their 
 widows, and worn-out Missionaries, in their humble homes, and 
 knelt in their great Friedhof : they were first in the Protestant 
 Mission-field, they are one of the few Associations, that have 
 obtained a footing in every one of the four portions of the non- 
 Christian world ; and they deliberately chose the most debased 
 and degraded tribes as the objects of their love, because such 
 as they seemed to need the Gospel most : their agents in Truth 
 wore the garb of Poverty, and were poor in Spirit also : in the 
 countries, where they worked among Slaves, they were ready 
 to become Slaves also, even as our Lord took upon Himself 
 the form of a Slave, " fwp<prjv SovXov \a/3tev." With the poor 
 Hottentot they were not ashamed to suffer hardship and perse- 
 cution, and to maintain, that these poor outcasts had Souls, 
 for which Christ had died. With the Eskimo they lived as 
 brethren, and won them to themselves, content with the poorest 
 and most unsavoury fare, labouring with their own hands, trying 
 not to be a burden to their Church, which was so poor, that 
 it has still to.be sustained by the alms of other Denominations, 
 for they were doing work, which no other Society could do : 
 they literally went about as the disciples of Jesus, without scrip 
 or change of garment, and their examples of self-denial won 
 the hearts of their people : in these last days they have opened 
 an asylum for lepers at Jerusalem. Their doctrines were as 
 simple as their practice, " Nothing but Christ crucified " : they 
 had a courage, which no danger could daunt, and a Love, which 
 no harsh treatment could efface : who ever heard of a Moravian 
 
( 63 ) 
 
 appealing to public meetings, or a public Press, or getting 
 up deputations to the Foreign Office of a European Govern- 
 ment, to organize armed relief-expeditions, or avenge their 
 slaughtered brethren ? They took death, and the spoiling of 
 their goods, joyfully : they had a quiet constancy, which no 
 hardship could exhaust: there were, and are, no Exeter-Halls to 
 trumpet their names, and no Periodicals to puff them up with 
 conventional praise : in their Church there are no rich men to 
 subscribe annual thousands, and yet they have left a mark on 
 the world, which no time can efface. Their types were : single- 
 ness of purpose, simplicity of bearing, self-consecration, and 
 contentment with a little. If I wished to praise a Missionary, 
 I should say, that he is worthy of being a Moravian. Many 
 Societies have done well, but this has excelled them all, for 
 it has most nearly approached to the ideal Church, formed after 
 the pattern of the Founder: first and foremost in the great 
 battlefield, yet seeking the last and lowest among the ranks 
 of men : " I was a stranger, and ye took me in : I was sick, and 
 ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye came unto me." The 
 blessings of those ready to perish have accompanied, and still 
 accompany, the gentle footfall of the Moravian brethren, as 
 they tread the soil of distant and inhospitable climes, unknown, 
 unpraised, but not unrewarded. 
 
 The mode of conducting Missions must be heroic also. We 
 have but one life to keep, or lose : how can we spend it in 
 the best way ? If Souls are to be won to Christ, it must be 
 by men, or women, whose Souls are overflowing with Love to 
 Christ. I ask not for ascetics, or celibates under vows, or 
 adopters of the native dress, or the turner of the formal prayer- 
 wheel, or the daily celebrant, but such an expression of character 
 on the countenance, such a mode of utterance, such a voice, 
 thoughts that move, words that burn, as display earnestness, and 
 that the Soul of the Missionary is on fire. All Human talents 
 are only so far profitably employed, as they are used to save Souls ; 
 all Human knowledge is of no avail, unless it conduces directly 
 or indirectly to the extension of our Master's Kingdom : the 
 simple Gospel outweighs it all, so simple that all can under- 
 stand, so profound, that no one can get beyond it. The 
 great Heroes, of whom I have spoken, and the great 
 Missionary band of Moravian Heroes, differed from each 
 other essentially, but they have formed the same conception of 
 Christ, and of their duly : they looked over the Human fences of 
 Churches, and saw the awful vision of the face of Christ only : 
 they had a burning desire to carry His Message face to face, 
 mouth to mouth, in its naked simplicity : they thought nothing 
 of highly decorated chapels, and Altar-cloths, stoles, music, 
 painted glass, and architecture : they took the living Word to 
 
( 64 ) ' 
 
 dying Souls, teaching the poor Heathen to live decent, Holy 
 lives in this transitory world, and through Faith to inherit 
 eternal life hereafter. There was no necessity for hair-shirts or 
 flagellations, for long ceremonies or retreats : theirs was the 
 daily round of Holy duty, whether steering the Mission-Ship, 
 building the Mission-School, or preaching the Mission-Sermon, 
 until the very hour that they are called away, which is the best 
 proof, that their allotted task was done. I would have you 
 realize the dignity, the greatness of the office : it is not a 
 romantic, or sentimental, employment, such as discoursing with 
 Brahmans under a tree, or gathering sweet little children in a 
 School : there is much that is distasteful, and humbling, and 
 sometimes a feeling of despair. 
 
 I quote the following from the Chronicle of the London 
 Missionary Society to evidence, that I am not alone in my 
 sentiments as to the qualification of a Missionary: "Thus they 
 live and work for God and for man, and grow grey in the 
 Service of both : and at the call of the Divine Master they rest 
 from their labours, and find a grave in the midst of the scenes 
 and results of their life's varied toil. But, though the body 
 sleeps with the Christian's sleep, they live still in their works. 
 Ignorance or prejudice maywiite, ' Only a Missionary ' upon 
 the simple stone, which marks the burial-place, but, as of Sir 
 Christopher Wren in St. Paul's Cathedral, so in some island- 
 gem of the Ocean, arrayed in a higher than natural beauty 
 through their presence and labours, a truthful and worthy 
 inscription will be, ' If you seek a monument, look around! 
 In ten thousand forms their life shows itself, and will con- 
 tinue to do so : in the physical aspect of the people, in the 
 birth-rate and death-rate, in dress, houses, public buildings, 
 domestic life, employments, Education and literature, Law 
 and social order, peace between rival factions and tribes, 
 commercial intercourse with other Nations, interest in, and 
 acquaintance with, the History and proceedings of people of 
 distant lands ; but, above all, in character and life, in Religion 
 and Worship, in Christian effort and liberality, in the Christian 
 tone pervading the whole community, in Jesus Christ received 
 and followed as the guide of life, and in trust in Him as the 
 hope in death. Truly the life of such Christian messengers is 
 one full of immortality. They are among the blessed ones 
 who, ' turning many to righteousness, shall shine as the stars 
 for ever and ever.' " 
 
 The Hero must.not be cast down, must not be diverted from 
 his purpose, must not change his ground. We can admire the 
 perseverance of a bad man in a bad cause ; how much more of a 
 good man in a good cause ! Though for long years they may 
 have toiled and done nothing, yet at His word they again cast 
 
( -65 ) 
 
 down their nets. The famous Las Casas had a fixed purpose 
 to protect the poor Natives of America, and he is reported to 
 have done" something every day of his life to advance the one 
 great idea, which dominated his existence. Hudson Taylor has 
 put it well : " Go in glad obedience : in fullest confidence, 
 without anxiety, to do a definite work." Such is the high type, 
 such the practice of those Hero-Missionaries, whom I have 
 noticed. They verily knew how to die daily : as servants of the 
 Most High they did not strive, or cry, or murmur, or appeal to 
 the Arm of the Flesh, but suffered even as their great Example 
 had suffered also. 
 
 Does the modern Missionary, as a class, rise to this high 
 level ? I speak not of one Nation, or one Society, or one 
 Denomination. I have been a close observer of the Missionary 
 in his goings-out and comings-in for half a century, seen them 
 in their fields of work, read their reports in many Languages^ 
 visited Training Colleges, and sat in many committee-rooms. 
 I think that there is a falling-off from the Heroic type, and 
 a tendency on their part to make themselves too comfortable, 
 somehow or other to connect the office of Missionary with the 
 opportunity of early marriage, to take the matter too lightly. 
 It is not pretended, that Missionaries must not take proper care 
 of their lives, and protect themselves from the climate : they 
 are bound to do so, and the Missionary Societies are bound to 
 provide them with the means for doing so. Nothing would be 
 more wrong than to fall into the errors of a certain well-known 
 American Mission, where nothing is provided, where the 
 Missionary is supposed to support himself by his labours, and 
 in consequence grows weak and ill on a Native diet unsuited to 
 his European constitution, and in a Native hut. This is a 
 wanton trifling with valuable lives. But it is the tendency of 
 our age to be soft and effeminate and luxurious in everything ; 
 there is a general softening of that fibre, on which strength of 
 character, self-denial, and consecration, depend. Young men 
 desire an income, a wife, and a home : they are not very 
 ambitious, not very earnest : they rather shun the hard lives on 
 the track of secular employment, on which they and their 
 contemporaries have started : they covet the improved social 
 position. How much we have fallen from the standard of our 
 countrymen, Columba of Iona, Columbanus, Aidan of Lindis- 
 farne, Gall, Boniface of Exeter ! How wide is the difference of 
 the easy-going Missionary of our generation from the type, that 
 has come down to us of the early Christians ! Paul gave up all 
 these things for the glory of God, and for the extension of the 
 Redeemer's Kingdom. It is time, that severer, loftier, more 
 heroic, sentiments should be pressed home. It seems a shame 
 to make the comparison, but it must be made. No young 
 
( 66 ) 
 
 Military officer, or Civilian, or Merchant, of the age of 25, 
 whose lot was cast in a foreign country, would burden himself 
 with a family: some might like to do so, but their circumstances 
 forbid it. The outer world, and the Roman Catholic Press, 
 scoff at this conspicuous phase of Protestant Missionary life, 
 which terribly impedes the Lord's work, and entails a vast 
 waste of the alms of the Churches collected to evangelize the 
 Heathen. There may come a time in a Missionary's life, when 
 a helpmate may be of advantage to the work of the Mission, but 
 not in his tender years, when he should be out among his 
 people, prepared for long journeys, and transfers to distant 
 localities. Paul has not been silent in word and example on 
 this subject. Then, again, the English Training is not such as 
 to make a young man prepared to bear hardship. I have visited 
 the Training Colleges of Germany, and they contrast favourably. 
 I found on enquiry that such a thing as an engagement to be 
 married is not permitted. The student there works in the 
 garden and the carpenter's shop, does menial services in the 
 House, and yet is a Hebraist and a Grecian. Such employ- 
 ments sharpen the Intellect, and rouse latent powers. John 
 Williams owed much of his influence to his skill as a blacksmith. 
 Bishop Selwyn the Elder could not have done what he did do, 
 had he not been an expert manager of a ship, and a man fertile 
 in resource. 
 
 Let me look at the subject from another point of view. How 
 much do we read in Missionary letters and reports of their 
 families, birth of children, death of children, illness of wife, and 
 domestic cares, while the reader is anxious to know, how the 
 Gospel-warfare goes on, what progress has been made. Only 
 imagine the public dispatch of a General or Governor, in which 
 such details were even alluded to ! In private letters to friends 
 such things might be noticed, but not in the documents sent 
 home to be placed before the committee. Nothing strikes a 
 committee-man more than the preponderate proportion of the 
 correspondence, which is occupied with notices of the wives 
 and children of Missionaries, as if the committee were a Board 
 of Guardians of the Poor, the Executive of a Matrimonial Com- 
 pany, the Trustees of an Orphan Home, and not the Directors 
 of a great Association to carry the Gospel to the Heathen. 
 How often a Missionary comes home in full health and vigour, 
 leaving for a time, or for ever, a field of work, for which he is 
 suited, and in which, after some years of pupilage, he has learned 
 to be useful, because his wife is ill 1 Would the General com- 
 manding an expedition, or the Governor of a Province, have 
 done so ? How often the Indian Official, or soldier, has to ship 
 off a sick wife, and cannot accompany her, and is doomed never 
 to see her again ! We have not far to look to find out what 
 
( 67 ) 
 
 Paul would have said, and what our Lord did say (Mark, x, 29). 
 Even in the life of John Williams we find mention of the illness 
 of his wife brought much too prominently forward : he was 
 always anticipating the necessity of an early return to England 
 for her sake; but he clung on for 18 years, and she arrived 
 home in excellent health, and outlived him some years. It is 
 against this exaggeration of human affections, that the servant 
 of Christ should struggle valiantly and prayerfully. We require 
 a higher scale of entire consecration, a more dauntless and un- 
 reserved surrender of life and its joys. 
 
 " Take my life, and let it be 
 Consecrated, Lord, to Thee." 
 
 The glamour of public meetings, and the indiscriminating 
 clamour of Missionary Periodicals, teeming with misplaced, 
 euphemistic, and exaggerated, praise, is enough to destroy the 
 spiritual state of any but the stoutest-hearted Missionary : what 
 wonder, if he becomes puffed up, and thinks himself somebody, 
 and that he has made a great Sacrifice in going to Persia, India, 
 or China, forgetting how much his worldly prospects and social 
 position have been advanced, how well he and his children are 
 looked after, how different in most cases would have been his 
 circumstances, had he followed the profession or trade of his 
 parents and brothers. There are giants amidst the body of 
 Missionaries, for whom nothing is too good, for they would in 
 secular professions have risen to distinction and wealth, but to 
 a very large proportion this would not have happened. The 
 praise of the good, self-denying, consecrated, Missionary is in 
 the heart of all, who care for such things, and many, unknown 
 to him personally, talk lovingly of him, when he is absent, and 
 sadly, when he is dead ; but the great Missionary is thinking 
 always of his own infirmity, of how much he has left undone, 
 and how much he could have done better, and rejoicing, that it 
 is given to him to spend and be spent. There is in modern 
 times a far wider spread of Missionary Spirit than in past years, 
 but it is not so deep : it has become a fashion, not a revelation 
 in the mind : a social tendency, not a personal call : a Profession 
 of a gentleman or a lady, not the Consecration of a Christian. It 
 is a strange feature in modern Missionary Reports to find the 
 word "gentleman" sometimes, and "lady" so often: they are 
 not New Testament words. Our Lord called his Mother 
 " Woman," and Paul spoke of his female associates as " Women." 
 
 We find no idle calls on the part of the Heroic Missionary 
 Society, or the survivors and relatives of Hero-Missionaries, 
 for vengeance on the murderers of the slain : this is one of 
 the features of the gradual degeneracy of the age, and the over- 
 
( 68 ) 
 
 weening self-assertion of a certain section of the British Middle 
 Classes. It is well to have a Giant's strength, but it is not well 
 to use it as a bully. Nothing would have been easier than to 
 have swept the Islands of Erromanga and Nikapu from sea 
 to sea >clean of all their inhabitants, to revenge the deaths of 
 Williams and Patteson ; but the Missionary Societies protested 
 against the very idea of retaliation, nor would the British re- 
 sponsible Authorities have tolerated it. The relations of the 
 deceased did not gather excited meetings in British towns, and 
 pass Resolutions, as in later cases, to petition the Government 
 to send expeditions of rescue or intimidation. Such weakness 
 of Faith, such want of sound judgment, such incomprehensible 
 misunderstanding of the duty of a Christian man, were reserved 
 to a later age. On the Platform the Missionary proudly, yet 
 humbly, professes, that he carries his life in his hand, ready 
 to live, God willing, and ready to die : if this were not the case, 
 how low the British Missionary would rank after the Swede, 
 the Norwegian, and the Swiss, who have no ships to send, and 
 whose countrymen still are ready to give up their lives, and fill 
 up all that remains of the sufferings of Christ. If a Missionary 
 has not stomaqh for such warfare, he had better retire into the 
 safe refuge of a London Curacy, or a Lancashire Manufactory, 
 or the secular vocations of his parents and relations, where he 
 will find Heathen to minister to, without risk to his life, or 
 causing alarm to his over-anxious relations and the members 
 and secretaries of his committee. 
 
 The Hero-Missionary remembers, that his service is a life- 
 service, not the pastime of youth, nor the employment of manhood, 
 until a good piece of preferment, and a pleasant home, are 
 provided for him in his native country. Nothing is so dis- 
 heartening as to see so many instances of this forgetfulness of 
 their first love, and of the words of our Lord (Luke, ix, 62), " No 
 man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is 
 fit for the Kingdom of God." There should be no discharge in 
 this warfare save death, or certificated ill-health of the Missionary 
 himself, not of his wife and his children. It is a matter of con- 
 gratulation, that we have aged Bishops content to occupy their 
 posts until Death, that we have aged Missionaries, who have 
 not preferred the ties of blood, or the claims of family, to the 
 work, which has been the desire of their youth, the joy of their 
 manhood, and the solace of their old age. Great men desire, 
 when their time comes, to die like warriors on the field of battle, 
 and to be buried under the shadow of the Chapel, which their 
 own hands erected amidst the flock, which their own words had - 
 brought to God. " Here am I, Lord, and the children, whom 
 Thou hast given me." It was well said by Bishop Steere, that 
 his death at his post may do much more than his life, and he 
 
( 69 ) 
 
 practised what he preached, and is buried behind the Com- 
 munion-table of the Cathedra], which he had himself constructed. 
 
 The Hero-Missionary is tender in heart, gentle in words, slow 
 to anger, and easily pacified. He is not insensible of the 
 heinousness of sin, but his heart melts in pity towards the 
 sinner. He does not strike with his hand or stick the bodies of 
 the poor Natives, whose Souls he has come out to try to save ; 
 he does not usurp an authority over them, because his face is 
 white, and he is one of a strong Nation, as he remembers, that 
 he is their minister, the servant of servants, as was his Master, 
 who washed the feet of His disciples ; he does not tie them up 
 to trees to be flogged, and kept in durance for whole nights, but 
 he attaches them to himself by the silken cords of Love. They 
 came among these poor children of Nature, not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister. 
 
 He may be the son of a noble in his own country, and he is 
 not puffed up, or he may be the son of a country-shopkeeper, 
 and he is not abashed, nor does he strive in his new profession 
 to be conventionally treated as a gentleman, for in his humility 
 he takes in either case the standpoint of being a Christian, occu- 
 pying the same position, that was occupied by Paul the great 
 scholar and Roman citizen, and by Peter the humble fisherman 
 of Galilee : he seeks not high places, nor great companions, nor 
 first-class-accommodation in Steamers or Railways : he is eco- 
 nomic of the funds of the Society, which is his nursing mother ; 
 he is not always calling out for grants for his wife, or his 
 children : he does not desire to dwell in a comfortable house, 
 for he minds not high things, and is content with men of low 
 estate: his door is ever open to the people, whom he came to 
 win to Christ : his attire is simple, and he seeks not the com- 
 pany of men of this world, though indirectly the type of the 
 Holy, upright man, which he presents to their eyes, has a reflex 
 blessing on their Souls : though silent, his life is a Sermon to 
 them. He acts up to the ideal of the Christian soldier, which 
 he had conceived in his youth, when the message came to him, 
 when the Holy Spirit overshadowed him : to be brave and 
 strong, yet loving and tender ; full of Holy ardour yet self- 
 controlled, and free from spurious excitement ; firm in con- 
 victions, yet tolerant ; firm of purpose, yet merciful and 
 considerate ; meek and lowly, yet proud of his calling ; fearing 
 God, and fearing no one else. 
 
 My friends, you must be thoroughly equipped for the combat 
 with something more than the surface teaching of the ordinary 
 Theological College. One of my fellow-students, fifty-five years 
 ago, at the East India College, was a Jew, a believing Jew and a 
 clever Jew, and he took the highest marks in Paley's "Evidences 
 of Christianity." I asked him, whether he were not entirely con- 
 
( 70 ) 
 
 vinced, and he replied, that it had not the least effect upon him. 
 Such must often be the. teaching of the ordinary Missionary to 
 a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Mahometan, and to a certain degree to 
 the Pagan. It is always easy to speak with contempt of the 
 Indian Fakir, smeared with ashes, and sneer at the prayer-wheel 
 of the Buddhist (something very like which in kind is found in 
 many a Christian Church), and point out the blots in the 
 Mahometan scheme of Salvation : it seems easy to show up the 
 utter abomination of Human Sacrifices ; but the Missionary will 
 find that behind these exoteric symbols there is a radical mis- 
 conception of the problem of Human Nature in the minds of 
 the professors of a false Religion, and behind the poor ignorant 
 devotee he will find men with minds much more subtle than his 
 own, gifted with a power of argument far exceeding his own, 
 appealing to authorities, of which the Missionary is ignorant, 
 and the uninterrupted practice of centuries. The idol is some- 
 thing more to the believer than a bit of wood and stone : the 
 believers are not men of the nineteenth century, and with the 
 impress of European training. To Miracles and prophecies 
 quoted by the Missionary the Teachers and believers of a dif- 
 ferent Religious conception will quote prophecies and -Miracles 
 of their own : to the words of the Bible, and the claim of 
 Revelation, they will oppose the words of their own sacred 
 books, and claim equal supernatural authority : the sequence of 
 historical events, and the facts of Geography, are unknown to 
 them : it becomes at last a struggle for life upon the first 
 principles of Human existence, and the contest must take place 
 upon an arena, of which the poor Theological student of England 
 never dreamt, behind the Altar, out of sight of the Church, in 
 scorn of the Bible, or any Christian authority, and nothing but 
 the outpouring of the Holy Spirit can bring the unbeliever to 
 see, and know, and bow to, the Truth. The Hindu in his 
 prolific Literature works out his great metaphysical question, 
 " What am I ? whence came I ? whither do I go ? " 
 
 Hot) ryevo/nai ; TroOev eZfii ; ri'vos XP-P iv tfh-Oov, airrj\6ov \ 
 
 And it ends in Nothingness : his successor the Buddhist 
 makes this Nothingness the object, aim, and the end, of existence: 
 the Mahometan boldly quotes the Old and New Testaments to 
 fashion a system, which can never respond to the yearnings 
 of the Human heart, or satisfy its aspirations : the poor Pagan 
 in his blindness is so far ahead of the modern educated Atheist, 
 that he feels and admits the presence of the Deity and His 
 omnipotence, and tries to appease Him by Sacrifices ; with him 
 it is not the cultivation, but the creation of Faith, that has to be 
 undertaken : he is ready, however, to listen to something better, 
 
( 71 ) 
 
 and welcomes the Teacher, who comes with a semblance of 
 greater knowledge of the great Unknown. We read how, when 
 the first Missionary arrived from Rome in Northumbria, and a 
 Council was summoned to discuss how he should be received, 
 a wise old chieftain remarked, that the life of man seemed to 
 them, in their Heathen ignorance, like the flight of a bird out 
 of the dark winter outside into the warm and lighted chamber, 
 and then out at a window into another world of dark winter at 
 the opposite side ; the passage of a moment from a long 
 Unknown Past into a long and Unknown Future : the contem- 
 plation of this was crushing ; and, if the stranger from Rome 
 could tell them something a little more certain, he should be 
 welcomed. Such is the Spirit, with which a Teacher is 
 welcomed in many a Pagan Community. But is the ordinary 
 Missionary equal to this occasion ? Bred in an atmosphere 
 permeated by Darwinism, Pantheism, and Atheism, or in a 
 Church, where more value is placed on the Human surround- 
 ings, the Ritual and the externals, than the Eternal Truth, 
 can it be hoped, that he will mount up to the level of the 
 Religion of Religions, the object and aim of Human existence, 
 and with the Bible in his hand and in his heart, and nothing 
 else, grapple with the Hindu, Buddhist, Mahometan, or Pagan, 
 on the common ground of Right and Wrong, Truth and False- 
 hood, Judgment and Mercy, Sin and Repentance, Pardon and 
 Peace, opening out new worlds of thought to his astonished 
 hearers ? The Hero-Missionary can do this. He illustrates 
 his principles, and his doctrines, in ■■ his Christlike life and 
 words, and challenges his hearers to show him a better way 
 than the way of self-Sacrifice, self-control, and self-consecration, 
 to produce a higher conception than that of the Fatherhood 
 of God, of Faith in a Redeemer, of the presence and power 
 of the Holy Spirit, leading poor weak men to personal Holiness. 
 There are plenty of men, who will volunteer to go out, and 
 dwell a season amidst the polished Persian, the civilized Arabized 
 races, the Indian, who, with all his faults, is gentle and reason- 
 able, the intelligent Chinese, and the progressive Japanese. 
 They represent Nations on the highest rounds of the ladder of 
 Civilization, our superiors in many Arts and Graces, with their 
 monuments of literature, and Architecture, and their time- 
 honoured customs : they have centuries ago got beyond the 
 epoch of Human Sacrifice, or Cannibalism ; they have had in 
 their midst great Sages, who felt after God, if haply they could 
 find Him, men standing on the same platform as Socrates, and 
 Plato, and Pythagoras. There is very little discomfort in such 
 service, and no danger : mere worldlings dwell among such 
 races for the purpose of Commerce, and the service of the State. 
 We do not wish to undervalue such services, for such were the 
 
( 72 ) 
 
 Missionary operations of Paul among the Greeks and Romans. 
 The process of sapping and mining in some countries has long 
 been going on. Education has brought with it a contempt for 
 Idolatry, but Civilization has brought with it a contempt for all 
 Religions, and a disbelief in the Supernatural, a doubt as to the 
 reality of a Future State, and fantastical notions not authorized 
 by the Bible. 
 
 But this is not the higher order of service : it does not mean 
 the same self-Sacrifice ; it does not approach so near the 
 services rendered to Man by our Saviour: our Lord abased 
 Himself, when He took the form of a Slave, and became Man 
 for our redemption. He thought it not vile to dwell in the tents 
 of men, and associate with the poor erring children of men. 
 Patteson and John Williams, and the whole army of Moravian 
 Missionaries, learnt to look over the wall of partition, that 
 separates race from race, and to call no one common and 
 unclean : there have been Missionaries, who have had the 
 fortitude given to them to go in, and dwell among lepers, and 
 have succumbed to the disease themselves : there are those, who 
 have found a "Grace vouchsafed to them to dwell among the 
 poor, dirty, savage outcasts of the Human family, to submit to 
 insult, hardship, and perils, to die in Spirit every day, and at 
 length breathe out their last breath in some round straw hut, 
 looking to Jesus, yet still thinking of friends and home. 
 
 " Dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos." 
 
 But there was no murmuring, for they knew how to be humbled 
 but not ashamed, to be cast down but not disheartened, bearing 
 about them the marks of the spear in their sides, and the print 
 of the nails on their hands and feet. The service of such was 
 great and noble : the heart of the worldling beats high, when 
 he hears of such achievements, and he recognizes the grandeur 
 of the life, though he is blind to the motive and the power. 
 Surely there must be joy in Heaven, when one of the miserable 
 savages, to the outward eye nearer the animal than the man, is 
 brought into the fold, and his body becomes the temple of the 
 Holy Ghost, for Christ in very deed died for him also. The 
 self-Sacrificing Missionary teaches the men to be brave, yet not 
 cruel, and the women to be sweet and affectionate, yet not 
 unchaste : out of the stores of his acquired experience he teaches 
 them humble Arts, and the very rudiments of knowledge, the 
 very fundamental of Human Graces, to be decent in act and 
 word, to respect Human life, to recognize property, to be sober 
 and chaste, to Love God as a Father, and cease to fear Him like 
 a Slave, to bow in gratitude to the free offer of pardon : and yet 
 all this is possible : it has been done, it may be done again : it 
 
( 73 ) 
 
 must be done by some of you, who stand here, and hear me this 
 day : " iv toStw vlxa." 
 
 It will be nothing wonderful, if in due time we convert the 
 people of India, China, and the extreme Orient. They are not 
 wiser and stronger than were the Greeks and Romans in the 
 days of their greatness, and we knew that the Cross proved 
 sufficient for their conversion. And experience has shown, that 
 the same Cross is sufficient for races, whom Caesar never knew, 
 of whose existence the Greek Philosophers, and Paul, had not 
 the faintest idea. We thus begin to realize the full meaning of 
 the prophecies of Isaiah : " The Isles shall wait for His Law." 
 And the words of our Lord : " They shall gather His elect from 
 the uttermost parts of the earth." And again, in the Revela- 
 tion : " Behold a great number, whom no man can number, out 
 of every Nation, and all tribes, and peoples, and tongues." 
 
 It is only after an all-round perusal of Missionary reports, that 
 I am able to differentiate the degree of self-Sacrifice of Mission- 
 aries in different fields. How light seems the burden of the 
 comfortable Missionary in China and India, when contrasted 
 with that of his brother in Africa or New Guinea ! They are 
 indeed Apostles of the ancient type. 
 
 There are three classes, in one or other of which you must, as 
 Christian men, range yourselves : 
 
 I. Whatever secular station you occupy, whether at home or 
 abroad, you must place the duty of assisting the evangelizing of 
 mankind in the very first rank of duties, for nothing can approach 
 it in importance : if your lot takes you to non-Christian countries, 
 you will find plenty of opportunities to serve the cause, and 
 bitterly you will regret in your old age, if you neglect your 
 opportunities. 
 
 II. If you have a call to go forth as a Missionary to the 
 civilized non-Christian Nations, if you find yourself in possession 
 of special gifts, consecrate them : do not take a worldly view of 
 the subject, and mix up a Mission to a dying world with visions 
 of early Matrimony, social advantage, and a pleasant career. 
 Mere worldlings act thus. Many a soldier, many a student of 
 Nature, many a Ruler of men, have risen far above such a low 
 level of Human aspirations. The Athlete, and the Mechanic, 
 give you a lesson. Show to the Heathen, that you come among 
 them, understanding the Law of self-Sacrifice, and that you 
 come not, as the haughty Briton, one who lords it over, and 
 sometimes strikes or ill-uses the lower races, but as their brother 
 and their servant for Christ's sake. 
 
 III. But let me show a more excellent way to those, who are 
 strong in body, strong in spirit, and also have worked out the 
 sublime idea of self-Sacrifice and self-consecration. The call 
 will come to some of you, as it has come to others, in your 
 
( 74 ) 
 
 dreams by night, in your visions by day, as you walk along, or 
 are in prayer, or in ■• the midnight- watches. It will gradually 
 overpower you, and make you captive, and at length you will 
 call out with a loud voice, " Send me, Lord, for I am ready." 
 For still many a sunny island of the South Seas, many a retired 
 valley of the great central Plateau of Asia, many a dark forest- 
 clad Savannah of the great valley of the Kongo, many a wild 
 tribe of South America, and, alas ! our own fellow-subjects, the 
 neglected, ill-treated Australian aborigines, and the poor Bush- 
 men of the Cape Colony, are waiting, waiting for the moving of 
 the waters of the Fountain of Life, and for some one to help 
 them down ; lifting up their eyes for the sight of the blessed 
 feet of those, who bring the Gospel-message ; calling, calling 
 for their man, the Allen Gardiner, and Patteson, and Williams, 
 of their generation : they are standing in your midst, though 
 not as yet revealed to the eyes of men. In the long course of 
 centuries no Prophet or Evangelist has ever come near these 
 poor heathen ; they have laid out of the course of the Revelation 
 of the Gospel : they are waiting for one, who, in his life as well 
 as his words, will illustrate to them the Life and Passion of our 
 Lord and their Lord : they ask not for the refinement, nor the 
 fantasies, of modern religious thought and practice, but with 
 dumb voices they ask the men of the Nineteenth Century and 
 civilized Europe to teach them to clothe their nakedness, to 
 dwell in decent dwellings, to cluster in villages, to live with 
 one consort, and to respect Human life, to do all things in a 
 Christian way, and to realize the presence of the Risen Saviour. 
 In the last desperate struggling of Heathendom it may be, 
 that the man of God, who thus appears like an Angel among 
 them, will be killed, and devoured ; but his death will prove the 
 dawn of the new life : over the martyr-tomb will spring up the' 
 new Chapel, and the younger generation, who witnessed the 
 slaughter, and partook of the terrible feast, will, by the Grace 
 of God, be converted and made new men, and, like Paul, 
 become Evangelists. When their day of Grace comes, and 
 they understand the matter, like the 'Jews at Jerusalem a few 
 days after the Crucifixion, they will be pricked to the heart. 
 History is always repeating itself; but on this generation, the 
 men of your age and country, rests the duty of completing the 
 work, till the Gospel cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. 
 At the present moment there are Regions still unevangelized, 
 sufferings for Christ's sake not yet suffered, and crowns of Martyrs 
 and Confessors not yet won. The resources of Christianity, the 
 capacities of Christian men, are not yet exhausted. 
 
 Finally, my dear friends, suffer me to say to you one word 
 more, and this word applies not only to the Missionary, whose 
 vocation is the highest of earthly vocations, but to each one of 
 
( 75 ) 
 
 us, however humble and prosaic our special vocation may be. 
 What were we created for ? Why are we kept alive, except to 
 do some special work, which is marked out for us by the 
 inexorable teaching of circumstances, circumstances which are 
 controlled by the omniscience of God ! How can we succeed 
 in any work, if our attempts are not sanctified by prayer ! 
 " Labora et Ora," for true prayer is something done in the 
 service of the Master, followed by praise for being selected to 
 do it, not the empty litany, or the conventional prayer-meeting. 
 Say what we like, we are all day-labourers, and he serves his God 
 best, who does his day's work in the best manner and in the 
 best spirit. None miss so entirely the mainspring of Human 
 action, as those, who strive to dissociate Religion from the simple 
 round, the common task, of the most prosaic, the most unro- 
 mantic, the most depressing lot in life. 
 
 It is not success, that sanctifies the work, for many of the 
 best of us in our noblest undertakings do not succeed. We are 
 thwarted by some narrow-minded obstructors standing on the 
 next round of the ladder above us ; we are baffled at every turn, 
 and at length laid aside by Poverty, Sickness, or Death. It is 
 not striving that wins : the race is not to the swift, nor the battle 
 to the strong. We must not look for the selfish satisfaction of 
 thinking, that we have done something ; we must not hope for 
 the applause of bystanders, for the foolish multitude generally 
 praise the wrong person, or praise the right person for the wrong 
 thing. We must find our reward in the work itself: something 
 each day accomplished ; something done ; some kindly word 
 spoken ; some cup of water offered to the suffering ; some noble 
 thought cherished, some achievement, which the world ought 
 not willingly to let die, shadowed forth, thought out, conceived, 
 if not actually brought forth. Good work, earnest work, prayerful 
 work, can never be without a blessing to the worker, which will 
 follow him after life's endless toil and endeavour to his rest: 
 and what greater work than the saving of a soul ! 
 
 I once stood at the mouth of the great Panjab Salt-Mine on 
 the River Jhilam, and watched the long procession of women, 
 children, and men, of young and old, slowly advancing towards 
 me, toiling up the steep incline, each with head bent, and back 
 curved under the burden of rock-salt, which they brought from 
 the bowels to the surface of the earth. This was their hard and 
 palpable day's labour. To the strength of each the burden was 
 adjusted; the young daily grew into capacity to bear heavier, 
 the old daily felt their strength less equal to their diminishing 
 load, but all rested night after night wearied with their daily 
 round, and all each morning rose to the consciousness of a day's 
 sweating and straining, and a risk of accidents and disease, and 
 the dark River to be crossed at last. 
 
( 76 ) 
 
 Tears started in my eyes, as I thought of the sad procession 
 of my contemporaries, whom during my own life I have seen 
 toiling and striving, lifting their heavy burdens, or sinking by 
 the way under them. I thought of the strong and enthusiastic, 
 too eager for the strife, who fell years ago ; the patient and 
 uncomplaining, who toiled on till within the last few years; 
 the yearly diminishing group of fellow-labourers with yearly- 
 diminishing force ; and the dark unknown Future before me. 
 
 But there is no prison so deep, that its depths are not reached 
 by some ray of God's interminable day, and, as I looked into 
 the faces of the salt-bearers, I became aware, that one ray of 
 light reached to the lowest slope of their dungeon, and, as they 
 advanced upwards, it ever became brighter and brighter, shining 
 hopefully in their uplifted eyes, and gladdening their hearts with 
 the thought of home, and rest, and of labour, sanctified for 
 the sake of the little ones, the old ones, the sick ones, to whose 
 comforts their earnings ministered. The Hero - Missionary 
 places the Heathen, to whom he goes as Christ's Ambassador, in 
 that corner of his heart, where other men place their families. 
 
 Nay, more. God's great lessons are taught in His works, and 
 in His creatures. As each labourer reached the outer world, 
 and flung down his burden, his eyes insensibly turned up with 
 a look of thankfulness and acknowledgment to the kindly light, 
 which had led him, and then each unconsciously shrouded his 
 eyes with his hands, as if unable to bear the full glow of un- 
 utterable gladness, which the Grace of God sends to testify to 
 the sanctity and dignity of labour, however humble and con- 
 tracted the sphere : "Well done, thou good and faithful servant : 
 thou hast been faithful over a few things. Enter thou into the 
 joy of thy Lord ! " 
 
 Henry Martyr! s Hall, Cambridge, January, 1 888-1895. 
 
( 77 ) 
 
 3. On the Duty of a Missionary in the Hour of 
 Personal Peril. 
 
 " Can a woman forget her sucking child ? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not 
 forget thee ! " Isaiah, xlix, 15. 
 
 "Entreat me not to leave thee : where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be 
 buried : the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and 
 me." Ruth, i, 16, 17. 
 
 The question to be calmly considered is, under what circum- 
 stance is a Christian Missionary, or a Christian soldier, at liberty, 
 under fear of death, or personal suffering, to abandon his post ? 
 The danger comes suddenly; the young Missionary (for I do 
 not venture to give advice to the old and experienced) should 
 reflect beforehand, and be confirmed in his own mind, as to 
 what his duty requires, before the hour of peril arrives. 
 
 Any volunteer martyrdom, any unnecessary Sacrifice of life, 
 any ostentatious and arrogant thrusting oneself into danger, was 
 condemned by the early Church, and is still more unjustifiable 
 now. 
 
 There are three combinations of circumstances which may 
 arise : let us consider each separately. 
 
 A new Mission may have been founded, and no converts made. 
 Popular tumult, or Official oppression, may render the position 
 of the Missionary insupportable, and certainly render his labour 
 useless. He has no other alternative but to withdraw, even with 
 Sacrifice of houses and goods. He may possibly do so pre- 
 maturely : he may be wanting in nerve, or tact, and be unfit for 
 such a post of honour and danger; but his retirement would 
 only be blamed, if blamed at all, as a want of judgment. 
 Instances of such cases have occurred in the withdrawal both of 
 Protestant and Roman Catholic Missions. Moreover, if there 
 be any meaning in the oft-repeated phrase, " an open and closed 
 door," it is clear, that the Lord has closed the door for the time 
 at least. In these days the Divine command is not communi- 
 cated by the voice of Prophets, or visions and dreams, but by 
 the march of outward events ; and we must not attempt by the 
 Arm of the Flesh, by gunboats, or cannon, or aid of fighting 
 commercial Companies, to retain a position, which is not retain- 
 able by the unaided peaceful valour of the Missionary. No 
 blessing can rest on a Gospel preached under the protection of 
 cannon and rifles, or connected with commercial profit. This is 
 a dangerous error, into which Missionary Societies have in these 
 last days openly fallen, and which some Societies seem not to 
 avoid as much as they ought, notably in Equatorial Africa. 
 
 The second combination of circumstances arises, when a 
 
( 78 ) 
 
 Missionary has been successful in founding a Church, and the 
 Ruler of the country, either from caprice, or jealousy of the new 
 influences, or downright Religious intolerance, determines to 
 eject the foreign Missionary, seizes him, plunders him, imprisons 
 him, and puts him on board a vessel to convey him from the 
 shores, or takes him to the frontier and expels him. This is 
 force majeur, and the Missionary has nothing to do but submit, 
 and find some refuge, until the tyranny be overpast, and he can 
 get back again. This kind of treatment has often happened 
 to Missionaries in former centuries. Sad as was the necessity 
 to leave their flocks, they could not resist the superior force 
 brought against them ; the shepherds were smitten, if not 
 by death in this case, but by forcible exile, and the sheep 
 scattered. The same thing has happened repeatedly any 
 time during the last half century in Abyssinia, both to 
 Protestants and Roman Catholics. We can hardly imagine 
 the sorrow, which good, earnest Missionaries must have 
 felt, when the shores of their adopted country faded in the 
 distance, and they could too accurately imagine the perils and 
 sufferings of the poor native converts. Having done his own 
 duty, he can comfort himself with the reflection, that the Lord 
 cares for His own children ; that the whole History of the 
 Church tells us how persecution strengthens a rising Church, 
 and brings out strength of character. 
 
 " Sanguis martyrum Semen Ecclesise." 
 
 The third combination of circumstances is the most painful, 
 and on which the thoughts of friends of Missions must be fixed. 
 A flourishing Church is founded, and a persecution is com- 
 menced, rendering the situation of the Missionary one of extreme 
 danger, and tempting a half-hearted man to seek safety by 
 flight ; but here the problem divides itself: 
 
 (i) Shall he ftywith his flock ? or (2) leave them to take their 
 chance, and save himself and family ? 
 
 Let us think out both alternatives. 
 
 Our Lord, in Matthew's Gospel, says, "When they persecute 
 you in this city, flee ye into another." This does not imply, that 
 the pastor is to flee, and the sheep be left to be killed. Peter was 
 among the hearers of our Lord on this occasion, and we shall see 
 further on how he applied it. But if pastor and flock can both 
 escape, no blame can attach, We read how, 348 a.d., Ulfilas, 
 Missionary Bishop among the Goths, north of the River Danube, 
 during a heavy persecution, determined to withdraw himself and 
 his flock from its reach to the south bank of the river. He 
 settled in Maesia, in the country now known as Bulgaria. In 
 Africa it may be possible, that a Missionary labouring among 
 
( 79 ) 
 
 Nomad tribes should remove his flock from persecution, and 
 seek a quiet life elsewhere. In Europe, we know how the 
 Moravians fled from Roman Catholic persecution in Bohemia 
 to Saxony, and founded Herrnhut ; how the Huguenots fled 
 from persecution in France to England, and the Pilgrim-Fathers 
 fled from England to North America : the whole Church fled 
 together. 
 
 But in the second alternative, when the European Missionary, 
 losing heart, or fearing for his family, deserts his people (we 
 put the case hypothetically), what shall be said ? Our Lord, 
 in John's Gospel, says: "But he that is an hireling, and not 
 " the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf 
 " coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth ; and the wolf 
 " catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep." 
 
 Peter must have heard these words also. It is narrated how 
 thirty years later he fled from Rome to escape death at the hands 
 of Nero, About six miles out of the walls on the Appian Way he 
 met his Lord proceeding to Rome, and carrying His Cross. The 
 Apostle cried out, " Domine, quo vadis?" — "Lord, whither goeth 
 "Thou?" The reply was, "Romam iterum crucificari" — "To 
 " Rome again to be crucified." The humbled sinner turned 
 back at once- to Rome, and submitted to his fate, and in token of 
 deep humility was crucified with his head downwards. On the 
 spot connected with this legend now stands a Chapel, and often 
 as I visit Rome, I never fail to find my way to it, for it conveys a 
 lesson to all time, that no man, who has put his hand to the 
 plough, should turn back. Peter was a fisherman from the 
 Sea of Galilee, and yet was not unwilling to die with, and for, 
 strangers to his race and Language at Rome. The European 
 should not grudge the same Sacrifice for the inhabitants of the 
 shores of the lakes of Equatorial Africa. 
 
 In the next generation Polycarp suffered martyrdom at Smyrna, 
 at the age of ninety or more, and it is recorded, that by his death 
 he shielded his congregation from further persecution. Cyprian, 
 Bishop of Carthage, in the Decian persecutions in 250 a.d., had 
 been compelled for a time to seek safety in retreat, but in 253 
 A.D. he returned to his post, and suffered martyrdom. Alban, an 
 Englishman, refused to save himself by denying the Faith, 
 and suffered martyrdom at Verulam, in Hertfordshire, 304 a.d. 
 Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, in North Africa, died at his post 
 during the siege of that city by the Vandals, in 430 a.d. In 755 
 Boniface, an Englishman from Devonshire, but the apostle of 
 Burgundy, was killed by a mob, while engaged in his labour 
 of trying to convert the Pagans in Friesland. 
 
 To descend from things spiritual to things secular, we read 
 how Gordon of Khartum had many opportunities of personal 
 escape from that beleaguered city, but he declined to abandon 
 
( 80 ) 
 
 his Native troops and their families, and he fell with them, and 
 is covered with undying glory, as the man who was staunch and 
 unselfish. In the British Army there are Native regiments, 
 brought together and trained, and commanded by English 
 Officers : it would be inconceivable, that in the hour of peril the 
 Officers could retire on board the ships, and leave their soldiers 
 to their chance : but in what way does a Christian Church so 
 far differ from a military regiment ? The converts have been 
 brought together, trained, and baptized by the European 
 Missionary. He must show them the way how a Christian lives, 
 and, as Havelock said to Outram at Lucknow : " Come and see 
 how a Christian dies." In the Indian Mutinies of 1857 many 
 district Officers could have escaped, had they forgotten their 
 duty to their Government, and many, with their wives and 
 children, died at their posts. 
 
 In this heroism and self-abnegation consists the greatness 
 of character, and any practical deviation from the golden rule 
 of " dying with their flock" would indicate a great weakening of 
 the fibre of the Christian Missionary. It is not within the 
 bounds of probability, that any fear of death would have induced 
 Bishop Patteson, and John Williams, to desert their poor sheep 
 in the Southern Islands just at the moment, when their presence 
 to sustain, comfort, and maintain, them in the Faith, was most 
 needed. In the Korea, Annam, and many parts of the world, 
 we read, how Roman Catholic Missionaries have perished with 
 their converts, or submitted to a lengthened imprisonment. 
 
 The death under such circumstances is a blessed martyr- 
 dom : we must be cautious not to use this phrase too freely. 
 A man is said to be a martyr to the gout, or any other 
 disease, as a conventional phrase ; but it is not right to 
 say, that a Missionary who perishes from disease, like 
 Bishop Parker, or is killed for purely political reasons, like 
 Bishop Hannington, is a martyr. His death was not brought 
 about by a witnessing for the Faith. Had Joseph Thomson, 
 the African traveller, pushed on from Kavirondo to the 
 U-Sogo country, he would probably have suffered the same 
 fate, but not have been called a martyr for trying to enter the 
 Kingdom of U-Ganda by the back door. The History of the 
 Church tells us, what a martyr is from the time of Cyprian, and 
 Ignatius, and Polycarp, to the time of Cranmer,. one who dies 
 sooner than deny His Lord, either by word, or by deed, in 
 deserting the post entrusted to him. There may be many good 
 men, who have not the Grace of thus enduring to the end, for it 
 is a special Grace. Aged priests and strong men have swerved 
 from the trial, succumbed, or fled, while young girls and men of 
 ordinary type, with nothing of the hero or saint in their outward 
 appearance, have testified upto death. The young Missionary 
 
( 81 ) 
 
 should count the cost, and look upon a violent death as one of 
 the contfngencies, which he must be prepared to face. Per 
 crucem ad lucem ! If not equal to it, he had better stay at home. 
 
 A young Missionary named Arnot, who had been many years 
 in Africa, in 1889 closed his address to the Royal Geographical 
 Society, in my presence, as follows : " If they give me honour, 
 " I shall let them see, that all honour belongs to Thee. The 
 " one reason for my success in Africa was the reality of the presence 
 " and power of God with me night and day." 
 
 I have alluded to the word " family," and some further remarks 
 are required. After a careful consideration of the subject for 
 many years, I have come to the firm conviction, that a Mission- 
 ary in Equatorial Africa, East or West, at a distance of, say, fifty 
 miles from the coast, should not be encumbered with a family. 
 He is like the captain of a ship, the soldier on a campaign, the 
 explorer of unknown countries, and should not be weakened in 
 the hour of peril by personal and home considerations, calculated 
 to unnerve him. Women are quite as dauntless, quite as full of 
 high enthusiasm, as men ; but in savage countries they are 
 exposed by the Law of Nature to a double form of death, not 
 only the death by the sword or the stake, which, as history tells 
 us, they are ready to meet as unflinchingly as their brothers ; but 
 they are exposed to the risk of a worse death, i.e. a life of shame. 
 It appears to me to be wicked on the part of a committee to 
 expose them to such contingencies. China, Japan, India, Syria, 
 South Africa, the Coasts of East and West Equatorial Africa, are 
 fields suitable for women's work, and that work is abundant ; but 
 it should be a rule absolute, that as regards Equatorial Africa, 
 no woman should be allowed to be sent to a Mission in the 
 interior. Independently of the dangers above alluded to, it is 
 a cruel thing to send young wives to undergo the perils of 
 maternity far from all reasonable comforts. I have seen a pro- 
 cession, as it were, of young women pass from the committee- 
 room into African graves, with no possible advantage as regards 
 Mission-work to compensate for the frightful Sacrifice of life. 
 
 Prayers are offered weekly in some Churches for the safety of 
 our Missionaries in Africa. Is that sufficient ? The very object 
 of Missions is to convert the Heathen, and build up Native 
 Churches : we should pray that these poor converts may be 
 strengthened in the day of trial ; and that the Missionary, the 
 prolongation of whose short span of life is a small matter, may 
 have Grace given to him to do his duty in the moment of 
 extreme necessity, and witness a good confession : " Be thou 
 faithful until death, and I will give thee the crown of life." 
 
 Church-Work, February 18th, 1889-1895. 
 
( 82 ) 
 
 B. Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods in the Mission- Fields. 
 
 A great deal has lately appeared in print on the above subjects 
 in relation to the home-ministry. With regard to that I have 
 nothing to say, except to express my aversion to any form of 
 vow to the Lord of celibacy for a term of years, or for lifetime, 
 and to any scheme of possible absolution from such vows by a 
 Bishop, or anybody else. A vow should not be made rashly, 
 and without good cause, but if made ex animo, it should be 
 kept : " Better it is, that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou 
 shouldest vow, and not pay." My remarks apply now exclusively 
 to the foreign Mission-field, nor would I place on the volunteers 
 for that portion of the Lord's Service any burden, which they 
 ought not in equity to bear. I ask no more than that, which 
 was demanded from the fellows of Colleges in former years, that 
 for a stipulated term of years, say ten from the date of their 
 entering upon their ordination, they should not marry. After 
 the age of, say, thirty-three, they should be free to do as they 
 may wish. As regards the woman-worker in the field, on her 
 I would place no limit of time at all. I must leave it. to her 
 conscience after a perusal of I Cor. vii, 34 : it will be the sure 
 test, how far she has consecrated the whole of her youthful 
 talents, time, energies, and opportunities, to the work of the 
 Lord. Ten years of adult single life may be to her a blessing 
 also, and increase her usefulness in many ways. 
 
 Anyone, who has dwelt, as I have, twenty-five years in daily 
 contact with Missionaries, must know how large a portion of 
 the Missionary's wife's time is taken up in her domestic cares, 
 and how for long-recurring periods she can do nothing, absolutely 
 nothing, for the Mission ; how long illnesses entail separation, 
 abandonment of the field, sometimes accompanied by her 
 husband, whose career is cut short just at its commencement. 
 I shall recur to this subject further on. I wish to impress upon 
 the young Missionary, that in undertaking family-cares in 
 extreme youth, below the age above alluded to, he is doing 
 what is manifestly wrong, and unworthy of his high calling. 
 Nobody forced him to come out to undertake the glorious pro- 
 fession of preaching the Gospel : he chose it, or in many cases 
 the Lord chose him : in the presence of his fellows he avowed, 
 that he had been called to the work. Now, the work requires 
 self-consecration, self-Sacrifice, a readiness to go where he is 
 ordered, to live out in tents or in rude huts, to bear hardship 
 like a good soldier, to spend and be spent, to be content with 
 a little ; to set the example to Native friends, Native converts, 
 and Native catechists, of the great Law of self-Sacrifice ; dwell- 
 
( 83 ) 
 
 ing in their midst ; in some cases wearing their dress, sharing 
 their simple fare with them on the road, on the river, in the 
 hut, in the tent ; speaking their language as one of them, and 
 being all things to them. Such is the high duty of the young 
 Evangelist : he gives the flower of his youth, the undivided 
 freshness of his faculties, he cares for nothing in the fulness of 
 his zeal but the Lord's work. The men of the world meet him 
 on the road, and mark him in his humble residence, and 
 recognize all the signs of the Evangelist : it is true, that the 
 young soldier, the young magistrate, and the young Merchant, 
 by the necessity of their position, keep clear of family-entangle- 
 ments, and give their hearts to the Service of their earthly 
 employer, with a view to get themselves forward in the world, 
 to put by economies for middle life and declining years. They 
 would deem it madness to encumber themselves with a family 
 until they saw a way to support them : is the Missionary to fall 
 to a lower level, not only to cramp his means of usefulness, and 
 his power to discharge his duties, but to be a burden to the 
 great Society, that sends him out, and is unwillingly forced to 
 squander its resources in the support of useless wives and un- 
 necessary children, who ought not to have come into existence ? 
 
 It is interesting to quote the opinions of two very competent 
 members of the Indian Civil Service on this subject. 
 
 Sir W. Hunter remarks that "A fresh impulse has arisen from 
 " the private efforts of small fraternities animated by a highly 
 " concentrated devotion. These little communities bring to 
 " their work the highest culture of the West, and also that type 
 " of ascetic zeal and self-renunciation, which in India from the 
 " time of Buddha down to the latest movement of Hinduism or 
 " Islam has always been the popular idea of Missionary life : 
 " without some show of self-Sacrifice the Hindu will not believe 
 " in the sincerity of the messenger or the truth of the Message. A 
 " man with a wife and half a dozen children may be a pleasant 
 " sight in an English parsonage, but is a standing absurdity in 
 " a Heathen Mission-house." 
 
 It is obvious, that this is going too far in one direction : I am 
 not asking the Missionary to lead a celibate life, but I am 
 pointing out to young men below thirty-three, that it would be 
 wise to postpone their marriage so as to secure the success of 
 their consecrated work. Whether they marry at thirty-three, or 
 at what has been the favourite time in past years, twenty-six, the 
 result of olive-branches will be the same. I remember once in 
 India talking over the subject with a German Missionary: his 
 reply went to the point: "I married," he said, "at the age of 
 forty, and had twelve children ; if I had married at twenty-three, 
 I could hardly have had more " : in fact, Missionaries are a very 
 prolific class. 
 
( 84 ) 
 
 Sir Bartle Frere, in his book on Indian Missions, seems to go 
 to extremes in the other direction, and is opposed to brother- 
 hoods altogether. He writes thus : " No doubt there are times, 
 " when any prudent soldier of the Cross should be, like Paul, 
 " unencumbered by any worldly ties, however dear and sacred, 
 " and the energy of some is due to entire freedom from all calls 
 " of domestic and social duty ; but in the long run, and looking 
 " to the majority of cases, the whole of the work, which the 
 " Christian Church has to do, my opinion is decidedly against 
 " celibate agency. Celibacy enters largely into the teaching 
 " of all false Creeds ; it springs from the weak, not the strong, 
 " side of poor Human Nature ; it is held in high honour by the 
 " vulgar, accompanied in mediaeval legends by details of hair 
 " shirts, dirt, and discomfort, but it fails everywhere. None of 
 " the Holy men in the Old Testament, or the Saints in the New 
 " Testament, practised it." 
 
 In reply to my honoured and lamented friend, I must add, that 
 such is not the character of the celibacy now suggested. No 
 one pretends to look at it, as a virtue, or a merit, but only a 
 means to obtain an end, and a detail of administration. If' 
 anyone were to put forward his celibacy as a sign of superior 
 sanctity, he is evidently not qualified to be a Missionary, and 
 has failed to find the secret of Christian duty. When he has won 
 his spurs by a decade of celibate activity, he will take his place, 
 God willing, among the married pastors and fathers of the flock, 
 and exhibit to the Natives the blessings of a happy Christian 
 family. 
 
 Nor is evidence wanting of the happiness of the Community- 
 life now recommended. I quote the opinion of a Missionary 
 of the Cambridge Mission at Delhi, 1889: " Of the blessings 
 " of our Community-life, both in its stimulus to devotion and 
 " in the mutual help and comfort, which each one receives from 
 " the rest, I need hardly say much here. It is a life to which I 
 " was accustomed during my years in London before I came to 
 " India, and therefore one, to which I have a natural leaning, 
 " apart from its manifest superiority as a system of carrying on 
 " Missionary work in such a country as India. Those, who 
 " have not had experience of it, can have little idea of the 
 " blessing of united Communion, united prayer, and occasional 
 " quiet days of devotion ; and after his daily round the tired 
 " and harassed bazaar-preacher is cheered up, as he rejoins his 
 " brethren in the evening ; and the itinerator after his lonely 
 " tour in the villages is sure of a hearty welcome home." 
 
 Some years ago, at the annual meeting of the Universities' 
 Mission to East Africa, I heard a young Missionary use similar 
 expressions in a sober strain of calm satisfaction, which con- 
 vinced me of the reality of his feelings. I can realize these 
 
( 85 ) 
 
 feelings myself. I spent ten years entirely alone, or with one 
 or two celibate companions, in the midst of the people, over 
 whose secular interests I had to watch. I remember how 
 greatly the work was advanced by entire freedom from family 
 and social duties and cares, how subjects of doubt could be 
 discussed earnestly and thoroughly, how before the dawn I 
 was in the saddle surrounded by the Natives, who came to 
 accompany me, how my heart went out to them, because they 
 were the sole objects of my interest : if such were the case in 
 Community-life, or solitary life, while employed on earthly 
 business, how much more, when the heart is given to Spiritual 
 business by spiritually-minded men ! 
 
 This touches upon another side of the question ; obviously 
 on account of the climate and surroundings of some Regions, 
 no Missionary, whether old or young, should be married at all. 
 
 A late Bishop wrote in 1886: "Mrs. 's illness, and Mrs. 
 
 " 's late dangerous confinement, make him bring once 
 
 " more the marriage-question forward. Thinks now, that he 
 " did wrong in consenting to newly-married women going as 
 
 " far as , and now withdraws it, and feels conscientiously 
 
 " bound to protest against such women proceeding beyond . 
 
 " Will not, therefore, consent to a clergyman taking a newly- 
 " married wife beyond those limits ; and, as he has no authority 
 " over laymen, must refuse to acknowledge any layman who 
 " does so." 
 
 What makes the subject more grotesque is, that a young 
 Missionary not long ago started a new idea of associated evange- 
 lists to conduct work on much more economical methods, and, 
 of course, celibates ; but, while his plans were maturing, he met 
 a young girl, married her, and took her out into the Association, 
 and she died a few years afterwards. On the West Coast of Africa 
 the pioneer-Missionaries of three Societies have taken out young 
 wives into deadly climates, entirely unprovided with suitable 
 habitations and ordinary comforts, and look round for com- 
 mendation of excited religionists in Exeter Hall, as leaders of 
 Faith-Missions, or rather of Folly-enterprises. We have again 
 to consider the danger, to which female life and honour are 
 exposed in solitary advanced stations, which ought to have been 
 occupied by men alone. How much anxiety was felt some years 
 ago in Eastern Equatorial Africa to rescue women during the 
 time of the revolt against the Germans, some of the. women being 
 incapacitated for movement by the state of their health, or their 
 babies. The question is asked, "Why were they there?" Would 
 women be found, especially young wives, in campaigns such as 
 that of the Crimea or the invasion of Abyssinia ? Why should 
 soldiers, sent out to fight the Lord's battles, encumber them- 
 selves ? I have received letters from Missionaries in the African 
 
( 86 ) 
 
 fields, stating that the presence of young wives was not only 
 useless as regards Missionary work, but dangerous. It is .all 
 nonsense to say, that the presence of children in Missionary 
 work aids the prosecution of the work of Evangelization. One 
 enthusiastic Missionary's wife tells us, that peace was imme- 
 diately made betwixt belligerent Natives at the sight of a mother 
 and her baby. If that were the case, we should have to go to 
 the other extreme, and rule that no unmarried Missionaries, or 
 barren wives of Missionaries, or Missionaries, whose families are 
 grown up, should be allowed. Bishop Taylor, in America, goes 
 a step further, and counts all the children among the effective 
 force of his Mission. We start at the information, that a new 
 Missionary was born last night. • I heard with astonishment 
 two remarks made in committee by a Missionary secretary : ( i ) 
 that the Missionaries came generally from a stratum of society, 
 where the sexes married at puberty; (2) that Missionaries in non- 
 European countries ought to be married, as a safeguard against 
 possible unchastity. I distinctly condemn, and repudiate, both 
 these arguments. Many Missionaries come from the same 
 stratum of Society as the Officers of Her Majesty's Army, Navy, 
 and Civil Services ; and, as regards the latter argument, the 
 numerous sad cases of moral lapses, which we have to deplore, 
 occurred, without exception, in the case of widowers or married 
 men. Of the brave band of celibate Missionaries in India and 
 Africa, I have never heard, in spite of close inquiry, of a single 
 discreditable story, either of concubinage, or a quasi-marriage 
 with a Heathen. Another view of the case is the family- 
 embarrassment, which it causes. England is become strewed 
 with "returned empty bottles," men who have turned back from 
 the plough, forgotten their first love, because their wives were 
 sick. I have heard orders passed in committee to send for 
 Missionaries from distant stations in the field to come home 
 to England to their sick wives. Even Bishops are not free from 
 this weakness. One Colonial Bishop left his duty, because his 
 wife was sick, and another because his daughter was dying. 
 Even the duties of children to their parents are exaggerated 
 in the case of Missionaries. I read of Missionaries leaving 
 their field to visit a sick parent after only two years' absence. 
 We, who have been about ten years at a stretch away from our 
 homes, and have received the sad news, sent by telegram 
 or letter, of a parent's death, know what the sorrow means, but 
 cannot justify the desertion of the duties of life and the spiritual 
 duties, through an exaggeration of human affections, more 
 especially, when it is done at the expense of a Missionary Society. 
 In the annual reports I read of husbands leaving important 
 stations, abandoning their flocks, to accompany a wife home, 
 at the expense of a Society. How many a public servant in 
 
( 87 ) 
 
 India has asked for a week's leave, and taken his family down 
 to the nearest seaport, and commended them to the care of 
 friends, never perhaps afterwards to see them again, and manfully 
 returned to his duties, which, though secular, were his life- 
 duties ! And some Missionaries have done so, and even done 
 more. Bishop Hannington, and Bishop Steere, and Bishop 
 Tucker, feeling themselves called to perilous duty, were not 
 unwilling to do what Lord Napier of Magdala, and Lord 
 Wolseley, and many other brave soldiers, have done, and what 
 every Officer of the Navy of all ranks does, viz., left their families 
 at home. It is a comfort to think, that the Church of England 
 has still a fund of devotion and godly enthusiasm, on which 
 it can draw. And many Missionaries have done likewise, but 
 all are not worthy of the high office. Does the foolish young 
 man, who, at the age of twenty-six, takes on himself such 
 responsibility, look forward twenty years, when he will be only 
 forty-six? I have heard men in early middle age pleading for 
 an extra grant for education of children. One Missionary told 
 me, that he married on the very day of his Ordination, and he 
 seemed to think, that he had done a clever thing in becoming 
 Reverendus et Benedictus at the same time. Setting aside the 
 extreme improvidence from a worldly point of view, it is not 
 Mission-Service: there is nothing of the grace of self-denial and 
 self-Sacrifice. In the Acts of the Apostles, in the early History 
 of the Christian Church (before the introduction of the enforced 
 celibacy of the Roman Church), we find nothing £o warrant the 
 idea, that a man. must be married to be a Missionary. If the 
 young aspirant to the high office cannot rise to the level of his 
 vocation, is not equal to the task, and considers matrimony 
 a necessary ingredient of Gospel-preaching, he had better select 
 some other profession. Such sentiments are unworthy, and 
 show an absence of a true feeling on the subject of Missions. 
 
 The Missionary Societies' annual reports and Periodicals bear 
 testimony to the prevailing weakness (shall I say " effeminacy" ?) 
 of the period. I read all, and make extracts, in my earnest 
 study of the Mission-subject, of its wants and its weaknesses, 
 its triumphs and its failures ; some extracts are sad, some 
 ludicrous. I must give some, as they lie before me, that my 
 readers may understand, how the grand story of the Gospel 
 to the Heathen is interrupted by perpetual harping on the "wife 
 and baby " theme. No one but a member of a Missionary- 
 committee could imagine the state of affairs. A Missionary 
 writes that " he must have a larger allowance, because he has 
 two grandmothers and a baby to feed." No secular employ6 
 could have been so deficient in conception of the ridiculous 
 as to write thus. In a really interesting account of the German 
 Leper-Asylum at Jerusalem, and excellent remarks about the 
 
( 88 ) 
 
 Spiritual state of the poor sufferers, we come to this bathos : 
 " On the 9th of February we were rejoiced with the birth 
 of a little son, and gave him the name of John." We have only 
 to imagine a clergyman announcing from the pulpit, that his 
 wife had been confined. Another report runs : "During the year 
 I have baptized two infants, a little daughter of our own, and 
 the child of a Christian teacher." The report was of work done 
 among Jews. Why chronicle the baptism of two Gentile 
 infants ? So entirely in the American Missions is a man 
 supposed to be entitled to the company of a wife, that a husband 
 is described " as with rare self-denial holding the fort alone." 
 In High Church Missions the brethren in the field beg the 
 Home-committee to send out an additional " priest," but to the 
 German Missions they ask for a " Geschwister," a married pair, 
 or " a brother and sister." In American reports the demand 
 is for "families": the Gospel cannot be preached without the 
 comfort of wife and children. Full details are given of the , 
 arrangements for the movement of these families ; the birth and 
 death of a baby seems to excite more interest, and certainly 
 happens much oftener, than the conversion of a Heathen ! We 
 have long accounts in some reports of a "little Jack," sad 
 words over the death of a " little Robbie" : domestic events are 
 chronicled with painful detail. How astonished the Governor 
 of a Province or a military commander, would be to receive 
 from his subordinates such details of domestic life ! It seems 
 to argue an absence of better stuff to chronicle, when a man 
 turns to his nursery : what shall be said of the compilers of the 
 report, when they insert such stuff ? It is an insult to the serious 
 readers of a Missionary report, and accounts for their lack of 
 popularity ; it is not, that sympathy is not felt for brethren, who 
 are sick or bereaved, but such things should be kept out of the 
 public dispatches, as not bearing on the great subject of Missions. 
 
 I give another extract, not older than 1888 : " Mr. and Mrs. 
 
 " and baby returned to •, and immediately went back 
 
 " to England, and left this week, and the committee has the 
 " great satisfaction of knowing, that they all recovered their 
 " health since their arrival in England." 
 
 Imagine any secular Government carried on on such principles, 
 and think of the scorn of the atheist, and the contempt of the 
 Roman Catholic Missionary, at the style of such notices, the 
 gravity of which the compiler of the report hardly seems to 
 realize ; as in Missionary reports all facts, that tell against the 
 Mission, are systematically ignored, the devotion of the above- 
 named Missionary was presumably deemed creditable. 
 
 And, when a committee of management tries to enforce stricter 
 rules, gently to draw the reins tighter, when it suggests to a 
 Missionary, that he should not leave his post to accompany 
 
( 89 ) 
 
 a sick wife to England, when it objects to send out at the 
 expense of the Society children of a certain age, who will have 
 to be sent back again in a few years at the expense of the 
 Society, every kind of remonstrance is made. I received in 
 December, 1894, a letter, a copy of which I insert : I neitherknow 
 the writer, nor the case, nor did I take the least notice of it, but 
 the writer is certainly a Missionary. I am violating no confi- 
 dence, and I quote it only to indicate the spirit: " I am sure, that 
 " you would not do a harsh or cruel thing in cold blood in the 
 " name of Religion ; yet your committee has forbidden my 
 " brother to bring out his only son, because that boy is four 
 " years old. Everyone knows that up to eight this climate is 
 " safe. Can you tell me what right you have to interfere with 
 " the tenderest heart-ties, and make a rule for a Missionary, 
 " that you know your own rector would think you mad to 
 " propose to him, or to one of his curates ? Why should you 
 " lay a heavy burden on us in the field, which you dare not to 
 " touch with your own fingers ? If money be wasted on luxuries, 
 " will money be blessed that you save, if the hire of labourers, 
 " which is kept back, crieth in the ear of the Lord of Sabaoth ? 
 " The mother's heart is wrenched, the father is driven against 
 " his will ; the heartiest tender love is trifled with, and all for 
 " what ? Who originated the scheme ? Why was it not pressed 
 " in other cases ? I am sure, that the insistence of this rule is 
 " unjust, unkind, and unnecessary : it must be cancelled. I now 
 " ask, that my four-years-old child's passage-money be refunded 
 " to me as a matter of right ! " 
 
 Does not this read, as if the committee had robbed this in- 
 dignant declaimer of his paternal inheritance, though in reality 
 it had lifted him up from a humble position of life, taught him 
 Latin and Greek at a preparatory School, trained him at a 
 College, fed and clothed him, given him a title for ordination, 
 paid for his canonicals, his outfit, and supported him and his 
 family. It is clear, that in many cases domestic ties quite out- 
 weigh all consideration of self-Sacrifice, gratitude, and even 
 honesty. To have sent that child out, and brought it back in 
 a few years, would have cost more than the 1 united collections 
 of six average English parishes for the purpose of evangelizing 
 the Heathen. 
 
 We have fallen from our high standard of the Mission-idea. 
 It is often forgotten, that this is the second time', that the Lord 
 has called upon the British islands to take a foremost part in 
 the Evangelization of the non-Christian World. At a period 
 in History before Mahomet had arisen in Arabia, before the 
 Church of Rome had commenced its downward course, before 
 even Augustine had landed in Kent, Patrick had gone forth 
 from the Clyde to Ireland and founded the Church there : after 
 
( 90 ) 
 
 him Columba had left Ireland to found the great Mission-centre 
 of Iona: after them Columbanus had gone forth to convert 
 Burgundy, and Aidan to found Lindisfarne, and bring North- 
 umbria to Christ : after them came Willibrod and Boniface : 
 at a period when the North of Europe was as Heathen as Africa, 
 and much more cruel, the men of the British islands, of our 
 own race, went forth in celibacy, in poverty, in suffering, to 
 work with their hands to sustain life, never to see their homes 
 again. Some portions of the type of these great Apostles have 
 clung to the modern Religious orders of the Church of Rome : 
 the Protestant Missionary has fallen entirely from the ideal : he 
 must have a wife at puberty, and a family, supported by the 
 alms of the Churches; he must have salaries, houses, comforts, 
 conveyances, pensions, and thousands spent on the Education 
 of his children ; he considers himself at liberty to be educated 
 at the expense of the Churches, and spend a few years in the 
 foreign field, and then for his own convenience, or because a 
 wife, or one of his numerous children, is sick, to leave his flock 
 and go home, and perhaps never return, because something 
 more comfortable is available in Great Britain. And yet the 
 words of our Lord seem very clear: " He that loveth his father 
 " or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." " No 
 " man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is 
 " fit for the Kingdom of God." Add to these Luke, xiv, 26. 
 This is just what our early Missionaries of the type of Columba 
 and Boniface did : it is just what the modern degenerate type 
 do not. In the Report of one single Missionary Society for the 
 year 1889 I find hundreds of children of Missionaries clothed, 
 fed, and educated for secular occupations, at the cost of thou- 
 sands of pounds collected as alms for the conversion of the 
 Heathen. Hundreds might be converted by the expansion of 
 our Missions, if our funds were not absorbed, wasted, misapplied, 
 by this unjustifiable expenditure. What shall be thought of 
 such expressions as this in Missionary Reports of last year ? 
 
 " Mr. has felt obliged to return home for a lengthened 
 
 absence from the Mission, as his wife's health precluded her 
 from joining him." 
 
 It may be asked, what kind of emolument, stipend, salary, 
 subsistence, allowance, by whatever name called, does an 
 ordinary Missionary of one of the great Societies receive ? In 
 the Indian Army, a second lieutenant receives 202 rupees per 
 month ; a lieutenant, 256 ; a captain, 415 : such an officer's career 
 in these grades lasts on an average twenty years ; he finds his own 
 outfit, passage-money, unless he comes out in a troopship ; he 
 pays his own house-rent ; his wife and children have no allow- 
 ance ; after his death there is a small pension for them under 
 certain conditions. ' 
 
( 91 ) 
 
 In the Missionary Societies, where Matrimony is allowed, 
 a scale of something of this kind may be assumed : 
 
 i. Three years at a preparatory School or Training-College, 
 
 free from all cost. 
 z. Pocket-money, clothes, outfit, travelling in England. 
 
 3. Passage-money: every kind of expense paid. 
 
 4. Railway or travelling expenses in the Missionary-field. 
 
 5. Books and Instructors in Languages. 
 
 6. Unmarried allowances, 144 rupees per mensem. 
 
 7. House-rent, furniture, house servants, conveyances. 
 
 8. Medical attendance. 
 
 9. Outfit for wife, passage-money, additional furniture, 
 
 toties quoties. 
 
 10. Additional married allowance, 63 rupees per mensem. 
 
 11. Medical charges for confinement, surgical expenses, a 
 
 repeating item. 
 
 12. Allowance for each child, passage-money of sending 
 
 them out to the field, when adults. 
 
 13. Furlough, passage, allowances, to and fro. 
 
 14. Children's Home up to age of 16, final grant. 
 
 1 5. Renewal of outfit, furniture, and conveyance on return 
 
 to field. 
 16. Retiring allowance, closing grants, pension to widows. 
 
 This is not the highest view of the subject, but it is a view, 
 from which the subject ought to be regarded. Collections are 
 made in Churches under the influence of prayer ; little children 
 bring their pennies, and collecting-boxes are handed about : it 
 is not right, that early marriages should be tolerated, causing 
 such intolerable expenditure. I repeat again, that I am not in 
 favour of celibate Missions, and I wish to see the Missionaries 
 free from vulgar cares, and with a decent sufficiency : but why 
 should they marry while still so young ? Why should they set 
 up a wife and six children any more than a carriage and six 
 horses ? Think of young widows, perhaps below twenty-five : 
 in some cases they have never got out to the field, or done a 
 stroke of Missionary work, and yet the funds of the Society are 
 saddled with a charge of (say) £$o for a lifetime. The number 
 of children thus supported amounts to hundreds. In some 
 Societies no provision at all is made for the children of the 
 worker, and the assistance of friends and private help are 
 drawn upon : the deferring of the date of marriage till after a 
 period of ten years' Service, or the attainment of thirty-three 
 years of age, would greatly reduce this really most deplorable 
 head of expenditure : and with regard to Church of England 
 Missions, it must be recollected that with the increasing poverty 
 
( 92 ) 
 
 of the home clergy, and the prospect of Disestablishment draw- 
 ing nearer every year, the burden of such charges will increase 
 at a rate far exceeding that of the income, and cripple the means 
 of usefulness. The number of recruits to the Mission-field from 
 such Homes for Missionaries' children is comparatively small : 
 it is asserted, that the average charge for inmates exceeds that 
 of the average of Institutions for the orphans of Officers of the 
 Army and other classes of Society : and their very existence plays 
 into the hands of those, who press the necessity of celibacy 
 under vows in the foreign Mission-field, which, however, ob- 
 jectionable for other reasons, has at least the merit of economy. 
 As it is now, vast sums contributed for the conversion of the 
 Heathen never get out of England : the real cure is, that every 
 shilling should go into the field, that is sent for Missions, and 
 that separate funds should be created, and distinct collections 
 made for the home-expenditure. I anticipate the date, when 
 contributions will be labelled, "not to be spent in Homes for 
 children, or any purpose not directly connected with Evangeliza- 
 tion of the non-Christian world." And who can pretend 
 that the maintenance of a young family of a young couple 
 can have any relation to the preaching of the Gospel ? It 
 causes the enemy to scoff, it gives offence to friends : it is openly 
 asserted, and not disputed, that many persons have become 
 Missionaries to enable them to marry early. The admission of 
 a Missionary to Service, who is already burdened with a large 
 family totally unprovided for, seems a tempting of God's provi- 
 dence. The offhand way, in, which Matrimony is talked of as 
 a necessity of existence, is an instance of the effeminacy of the 
 age, and the absence of robust self-consecration. I heard a 
 member of a committee remark with regard to an agent of 
 a Missionary Society, who had a sick wife in England, that it 
 was wrong of the committee not to allow him to come home 
 every year to comfort her, arguing that the duties of husband 
 and wife were paramount to the duty previously assumed to preach 
 the Gospel. If this be conceded, absolute celibacy must become 
 the condition of Mission Service. 
 
 I here quote the words of one of the greatest of Missionaries 
 (Carey) : " Remember that the money, which you will expend, 
 " is neither ours, nor yours, for it. has been consecrated to God, 
 " and every unnecessary expenditure will be robbing God, and 
 " appropriating to unnecessary secular uses, what is sacred, and 
 " consecrated to Christ and His cause. Missionary funds are in 
 " their very circumstances the most sacred, and important, of 
 " anything of this kind on Earth." 
 
 I am glad to read distinct evidence of a reaction. The 
 following Circular has been issued regarding the scheme for 
 Associated Evangelists : 
 
( 93 ) 
 
 "Church Missionary Society, March, 1890. 
 
 " The committee has sanctioned a scheme for the employ- 
 ' ment of bands of Associated Evangelists, Lay and Clerical, 
 ' who, living together, could be maintained at a comparatively 
 * small cost to the funds of the Society. 
 
 " The scheme necessarily implies, that the members of the 
 ' band should be unmarried, and none should join who contemplate 
 ' early marriage. At the same time the committee do not 
 ' require any pledge of celibacy. Should any member of the 
 ' band, after experience, desire to change his state in this 
 ' respect, the committee will be prepared to bring him home. 
 
 " The millions of India being scattered in villages, that 
 ' Empire affords special facilities for the employment of such 
 ' an agency. One band is already at work in the Nuddea 
 ' district of Banga.1 ; other centres have been selected, and will 
 ' be occupied as soon as possible. 
 
 " The committee has sanctioned similar schemes for Ceylon 
 ' and China. 
 
 " Each band will be under the leadership of an experienced 
 ' clergyman, and there is no reason why any members of the 
 ' band should not be in Holy Orders, nor why Lay-graduates 
 ' of the Universities should not volunteer for this work. 
 
 " But the scheme also affords a very favourable opening for 
 ' men, who have not had the advantages of a liberal Education, 
 ' but whose hearts the Lord has stirred with the desire to 
 ' be permitted to carry the glad tidings of Salvation to the 
 ' Heathen. The qualifications in such men on which the com- 
 ' mittee lay special stress are : Real spirituality, with a vivid 
 ' apprehension of a personal union with Christ. An intelligent 
 ' acquaintance with Holy Scripture, and with Christian doc- 
 trine, as there set forth, and a good knowledge of the prayer- 
 ' book and Articles, together with a hearty assent to them. 
 ' Experience and proved capacity in work for the Spiritual 
 ' good of others. Force of character and powers of endurance. 
 ' Satisfactory medical testimony as to physical fitness. The 
 ' committee will be glad to enter into communication with 
 ' young men of not less than twenty-two years of age, who 
 ' think themselves called by God to this special work." 
 
 Young Missionaries actually in the field have voluntarily 
 offered to share their home, and their allowances, with a like- 
 minded brother, securing thus a friend and fellow-labourer 
 without the distraction and obstruction, and weakening, of 
 purpose which necessarily accompanies the husband of a young 
 wife, and very young children, in uncongenial climates. I allude 
 with praise to a paper by the Rev. A. Clifford, Secretary to the 
 C.M.S. in Bangal, which was read by him before the Calcutta 
 
( 94 ) 
 
 Diocesan Conference, February 19, 1889. No one could have 
 expressed a stronger opinion in favour of " Community^life 
 as a Missionary Method " than he has, and he states, that 
 three young lay Missionaries have already joined an ordained 
 Missionary in such a Community in a rural district, and pre- 
 pared for active evangelizing "work. Communities of women 
 in suitable places would be the complement to the above 
 arrangement. It remains now for all Missionary Societies to 
 refuse absolutely to permit the Marriage of Missionaries before 
 they have served ten years, or at least attained the age of 
 thirty-three. How utterly reckless young people are may be 
 illustrated by the intelligence which reached England only last 
 month. No Missionary Associations are more full of Faith 
 and zeal than the China Inland Mission, and the Harley House 
 Mission : they are zealous beyond their means, and their Faith 
 is more elastic than their banker's account. Month after month 
 it is recorded in their Periodical organs, that funds are wanting. 
 There is no reserve fund, no guarantee, and no provision for the 
 sick or the widow; if the parent- Association became embarrassed, 
 the labourers in the field would starve, and yet two of the 
 youngest members, the children of the leaders of the two 
 Associations in the Far East,, went in for Matrimony, and 
 it seems to be a cause for rejoicing. It is possible, that 
 Timothy, and Titus, and Luke, and Mark, and other of Paul's 
 companions, may have been wishful to unite themselves to one 
 or other of the sweet women, who ministered unto the Apostle, 
 Phoebe, or Persis the beloved, or Triph6na, or Triph6sa ; but the 
 compiler of the Acts of the Apostles was occupied with the 
 grandeur of his subject, and did not descend to the level of 
 chronicling with joy the union of Missionaries, or the birth of 
 infants. In one Missionary Periodical I read how an enterprise 
 to West Africa was "crowned" by the Marriage of two of the 
 Missionaries. 
 
 A man is much more likely to make a good choice of a help- 
 mate, when he knows the work, which he requires help in, than 
 if in statu pupillari at the Missionary College he asks the little 
 girl, whom he has met in the Sunday-School, or the young 
 person in the shop adjoining that of his father, to go with him. 
 The Sisterhoods will, in due course, supply such good helpmates, 
 and there is no restriction on their age beyond their own sense 
 of duty to their Lord, or a special term of engagement made 
 with their Society. In the first decade of Missionary-life sisters 
 and brothers are more useful than husbands arid wives. This 
 remark was made to me by a friend in India more than 
 thirty years ago, and I heartily endorse it. Priscilla and 
 Aquila indeed did exceptional service ; but we want more 
 of the type of Luke and Mary, fewer Marthas, who are 
 
( 95 ) 
 
 cumbered with domestic service, and none of the Demas-type, 
 •who turn their back on the Mission-field, loving the present 
 world in the shape of a sick wife, or a comfortable living 
 at home. If men are really called to God's special Service 
 in foreign parts, and are made so much of by admirers in 
 Exeter Hall, they must just make a sacrifice of their lives 
 and comforts. It is idle to talk of " Sacrifice," when 
 a Missionary marries at the expense of a Missionary Society 
 ten years earlier than his brother in some trade or pro- 
 fession at home can afford to do. Even down to the day 
 that I write this, College-students do not hesitate to engage 
 themselves. In a letter from India, I gathered, that some 
 thought that, by early Marriage they were doing the right thing 
 for the cause of Missions ; the Evangelical name of the Church 
 has become the laughing-stock of the High Church and the 
 Roman Catholics, to whom the work of the Mission is the first, 
 last, sole, lifelong, object of their desire. 
 
 These are not the words of one, who is ignorant of Mission- 
 work, as exhibited in the field, or discussed ad nauseam in the 
 committee-room, nor of one who is hostile to, or contemptuous 
 of, the cause, but of one, who for fifty years has studied the 
 subject, not of one Society, of one branch of the Church, of one 
 Church, of one Nation, or of the Protestant Churches only ; but 
 in its entirety ; who has read many volumes, and written many 
 pages, on the subject, which have been reprinted in India, 
 Europe, Australia, and America. We have come to the parting of 
 the ways. Is it not a cruel thing to marry at an early age, and 
 take a poor, thoughtless, useless, girl to the Kongo, the Niger, 
 the Masai country, the Victoria Nyanza, far up to Garanganja in 
 Central Africa, far from medical aid and the ordinary decencies of 
 civilized wives, entailing sickness, death, and waste of expendi- 
 ture, leaving no results but untimely graves of young mothers, 
 and poor children, and disconsolate widowers ? Why not steer 
 a middle course, reserving Matrimony to a later period, and a 
 more settled Mission-field ? 
 
 Church-Work, London, July, 1890-1895. 
 
( 96 ) 
 
 C. The Work of Women. 
 
 i. The Female Evangelist. 
 
 2. Public Ministry of Women. 
 
 3. Proposal to admit Women as Members of Religious com- 
 
 mittees. 
 
 4. What Women have received from the Bible, and what Services 
 
 they can render in return. 
 
 5. Women's Work in the Church of Rome. 
 
 6. Work of Roman Catholic Women in British India. 
 
 1. The Female Evangelist. 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in 
 three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. — Matt, xiii, 33. 
 
 And the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. — Matt, xxv, 4. 
 
 I beseech thee also, good yokefellow, help these women, for they laboured with 
 me in the Gospel . . . whose names are in the book of life. — Philip, iv, 3. 
 
 Half the population of India, or about one hundred and 
 thirty-five millions, are women. There, as in other parts of the 
 world, the women are most easily influenced by Religious con- 
 victions, and to them is confided the control of the tender years 
 of the male population ; and, though women in India do not 
 appear in public, it is a mistake to suppose, that within the walls 
 of their homes their influence is not very great, for good or for 
 evil. From time immemorial, in Northern India, women have 
 been secluded either absolutely within brick walls, or debarred 
 by understood etiquette from holding conversation with the 
 other sex. I remember an old Native, who had travelled much 
 in India, remarking, that it would be better to lose one's way on 
 a journey, than ask it of a woman, as it might involve the 
 traveller in trouble. Nor do I think, that it is either likely, or 
 desirable, that for some generations the rule should be broken ; 
 it might lead to greater evils. Women are exceedingly trouble- 
 some in Courts of Justice, when they break through the barrier 
 of custom, and appear either as litigants or witnesses. Until 
 a great change ,comes over the structure of Indian society in 
 India, it is as well, that in railways, and in Churches, as they 
 are in Schools and hospitals, the sexes should be separated, and 
 a decent reserve maintained by men in alluding even to their 
 existence. 
 
 Noble efforts have been made during the last quarter of a 
 century by special Societies to approach the women in cities 
 and towns, where they are absolutely secluded. The Female 
 
( 97 ) 
 
 Medical Missionary has appeared, to the delight and admiration 
 of all. Female Teachers, and that blessed combination of 
 syllables, "the Bible Woman," and the Scripture-reader, the 
 house-to-house Visitor, the composer of Tracts and Stories 
 specially for the use of women, and other indirect channels of 
 female influence, have come into existence. A recognized 
 component part of the fully-equipped Mission must be a 
 " Female Evangelist." 
 
 Can Female Evangelists, gifted with power of utterance, and 
 equipped with Spiritual knowledge, be found, and, if found, how 
 can they be employed ? Let me consider the points separately. 
 
 Now no one, who has attended Religious meetings of late, 
 can fail to be aware, that a new power has come into existence, 
 and a very sweet and healthy one. Paul may have set his face 
 against Women speaking in Churches, and usurping the functions 
 of an ordained minister ; but this scarcely comprises Prayer- 
 meetings, and village-itinerations ; and the teaching of the Old 
 Testament is against such restrictions, as two most noble pas- 
 sages in the Old Testament proceeded from the lips of Women, 
 Deborah and Hannah ; and just in the dawn of the New 
 Covenant the Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth of a Woman, 
 the Mother of our Lord, in strains of unsurpassed beauty and 
 eloquence, showing unmistakably, that God is no respecter of 
 sexes. The Revisers of the Old Testament have done good 
 Service in communicating to the public the right interpretation 
 of Psalm lxviii, 1 1, for the word is in the feminine gender : " The 
 Lord giveth the Word : the women, that publish the tidings, are 
 a great host." This was long well known to Hebrew Scholars, 
 though the Revisers of 1611, for reasons best known to them- 
 selves, entirely lost sight of the correct interpretation. How- 
 ever, the fact is now made known most opportunely; but it 
 presupposes the existence of natural Gifts, and a careful 
 instruction. Female Evangelists can be found, natural Gifts 
 can be developed, and suitable instruction can be conveyed ; 
 and, further, the sooner this measure be adopted, the better. A 
 new army of soldiers, an auxiliary force, to supplement the 
 regular forces, is summoned into the field. 
 
 Then comes the question, How can they be employed ? I 
 have myself lived many years alone in the villages of Upper 
 India, and marked the habits of the people. To the British 
 Ruler, in the midst of his subject-people, all things are possible, 
 if he evinces sympathy and Love, and respect for their customs, 
 and a tolerance for their Religion. He may do pretty well what 
 he likes, within the limits of honour and virtue, if he does it in 
 a Christian way ; but he soon finds out, that the people, though 
 they know him, and confide in him, would rather, that he did 
 not enter their homes, or talk to their women, old or young, 
 
( 98 ) 
 
 or even allude to them in conversation. It is contrary to the 
 etiquette of the country, and their feelings would be hurt, if he 
 did so. The bystanders would titter, if he asked a friend after 
 his wife's health. In the villages there is no absolute seclusion ; 
 but a decent woman would veil herself, or turn her face to the 
 wall, or beat a retreat, if in the road or street she came suddenly 
 upon men. The Missionary must feel the same difficulty, and 
 perhaps more intensely, as he is not so well known, and is not 
 surrounded with the prestige of authority. The Female Evan- 
 gelist will find her work in the villages all ready for her. 
 
 The attempt has for some years been made with wonderful 
 success in Northern India. In the Monthly Periodical of the Church 
 of England Zanana Society are most sweet and encouraging letters. 
 One from the pen of Miss Tucker (A.L.O.E.) speaks to the 
 heart, as she expresses her own feelings. As I read it, the same 
 feeling comes over me, a desire to be young again, and back 
 again among my own people, the inhabitants of the Panjab, 
 among whom I lived so many years, alone and happy, in spite 
 of war and tumult. It was part of our system, that the District- 
 Officer should dwell in tents amidst his people, without guards, 
 ruling by Moral influence, and the feeling of gratitude for 
 benefits received. I can conceive no happier life, when in the 
 employment of an earthly Ruler : how much more so when in 
 the Service of our King ! Memory goes back gladly over the 
 interval of fifty years to the white tent pitched in the outskirts of 
 the village in the mango-grove, where I have passed laborious 
 hours, devoted in sincerity and single-mindedness to the benefit 
 of the people, who crowded round the alien, and yet beloved, 
 Ruler. I recall the evening-walk with a long train of followers, 
 through the streets and the gardens, down by the stream, or over 
 the heather. I hear again the cry of the peacock, the cooing of 
 the doves, and the barking of the dogs. I see again the slanting 
 rays of the sun, shedding glory through the grove, the white 
 figures glancing through the shade, the rows of elephants, 
 horses, and camels. Oh, that I could be young again, and go 
 forth to be an Evangelist, where once I was Ruler and Judge, 
 and filled the part of an earthly Providence, to contented 
 Millions ! I can at least encourage others to go. 
 
 I do not admit for a moment, that the villagers of Northern 
 India, scores of whom I have known and loved, are in a state of 
 Moral darkness beyond that of European Nations, who personally 
 know not Christ. If this were the case, the Courts of Law, Civil 
 and Criminal, would have disclosed it. I have decided thousands 
 of cases, and not discovered it. But these villagers are in a Moral 
 twilight, and the Sun of Righteousness has not risen before their 
 eyes. If the Holy Spirit speaks to their consciences (and does 
 it not speak ?), it is with a muffled and half-audible voice. Are 
 
( 99 ) 
 
 they to blame ? No Evangelist or Prophet has ever come to 
 them ; for long ages they have been left outside the influence of 
 any Soul-revival. 
 
 To the village-women the appearance of a Female Evangelist 
 must be, as it were, the vision of an Angel from Heaven : to their 
 untutored eyes she appears taller in stature, fairer in face, fairer 
 in speech, than anything mortal that they had dreamt of before : 
 bold and fearless, without immodesty ; pure in word and action, 
 and yet with features unveiled ; wise, yet condescending to talk 
 to the ignorant and the little children ; prudent, and self- 
 constrained, yet still a Woman, loving and tender. In Hindu 
 Legends the Poets have written about Sita and Damayanti, and 
 painted them with the colour of every earthly virtue, showing 
 that they knew what a virtuous Woman should be : yet such as 
 they never appeared to the sight of poor village-women, even in 
 their dreams, until suddenly their eyes, their ears, and their 
 hearts, seem to realize, faintly and confusedly, the Beauty of 
 Holiness, when they begin to hold converse, only too brief, with 
 their sweet and loving visitor, who, smitten with the wondrous 
 desire to save Souls, has come across the Sea from some un- 
 known country to comfort and help them. Short as is her stay, 
 she has, as it were with a magic wand, let loose a new fountain 
 of hopes, of fears, and desires : she has told them, perhaps in 
 faltering accents, of Righteousness and Judgment, of Sin, Re- 
 pentance, and a free pardon through the blessed merits of a 
 Saviour. This day has Salvation come to this Indian Village ! 
 
 It is notorious, that the supply of male agents, both Spiritual 
 and secular, falls far short of the demand. All the Missions are 
 below the nominal and necessary strength. What is to be done ? 
 My suggestion is: "Make a fuller use of Women. Call upon 
 that sex, which no longer deserves the conventional epithet of the 
 weaker, or less wise, to supply the vacuum, and stand in the gap." 
 But they must have precisely the same allowances, be provided 
 with similar accommodation, and placed on the same footing, as 
 the male Missionary. The Missionary's wife is no doubt as 
 much a Missionary in theory and practice as her husband, but 
 her hands are very full already. The proposal to employ special 
 medical Women, and special Educational Women, and special 
 Bible-Women, has been accepted, and is part of our system, 
 I rejoice, that I was the fortunate suggester at the Bible-House 
 of the measure with regard to Bible- Women. It has been found 
 most acceptable everywhere. In some Missions combinations 
 have been made by the Missionary Societies and the Bible 
 Society, under which a class of Bible-selling Evangelists, both 
 male and female, is coming into existence. All the lines seem 
 to be converging in this direction. I am merely formularizing, 
 and bringing forward in a general and popular form of description 
 
( ioo ) 
 
 a Method, which is already in practice, and which harmonizes 
 with the tendencies and requirements of the age, as well as the 
 aspiration of godly Women, who desire to take their full share 
 in the work of their Lord. Hitherto they have been kept in 
 the second rank, or even left behind in the tents in charge 
 of the stuff. The order has gone forth, " Up, Women, and at 
 them ! " 
 
 I suggested in 1895, at the London Jews Society, that one 
 of the Women-workers among the Jews in London should give 
 the address at the annual breakfast. An archdeacon, who was 
 present, said, "Are you joking ?'' The Clergy would not listen 
 to the suggestion, and yet Priscilla helped Aquila to show the 
 way more perfectly to Apollos, and the Souls of Women are as 
 dear in the sight of the Lord as those of men, and Women are 
 much more fit to make addresses in a Mission Hall than old 
 worn-out Clergymen. 
 
 For a great part of my life I have been in Authority, with 
 scores of male agents, European and Native, under my orders, 
 and I have always insisted upon Training, as a condition 
 precedent. An untrained servant, however honest, well- 
 intentioned, and willing, is of comparatively little use. A 
 Women's Board of Management is essential to the selection, 
 training, and control of female agents. Set a Woman to manage 
 women. No female agent should be entertained without the 
 approval of that Board. We have a Medical committee for our 
 medical requirements ; a Clerical committee for selection of 
 Missionaries ; a Financial committee for our Finance. The 
 female agent is a speciality, the diagnosis of which exceeds 
 the skill of the surgeon, the clergyman, or the financier. The 
 matter is too high for the Lay committee without professional 
 advice. The second step is, that female agents must be trained 
 at some establishment specially devoted to the subject. We 
 spend annually thousands in our Training Colleges for, men, and 
 no money is spent to a better purpose : let us not grudge what 
 is required to refine, and place the mint-mark of Training and 
 instruction on that purity, and consecrated talent, and that life- 
 devotion, which is better than fine gold. I am more and more 
 convinced, that the Spiritual side of a Missionary's duty depends 
 as much upon Training and godly instruction, as it is admitted 
 on all hands with regard to the medical and Educational side. 
 I look with misgiving upon the haphazard mode, in which 
 female agents have hitherto been supplied. It is wonderful, 
 that they have been as good and efficient as they undoubtedly 
 are. The Epoch for the simple, God-fearing, Scripture-loving, 
 but otherwise uninstructed, Missionary, whether man or woman, 
 is past. Arms of precision are required to fight the Lord's 
 battles. 
 
( ioi ) 
 
 The disparity of the number of the sexes in this country is 
 notorious. In every town there is a sweet superfluity of Women, 
 to whom a vocation is not marked out, or sought for in vain, 
 or at least not found. Endowed with talents, Education, and 
 Spirituality, they stand, as it were, in the market-place of this 
 great world, seeking employment. The brothers have gone 
 forth in their prime to fight the Queen's battles, or carry on the 
 great life-war in the ranks of their contemporaries. The sisters 
 remain at home. The simple round, the common task, may be 
 sufficient, where there is a round, and there is a task. But many 
 even in early life have outlived the natural ties, which held them 
 to the spot, where they were born, and they stand wistfully, and 
 with weary spirit, looking out into the dim and remote future, 
 with the inaudible cry of the heart : " My life, what shall I do 
 with it ? Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " The dove, 
 let loose from the Ark, finds no place, on which it can rest its 
 , foot, and returns in despair. 
 
 In the Middle Ages, or in Roman Catholic countries, such 
 flowers would be left to bloom away, undesired and unprofitable, 
 in the sealed garden of the Convent ; such nobility of character, 
 such fervency of devotion, such capacity for God's work, would 
 be crushed by an idle Ritual of Chapel-services, or be allowed to 
 burn itself out as foolishly, as vainly, as the waxen tapers on the 
 Altar. In Protestant countries there is an opening for better 
 things. The tending of the sick-bed in the Hospital, the Soul- 
 introspection during the midnight watch betwixt the dead and 
 the dying, is a better chastisement of the proud and egotistic 
 Spirit than the self-inflicted lash of the Abbess and the Nun. 
 The conveying of the Gospel-blessing from village to village in 
 India is more pleasing and profitable than the cold, cheerless 
 chant of the midnight-Mass, where sanctity is only to be 
 purchased by idleness. 
 
 Some may fall, and some have fallen by the roadside, as they 
 enter the vineyard, or before even they have stretched out their 
 hand to the tending the vines. The Lord considers the Will, 
 not the deed, and, if the Soul's desire is to serve the Master, 
 what matter whether He recalls the servant in the morn, or at 
 noon, or at sunset, or whether He prefers the servant to the 
 work, which that servant proposed to do ? And, if the summons 
 comes in a far country, what matter whence the enfranchised 
 Soul takes its flight ? Some may die in the carefully guarded 
 home of their earthly parents ; some in the solitary rest-house 
 in India ; some in the round straw hut in Africa. This is but 
 the mode of transition. The object and end of the Life's labour, 
 and journey, are the same. 
 
 Courage, Sister, be not cast down ! Others have trod this path 
 before you. When the Lord cometh, and reckoneth with His 
 
( 102 ) 
 
 servants, it will be found, that thy talent has gained five talents, 
 that thy self-devotion has saved Souls. Enter thou into the joy 
 of thy Lord ! 
 
 London, 1885-1895. 
 
 2. The Public Ministry of Women. 
 
 The importance of Women in home life, in the Hospital, in 
 the School, in the visitation of the poor, and the general organi- 
 zation of the parish on the material side, goes without saying. 
 The subject before us is to inquire : How far can the un- 
 questioned talents, devotion, piety, and gifts of our sisters be 
 utilized in the public Spiritual ministry for the saving of Souls t 
 
 Let misconceptions be cleared away. The verses in the 
 Epistle to the Corinthians are supposed to close the subject to 
 discussion : " Let women keep silence in the churches," etc. 
 Paul wrote with reference to the existing necessity, and the 
 moral capacity of the women at Corinth, in the same way that 
 he wrote to Philemon with reference to the existing necessity, 
 of dealing with Slaves. He had not in his thoughts the Holy 
 Women of Europe of the Ninteenth century. In the same 
 Epistle we read, that the Churches alluded to were rooms in 
 private houses, as in that early period there were no buildings 
 set apart for Worship. If his advice be taken literally, it must 
 mean, that Women are to keep silence in every assembly of 
 Christians. Their alternative was to consult their husbands. 
 In that age Marriage took place in childhood, and no respect- 
 able woman was single. In the present age there are many 
 single women, and many widows, all fit for the Service of the 
 Lord, and, moreover, the husbands of many married women are, 
 confessedly, totally unfit to teach their wives or anyone. We 
 may lay this passage reverently aside, and consider the subject 
 on its intrinsic merits without reference to Authority, for, in fact, 
 it is a new phenomenon of the present Epoch. 
 
 Every good Gift, every perfect Gift, is from above ; and those 
 to whom a Heavenly Gift is lent, are bound to use it, and not 
 to fold up the talent in a napkin, and no more blessed Gift has 
 been conceded to God's poor creatures than the power of 
 influencing others by gracious and wholesome words. There is 
 a diversity of mode, in which such Gifts can be employed. The 
 Bible-woman and Zenana-visitor enter the home of the non- 
 Christian Oriental, closed absolutely to the foot of a male, and 
 talk and read to, and pray with, the inmates. The visitor of 
 the Hospital, or the trained woman-doctor, while in discharge 
 
( 103 ) 
 
 of their secular and benevolent duties, avail themselves of the 
 opportunity of conveying the Gospel Message to the Souls of 
 women, secluded by ancient custom from free intercourse with 
 their fellows. The Female Evangelist passes from village to 
 village in Oriental countries, and gathers the women together, 
 and expounds to them the way of Salvation. To the untutored 
 minds of these poor women she appears as an Angel from 
 Heaven, unveiled, yet not immodest; fearless and strong, yet 
 still a Woman, loving and tender; wise and prudent, yet con- 
 descending to hold sweet intercourse with, and by her words 
 penetrate into, the Souls of poor, ignorant, Indian women and 
 little children. Salvation is thus brought to the very door of 
 hundreds, who knew not Christ, and who never would have 
 known Him, had not the lips of Women been unsealed by the 
 special outpouring in these last days of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Passing upwards, we find Women acting as elected Church- 
 wardens, as members of committees of Religious Societies, as 
 Secretaries, as deputations on platforms, in Council-chambers, 
 in the private study; and, wherever they are met, they are valued. 
 
 It is rash to say that the gift of prophecy has ceased in one of 
 the senses of that word, not that of predicting future events, but 
 of opening the hearts of men to the reception of Gospel-Truth : 
 it is narrowing of the possibilities of Salvation ; it is a refusal to 
 make use of the weapons, with which the Spirit has armed our 
 sisters. Women were always, and ever will be, more devout than 
 their brothers. Now we find them unconsciously, and from no 
 human forethought, ready to carry on the battle. 
 
 An American minister writes from India, that in the National 
 Indian Congress there were Female delegates, and one of them, 
 of high caste, appeared on the platform unveiled, and delivered 
 an address in English. In the other end of the world, and in 
 another level of Civilization, I read ihow, in a council of North 
 American Indians, a woman took a leading part, such as Holy 
 women used to take in the early centuries of the Hebrew Nation. 
 The story is so unique, that I give it in detail : " When 
 " the Quakers visited the Indians near Susquehanna in 1706, 
 " they, accompanied by an interpreter, met the Council of the 
 " Tribe, who all spoke in turn : one of them was a Woman : 
 " they remarked that some women were wiser than some men, and 
 " that they had not done anything for many years without the 
 " Counsel of the ancient grave Woman, who spoke much in 
 " their Council. She remarked that she looked on the coming 
 " of the Quakers as something more than an ordinary event, as 
 " they did not come to buy or sell, or get gain : but they came 
 " in Love and respect to them, and desired their well-being 
 " both here and hereafter." " North American Indians and The 
 Friends," p. 65. In an assembly of drunken men and abandoned 
 
( 104 ) 
 
 ■women in an English city a Woman can get a hearing, and 
 exert a blessed influence, while a man is powerless. , 
 
 The Holy Spirit makes use of their hearts, their song, their 
 voices, to carry His Message. They find themselves, without 
 Human Training, in possession of this Gift, but are they not to 
 use it, because the conventional tyranny of centuries has placed 
 half mankind in subjection ? But in the beginning it was not 
 so, for male and female created He them. We must recollect, 
 that the Devil makes use of female eloquence and female grace, 
 to decoy poor weak Souls into forms of deadly error. Each 
 form of anti-Christ has its prophetess. And are we to shut out 
 one powerful means of Grace, to leave in the tent amidst the 
 stuff a powerful and enthusiastic auxiliary, while a totally 
 inadequate, and only partially efficient, force of men wages 
 an unequal war against sin and unbelief? If anyone feels 
 to the full the value of a redeemed Soul, he will welcome 
 these new allies, even as a cohort of Angels, which the 
 Lord in these last days had sent to carry on the warfare. 
 In the last generation how often must the clergy have looked 
 down from their pulpits on the vision of upturned faces 
 of Holy Women, listening to Gospel-Truth, and profiting in 
 their own Souls, but unable to impart to others ; and some must 
 have wished, that those, who were dumb by mere force of 
 custom, might find a voice ; and, behold, in these last days, there 
 has been an outpouring of the- Spirit, as in the vision of the 
 Prophet Joel, and the fulfilment of the day of Pentecost, on the 
 daughters and handmaidens. 
 
 Far be it from me to suggest that Women should be admitted 
 to Ordination, or to the Pulpit, in a consecrated place of 
 Worship ; but to everything short of that, viz., to the assembly, 
 to the Mission-hall, the hospital-Chapel, the club-room, the 
 cabin of the ship, the tent in the encampment, the hillside 
 amidst the miners, the great halls of industry of the manufac- 
 turers, the workhouse of the poor ; in fact, to every conceivable 
 place, where the human voice can be heard, where men and 
 women congregate, and when there are Souls to be saved. 
 There can be no standing on ceremony, or privilege, or etiquette, 
 among those, who think sadly on a dying Soul. " Nobody ever 
 spoke to me," said a poor dying young Officer in India to 
 a friend, who visited him in his last hours. Had there been 
 no Woman in his neighbourhood to awaken his slumbering 
 conscience, or was she held back from speaking ? 
 
 In the whole of His ministry our Lord was accompanied by 
 Women : they as well as His male disciples were learning their 
 lesson : Women were present at the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, 
 the Ascension, and on the day of Pentecost. The man of 
 Macedonia, of whom so much with such little relevancy is 
 
( 105 ) 
 
 made, as appearing to Paul, was really a Woman. The Gospel- 
 Message finds its entry, when some preparation has been made, 
 when there are prepared receptive hearts, prepared wills, and 
 praying spirits : it was precisely at the Upoaevxj, or Place of 
 Prayer by the riverside at Philippi, that Paul found the devout 
 Women assembled, and the first convert made out of Asia 
 mentioned by name was a Woman, Lydia of Thyatira in Asia 
 Minor, but, as she and her household were settled in Philippi, 
 she was the firstfruits of Europe : she was one that worshipped 
 God, before she met Paul ; and she was unwittingly the cause 
 of the first persecution of the Gospel in Europe. 
 
 In Thessalonica we hear of the "chief Women, not a few 
 being added" ; at Berea we read of " Greek Women of rank." 
 The tribute paid by Paul to the Women, who helped him, was 
 remarkable ; John wrote one of his three Epistles to a Woman ; 
 Priscilla and Aquila together set Apollos right in certain 
 doctrines, and in the greeting of Paul in the last Chapter of 
 the Romans the name of that Woman precedes that of the 
 man. Those, who unduly press the argument, that Women were 
 to keep silence in the Churches, may be reminded that this 
 rule did not apply in the Temple at Jerusalem, for Anna, the 
 Prophetess in the Temple, spake of Jesus to all them, that looked 
 for redemption. 
 
 Since receiving a request to write a paper on this subject, 
 I attended a great annual Missionary Meeting in London. Two 
 male Missionaries from China spoke, and spoke well. They 
 were followed by a young Woman, who had laboured four years 
 among the Women of China. Her words were gentle and low, 
 but still heard throughout the vast hall. There were no tricks 
 of oratory, but her clasped hands gave emphasis to her story. 
 The Holy Spirit spoke through her unmistakably : if the object 
 of speaking is to touch hearts, to evoke noble emotions, to 
 suggest thoughts, that will not die, but remain as an abiding 
 possession, she succeeded. We seemed to hear the Women of 
 China pleading, " Come over and help us." The hour was late ; 
 many a train was missed that afternoon, for of the two thousand, 
 who filled that hall, none dared to stir, and, when she ceased, 
 some lent forward, as if she were still speaking, for they were 
 not satiated and desired more. Can such Gifts be deemed 
 valueless and to be pushed aside to make room for the amiable 
 old clergyman, whose day of utterance is past, or the young 
 neophyte, concerning whom it is doubtful, whether the day will 
 ever come at all ? 
 
 Religious Revitw of Reviews, 1892-1895. 
 
( 106 ) 
 
 3- Proposal to Admit Women as Members of 
 Religious Committees. 
 
 Dear Friend, 
 
 I beg to intimate to you that I have given notice, that I 
 intend on July 17 to propose the following resolution: "That 
 women be eligible to seats on the committee of the British 
 and Foreign Bible Society." 
 
 This does not imply, that there must be a certain number of 
 women on the committee, but that, if the name of a woman 
 be proposed, it shall not be ruled out by the chairman, on the 
 ground, that women are, under the organic laws and regula- 
 tions, or unbroken custom, ineligible. Whatever may have 
 been the practice in past years, there is nothing in the laws, 
 which justifies exclusion. 
 
 I recognize unmistakably, that the Women of the twentieth 
 century will be fit for, and therefore entitled to, a much larger 
 share in the administration of Religious and benevolent Asso- 
 ciations : our sisters have generally more leisure than their 
 brothers ; they are animated by more fervour, and more Holy 
 zeal ; in many instances they have exhibited unequalled devo- 
 tion, and great capacity. 
 
 In many quarters the battle has been won. No Board of 
 Parochial Guardians, no Hospital-committee, no Missionary- 
 committee for the selection of female agents, or the adminis- 
 tration of Associations for the conversion of women, would 
 give satisfaction, if composed entirely of men. More than 
 this, learned Societies, such as the Royal Asiatic, Zoological, 
 Botanical, Statistical, Anthropological Societies, and the British 
 Association, admit Women to membership, and place no bar on 
 their election to the governing body, if deemed fit. 
 
 In our own Society what would our district-Secretaries do 
 without the persistent, stirring, and able, assistance of the 
 women of the community ? Some years, back I was fortunate 
 enough to persuade our committee to introduce Bible-Women 
 into Asiatic countries. Later on I proposed, that the post of 
 Honorary Life Governor should be conferred on Women : it was 
 rejected in committee, but the idea gained ground, and was 
 gradually accepted, and on entering the committee one day, 
 I found, that my rejected resolution was being carried. We already 
 employ Women as translators, and proof-correctors, and I feel 
 sure, that, as time goes on, new doors for sanctified influence 
 will be opened to them. If the world consists of 1400 Millions, 
 
( 107 ) 
 
 half that enormous number are women. Are we to place half 
 the population of the world under a disadvantage ? 
 
 When two years ago I took leave of the committee of the 
 Church Missionary Society, after half a century of membership 
 of the Society, my final proposal was to admit Women to the 
 committee, because in very deed the names of several Women 
 most competent for that office, must have occurred to all. 
 However, two members of the General committee, who knew 
 little of the work of Missions, or of the onerous duties of 
 the Group and Corresponding committees, moved the previous 
 question, and without discussion the matter was dropped, but 
 I myself feel a solemn conviction, that the new century will 
 not open upon us without the presence in all Religious com- 
 mittees of one, two, or more godly Women. We are plainly 
 resisting the enlightened and holy tendencies of the age in 
 excluding our qualified sisters from the fulfilment of their legiti- 
 mate aspirations, and the display of their undoubted capacity 
 for giving wise counsel, for controlling details of administration, 
 especially as regards female converts, and for representing their 
 sex in the foremost ranks of their Master's battle against igno- 
 rance and sin. 
 
 My connection with all Associations must soon end : I have 
 given such time, talents, and money, to the most blessed work 
 of the Bible-Society, as were at my disposal ; but I wish to be 
 remembered after my departure as one, who for many years 
 strove to remove the social inequalities of the two sexes in every 
 department of secular and Spiritual life. 
 
 I trust that my friends, during the interval, which will elapse 
 before the Resolution is brought forward, will think out, and 
 discuss among themselves, this important subject, so that, if 
 the Resolution be not accepted, the public may be informed 
 what were the solid reasons for rejecting it. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 Robert N. Cust, 
 Vice-President of the British and Foreign Bible Society. 
 
 June 24, 1 893-1 895. 
 
 N.B. I was left in a minority of only two members, but 
 I feel confident, that sooner or later the Reform must be carried. 
 
( 108 ) 
 
 4. What Women have Received from the Bible, and 
 what Services they can Render in Return. 
 
 The kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in 
 three measures ,of meal. 
 
 Since the earliest Epochs and in all countries, women have 
 been more or less oppressed by the stronger sex; whetherin a 
 high Oriental civilization, or in the low level of the barbarian of 
 North America, Africa, and Oceania. But from the earliest 
 days, wherever the Spirit of the Bible prevailed,, women were 
 treated with respect, Love, and honour : there existed, indeed, 
 Polygamy up to the time of the Captivity, but we find no trace 
 of it after the return from Exile. Daughter, sister, mother, were 
 words accompanied with a blessing, as they suggested blessings. 
 The Jews had much to learn of our Lord, but in this particular 
 there was less cause for reproof. By placing the mark of His 
 disapproval on divorce He corrected the only flaw in the relation 
 of the sexes. Throughout the Epistles of Paul we find tender 
 salutations, full of respect and love to his dear female fellow- 
 workers, and no doubt they were worthy of the honour, though 
 History is silent as to the nature of their Services to him 
 personally. Nothing, however, is more striking in the Gospel- 
 narratives than the fearless and persistent devotion of the 
 daughters of Jerusalem to their Lord, who had been deserted by 
 his male followers with the exception of John. First at the 
 Sepulchre ; last at the Cross ! 
 
 It would occupy too much space to chronicle what Women 
 have done for the work of Missions. I wish only to record how 
 much they haye done and are doing for the British and Foreign 
 Bible Society. 
 
 i. What would become of our local organizations in this 
 country, if Women were not forward in every detail ! How 
 altered the appearance of audiences, if Women were not present 
 to hear the speakers ! How vain would be the efforts of 
 Secretaries and deputations without those " sisters, who laboured 
 much in the Lord ! " How strange, on our annual gatherings, 
 would Exeter Hall appear in the absence of the devout Women, 
 a great multitude, who show so impressively, by their numbers, 
 how deep is their devotion to the work of their Lord ! 
 
 2. Love is more valuable than wealth ; still, to carry on this 
 great work, money is required, and if the gold and silver in our 
 treasure-house could cry out, how many coins would say, 
 "Directly or indirectly, by the influence of mother, daughter, 
 and wife, a woman sent me." If Eve tempted man to sin, to 
 how many good actions have women led men by good example 
 and gentle persuasion ! 
 
( 109 ) 
 
 3. In the foreign field Women have not been absent, in their 
 labours in the Dep6t or as colporteurs. We all recollect the 
 notable instance of that good lady at Neufchatel, who so many 
 years, without remuneration, from simple love of the Book, kept 
 the Dep6t, and did the work of a silent Evangelist. Some 
 years ago, at Moscow, I was in the Depot, when a Woman 
 entered and began to fill her empty sack with Bibles, and I 
 found that she was a book-hawker, who went her daily round, 
 content with the small percentage upon her sales. She looked 
 for her full tale of wages for her work to Heaven, and to her 
 Master there. 
 
 4. In the home-field we bless the name of Bible- Women, and 
 of the dear departed friend, who set on foot the enterprise. In 
 the streets and the homes of the poor, in the docks and the 
 manufactories, wherever sinners are collected together, there 
 Bible-women are found. Not many, that are wise in things of 
 this world ; not many that are great, as man calculates great- 
 ness ; nor may they be beautiful to the eye, that sees only the 
 outward form ; they are only humble handmaidens of the Lord, 
 but their names will be written among the Angels. 
 
 5. In Oriental countries, where women are by the custom of 
 the country secluded from the men, what chance would a poor 
 woman have to know the truth but for the appearance of her 
 sister from Europe and North America, some to teach, some to 
 heal, and some to bear about the Book of Life, to read it to ears, 
 which never heard the story of the Precious Promises before, 
 to leave it in the hands of those, who have found out its value ? 
 Is not this the leaven, which a Woman took and hid in a measure 
 of meal ? Will it not be remembered in the great day, when 
 all things are revealed ? _ 
 
 6. Let me allude to even higher things. All Gifts come from 
 the Lord, and as they belong to Him, to Him must the firstfruits 
 and the last gleanings be rendered. Women have not been 
 wanting, to whom the great Gift has been granted of a sanctified 
 power of rendering the meaning of inspired words in the Hebrew 
 and Greek into the Vernacular spoken by the Natives. Let us 
 reflect how mighty such a Gift is ; how blessed are they who 
 have been chosen to exercise this Gift. Some may have con- 
 verted souls by their living voice ; this is a great Grace, but to 
 the sister, whose voice speaks beyond the grave we must say, 
 " Thou excellest them all ! " 
 
 Thus I have noticed briefly the good work of our sisters. 
 The Lord will reward them ! 
 
 Is the intellect of any man so crass, and his experience so 
 limited, that he is not aware, that a Woman can be as eloquent 
 as men, when a subject occupies her thoughts ? 
 
 British and Foreign Bible Society, July, 1890-1895. 
 
( no ) 
 
 5. Women's Work and the Church of Rome. 
 
 One of the most interesting developments of the Missionary 
 spirit of modern times is that of Woman's work among Heathen 
 and Mahometan women. When we see secular Institutions like 
 Lady Dufferin's Fund start, we rejoice, because it is Christ's 
 Work done, though without the blessed accompaniment of 
 Christ's Word. But what shall be said of the Papal development 
 of this movement ? I have received a pamphlet in the English 
 Language from high Roman Catholic quarters, headed "The 
 Missionary Catechists of Mary Immaculate." It goes over all 
 the reasons for making the movement, the necessity, and the 
 opportunity, and then follow these words : " Mary seems to 
 " wish to respond to the solemn proclamation of the Immaculate 
 " Conception in preparing the liberation of Eve's poor daughters. 
 " She has inspired Christian Souls with the thought of founding 
 " under her high patronage a work of prayer and Sacrifice. 
 " Pope Leo XIII has enriched by precious Indulgences the 
 " work of Mary Immaculate." 
 
 From India a Bishop writes : " My heart, inundated with joy, 
 " overflowed in thanksgiving before the Blessed Sacrament, and 
 " the Altar of Mary Immaculate 1 , who has inspired generous 
 " Souls with the thought of rehabilitation of Pagan women." 
 
 From China a Bishop writes : " I pray the Virgin Immaculate 
 " to extend the mantle of her protection more and more over 
 " a work, that must be so pleasing to her. . . The Eagle of 
 " Patmos saw a multitude led to kneel at the feet of the Lamb 
 " by the voice of the devoted soldiers of Mary Immaculate." 
 
 The author of this pamphlet goes on to say : " To these in- 
 " numerable approbations of the work of Mary Immaculate 
 " must be added that gratitude, which our zealous Missionaries 
 " lay at the feet of our Saviour, and His Immaculate Mother, 
 " when they bear witness to the fruits already attained by its 
 " means. I now see to whom after God we owe the muscle of 
 " our perseverance, viz., to the prayers and good works of the 
 " Association of Mary Immaculate. 
 
 " Of so many supplications, made to Mary Immaculate, and 
 " presented by that sweet Mother of God at the foot of the 
 " throne of her Son Jesus, the fruit should be to inspire numbers 
 " of Christian Women with the heroic resolution of hastening to 
 " the succour of their poor Pagan sisters, and leading them 
 " to filial tenderness towards the Blessed Virgin, who is the 
 " dispenser of all God's Graces." 
 
( 111 ) 
 
 A Missionary in China writes : " I pray to God to move the 
 Council of the Association to have confidence in the Virgin 
 Immaculate." 
 
 The Council, speaking for itself, says : " Witness of the rapid 
 " development attained under the visible protection of the 
 " Blessed Virgin, the Council with entire confidence in its 
 " august patron faces the great work. The associates of Mary 
 " Immaculate are finally exhorted to redouble the ardour of their 
 " prayers, and the generosity of their voluntary Sacrifices, in 
 " order that the patronage of the most Blessed Virgin may day 
 " by day display itself more powerfully over this work, of which 
 " after God she alone has the whole glory." 
 
 This paper was printed at St. Andrew's Press, Barnet, in Great 
 Britain, and circulated in February, 1888. It reads like a 
 romantic legend of the dark Middle Ages : the odd statement 
 of the date and place of printing may recall the reader from the 
 world of wonderful romance, and priestly delusion, to the hard 
 facts. Throughout there is not one word quoted from the Bible, 
 so rich in appropriate passages, no allusion the most distant, to 
 the Holy Spirit, and only a passing notice of our Saviour, as 
 a kind of lay figure, and a conventional use of the phrase " after 
 God." All power, all willingness to help, all motive to good 
 works, all aspirations to holiness and work of charity, are centred 
 in the person of the lowly handmaid of the Lord, the Virgin 
 Mother, who is fondly and fancifully, without any authority of 
 Scripture, presumed to be omnipresent, omniscient, cognizant 
 of all that is going on in the world, with power to inspire the 
 hearts of her devotees, with an ear open to their prayers, and 
 the only medium of God's Graces. Can it be doubted that in 
 the Roman Catholic Church there exists a Quaternity, not a 
 Trinity, or, if a Trinity, that the Virgin Immaculate has usurped 
 the place, and the functions, of the Holy Spirit ? 
 
 February, 1888-1895. 
 
( H2 ) 
 
 6. Work of Roman Catholic Women in British India. 
 
 It is an interesting and instructive sight to see how Women's 
 work is conducted by the Church of Rome. The Women here 
 alluded to come from Savoy, in France, work under the Monks 
 of St. Francis of Sales, and, sixteen in number, live entirely on 
 the monthly allowance of one hundred and fifty Rupees, made 
 by the British Government in the Educational Department. I 
 make a few quotations from a report of the Superior General 
 of the Missionaries given in the Annals of the Propagation of 
 the Faith, in the Number of September, 1892, published In 
 London, now on my table. 
 
 These religious Women have their Mother-home at Chavanod, 
 near Annecy (Savoy), "under the protecting shadow of France " : 
 they have devoted themselves to the Salvation of Souls in India 
 since 1886. The station of Amraoti is to the West of Nagpur : a 
 tract of ground was purchased for their dwellings, etc. : in order 
 to assure themselves of the means of living it was necessary to 
 have a School, to which the British Government would accord 
 a grant. By degrees the little girls came to it — Christians, alas ! 
 mostly Protestants ! and then the Natives. 
 
 The Sisters, while they taught, studied English, Marathi, 
 and Hindustani : they were dispensed from that point of their 
 Rule, which forbids the use of a pianoforte, and gave lessons : 
 as the Priest wrote, " they take flies with their honey, and 
 Marathi with the piano." 
 
 The good God has visibly protected the community : not 
 a Sister has died. They have a dispensary in the city, which 
 is called Nazareth : the Sisters commenced by making use of 
 one remedy only, " water from Lourdes," and the cures wrought 
 were numerous enough to increase their reputation : but, as they 
 did not wish to tempt God, they studied pharmacy, and prepared 
 medicines : they became popular, and the moment arrived for 
 which they had longed : little children were brought to the. 
 dispensary with the hand of death upon them, and when the 
 only remedy for them was the best of all remedies the waters 
 of Baptism. More than one Mother, without knowing it, carried 
 away a little Christian in her arms, who died on the road, to 
 live for ever in Heaven : but these conquests were rare. 
 
 When a poor child in its agony is brought to them, what joy ! 
 The Sisters divide the duties : one engages the attention of the 
 public by dressing wounds ; the other collects herself, says a 
 prayer, and produces the blue flask, a small bottle of holy 
 water: the parents look on: the Sister washes the baby's head, 
 and it is given back better than cured, saved for eternity ! 
 
( 113 ) 
 
 The baptisms in extremis in 1891 exceeded 600: some 
 Brahmins finally attempted to cast suspicion on this new kind 
 of remedy, and accused the Sisters of killing the children with 
 charmed waters. 
 
 " At times a heart-broken mother comes : her child, unable to 
 " be moved, lies dying. in her hut: would the Great Lady come 
 " and see it ? And like an angel, the daughter of the Cross trips 
 " from her cart, and discovers a child half dead, and speedily the 
 " water from the blue flask presents one of the elect to Paradise ! " 
 
 The Sisters take care not to eat, except when out of sight, 
 for they would lose their prestige, and would no longer be con- 
 sidered of noble caste, if they were seen taking food in public. 
 
 Parents overcome with misery offer to let the Sisters take one 
 of their children under their charge for ever.: sometimes rupees 
 are given in exchange : a triumphal entry is made into the 
 orphanage ! In such cases there is no hurry to baptize : 
 Baptism is not administered until the child understands the 
 meaning of it. (Do the Sisters understand the meaning ?) 
 
 Prudence, and the Law of the Church, forbid Baptism, except 
 in danger of death, to the children of infidels against the 
 wish, and without the knowledge, of, their Parents or Guardians : 
 the Nuns meet with poor creatures, whose illness is not serious 
 enough to render it lawful to baptize them : the Sisters have to be 
 careful not to arouse suspicion by taking too frequent steps in 
 the matter: they go back as' soon as they may to the village, 
 and make inquiries : the child is dead, and tears are shed, while 
 a Sister of the Cross writes this bad news in a letter. 
 
 Another centre of operations is at Ellichpur. 
 
 It will be remarked, that in the practice of these poor women 
 there is gross deceit, grovelling superstition, purchase of human 
 flesh for money, and an entire failure to realize the Precious 
 Promises of the Gospel : and all this is supported by grants 
 from a State - Educational - Department : of real Hospital 
 work, and honest primary Education, there is no mention, nor 
 do we read of a single adult convert : so much the better: perhaps 
 the making use of the waters of Lourdes to cure diseases in 
 India, and producing a blue flask of holy water to baptize 
 a dying, or even a dead, child, while the bystanders believe, that 
 a medical lineament is being applied, indicates a conception of 
 Religion far below that of a Mahometan, infinitely below that 
 of a Buddhist, and slightly below that of a sensible Hindu. 
 
 September ^%, 1892-1895. 
 
( 114 ) 
 
 D. — The Native Teacher. 
 
 Address at Strangeways, Manchester. 
 
 The Isles shall wait on Me.— Isaiah, lx, 9. 
 
 The speaker, who preceded me, has dwelt on the Lord's work 
 in India, that country, the interests of which are so near to my 
 heart. Twenty-five years' residence has taught me to love the 
 people, whose Languages and customs have become to me as 
 familiar as my own. India has been indeed the joy of my youth 
 and manhood. The speaker, who follows me, will treat of Africa, 
 the land of my adoption, the solace of my old age, to which I 
 have consecrated twenty-five years of study. India and Africa 
 are the popular, and best known, topics of Missionary interest. 
 Their populations can only be counted in hundreds of millions. 
 I seek to interest you this day in the story of the Gospel in the 
 islands of the South Sea ; the shaking of the olive-tree ; the 
 gleaning grapes, when the vintage is done ; the few sheep 
 left in the wilderness : yet God's Grace has been marvellously 
 evidenced in these islands, the utmost ends of the world, con- 
 cerning the existence of which neither Prophet nor Evangelist 
 had the remotest conception. Isaiah, in a moment of inspiration, 
 cried out on three several occasions : 
 
 " The Isles shall wait for His Law" (xlii, 4). " The Isles shall wait on Me and 
 on Mine arm shall they trust " (l, 5). " Surely the Isles shall wait for Me, to 
 bring thy sons from far, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy 
 One of Israel, because He has glorified thee " (lx, 9). 
 
 Our Blessed Lord told His disciples : 
 
 " That in those days the Son of Man would gather His elect from the four 
 winds, from the uttermost parts of the earth " (Mark, xiii, 27). 
 
 It is only in this generation, that the magnificence of the 
 prediction can be realized in its fulness. 
 
 The world is generally considered to consist of four continents; 
 but lying outside them in the bosom of the Pacific are fairy 
 Regions, sealed and secluded gardens of the Ocean, where " Day 
 never shuts her eye " : Regions which were dreamt of by the Poet 
 Horace : 
 
 " Nos manet Oceanus circumvagus ; Arva Beata, 
 Petamus Arva, divites et Insulas." 
 
( 115 ) 
 
 In later days Tennyson has described them in a few wondrous 
 lines : 
 
 " there to wander far away 
 On from island unto island at the gateways of the Day, 
 Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, 
 Breadth of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise : 
 Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag. 
 Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from 
 
 the crag ; 
 Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree, 
 Summer-isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea." 
 
 These Regions have been marked by frightful crimes, Cannibal- 
 ism, Human Sacrifice, Sorcery, and by the murders of Cook and 
 La Perouse, the explorers, and John Williams and Patteson, the 
 Missionaries. Yet God did not leave them for ever without a 
 witness, and at the close of last century Missionaries found their 
 way to Tahiti from England : later on, Hawaii and Mikronesia were 
 occupied by an American Mission: soon afterwards, New Zealand 
 was evangelized from England, as well as Samoa, Fiji, the Loyalty 
 islands, the New Hebrides, Bank's islands, Santa Cruz, Solomon 
 islands, and New Guinea. Never, since the days of Pentecost, 
 had-there been so plentiful an outpouring of the Spirit, for God 
 chose men of the humblest station to be His messengers, and 
 the Divine method of sending out Native Teachers two and two 
 to evangelize their own countrymen was adopted with wonderful 
 success by all Protestant Denominations. Those, who have 
 travelled in tropical climates, know how at night the ship leaves 
 behind it a long and broad brilliant furrow of light, marking for 
 many leagues the course, which has been taken. Such is the 
 light left behind in their annual visits by the Missionary Ships, 
 the " John Williams," the" Wesley," the " Southern Cross," and 
 the " Dayspring," the memories of unselfish acts of kindness, 
 devotion to the best interests of the islanders, and the desire 
 to elevate them, and protect them from their own cruel 
 customs, and from the vicious trader, and heartless man- 
 stealer, who came from Europe. 
 
 The Region of Oceania has sometimes been called Australasia, 
 as being a southern extension of Asia ; but the name of Oceania 
 is more suitable. With certain exceptions it is South of the 
 Equator and North of the Tropic of Capricorn. Estimated by 
 its land-area, it is only a little larger than Europe ; estimated by 
 the surface on the face of the Globe, over which the islands are 
 spread, the area occupied exceeds that of Asia, for it stretches 
 from Australia on the West to Easter island on the East, from 
 the Sandwich islands North of the Equator to the Southern 
 point of New Zealand. It does not include Malaisia: it may be 
 
( 116 ) 
 
 said of Oceania, that it is entirely outside the influence of Asiatic 
 Religions and culture. 
 
 The four Subdivisions are : I. Polynesia ; II. Melanesia ; III. 
 Mikronesia ; IV. Australia. The last may be omitted from this 
 discussion, as little or nothing has been done to evangelize the 
 Natives, and this is a heavy blot on the Churches of Australia, 
 which undertakes to send out Missions to New Guinea, while 
 80,000 of the Queen's subjects at their very door know not the 
 Saviour, and have not one Translation of the Bible in their 
 numerous Languages in circulation. 
 
 Polynesia includes the Groups of the Paumotu, Society, Harvey 
 or Cook, Marquesas, Sandwich, Ellis, Samoa, Tonga, and New 
 Zealand. The number of islands is very great, and the beauty 
 of the scenery, and the fertility of the soil, notorious. Their 
 existence may be said to have been certified by Tasman in 1642, 
 but they were first brought to notice by Captain Cook, who, in 
 the first of his celebrated voyages, visited Tahiti, and in his last 
 perished at the Sandwich islands. The population is one race, 
 and they all speak closely connected Languages: though a noble 
 race, tall, fair, agreeable, and beautiful, they were Nature- 
 worshippers and Cannibals ; but they are now nearly entirely 
 Christians. The London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan 
 Missionary Society, the American Board of Foreign Missions, 
 and the Church Missionary Society, have accomplished this 
 noble work : the Marquesas, Paumotu, and the Islands of Wallis 
 and Horn, are mainly Roman Catholic. Great Britain has 
 taken possession of New Zealand ; France of Tahiti, Paumotu, 
 and Marquesas. Other Groups maintain a precarious in- 
 dependence. 
 
 To the West of Polynesia lies the Region of Melanesia. The 
 British Colony of Fiji is on the extreme Eastern flan'k, and a 
 necklace of islands extends in a semicircular sweep to the great 
 island of New Guinea, the whole of which is included, and has 
 been divided between Holland, Great Britain, and Germany. 
 France is in possession of the islands of New Caledonia, and 
 the Isle of Pines ; the remainder are for the moment independent, 
 but the end seems approaching. The population speak a multi- 
 plicity of totally different Languages : they are black, inhospitable, 
 1 savages. Still the Grace of God has been found sufficient to 
 carry the Gospel to a large number, and the work is being 
 pushed forward at different points by the London Missionary 
 Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, the Presbyterian 
 Associations of Scotland, Australia, and Canada, and the 
 Melanesian Mission of the Church of England. Perils of no 
 ordinary character had to be encountered : perils of the deep, 
 for the steamship through an unsurveyed sea was the only means 
 of communication ; perils of the climate, perils from cruel, 
 
( 117 ) 
 
 treacherous savages, whose worst passions had been roused by 
 the injuries inflicted upon them by the men-stealers from Australia 
 and Fiji, and the depravity caused by the introduction of 
 intoxicating liquors, and foul diseases. Difficulties presented 
 themselves of no ordinary character, to secure safe and 
 decent protection from the weather, to provide supplies of food, 
 to train Native Teachers, to collect Scholars from distant islands, 
 and to master the strangely different Languages. 
 
 Mikronesia lies wholly North of the Equator, consisting of 
 the Caroline islands, belonging to Spain, the Marshall islands 
 recently annexed by Germany, and the Gilbert islands. The 
 population is gentle, hospitable, free from savage and criminal 
 habits, speaking, however, several distinct Languages. The 
 American Board of Foreign Missions has prosecuted its quiet 
 labours with marked success. 
 
 It is not my object in this paper to state in detail the particular 
 work done by different Missionaries. Still less is it my object to 
 fall into the too common error of unduly glorifying individuals. 
 In the long list of heroes, above all tower the names of John 
 Williams and James Patteson, for they were selected by Divine 
 Providence for the honour of sealing their Faith by the offer of 
 their lives ; and I call particular attention to the fact, that no 
 wish was expressed by their friends, nor attempt made by 
 the British Government, to avenge their lives, though nothing 
 in their cases could have been easier. The true-hearted Mis- 
 sionary trusts not in the staff of a broken reed, the Arm of the 
 Flesh, but in the Lord his God. 
 
 One characteristic feature of the labours in all these Regions 
 has been the Translation of the Bible, or of portions, into 
 the Languages of the tribes, as they came under Missionary 
 influence. The versions thus prepared, and published by the 
 Bible-Societies, came upon the Scholars of Europe with all the 
 freshness of a new Revelation. It is indeed wonderful to handle 
 Translations into the Languages of Tahiti, Rarotonga, the Mar- 
 quesas, Hawaii, Samoa, Niue, Tonga, and Maori, in Polynesia; 
 of Fiji, Rdtuma, Mar6, Lifu, Uvea. Aneityum, Tanna, Nguna, 
 Futuna, Erromanga, Aniwa, Fat6, Mota, Florida, and Isabel, in 
 the Groups of the Loyalty, New Hebrides, Banks', and Solomon 
 islands, in the Language of the islands of Murray, and Saibai in 
 Torres Straits, and the Duke of York island, and New Britain, in 
 St. George's Strait, and Mafur, Motu, and South Cape in New 
 Guinea, all in Melanesia. Add to this versions in the Languages 
 of Kusai, Ebon, Gilbert Islands, Ponap6, and Mortlock islands, 
 all in Mikronesia. Nowhere is the precious Gift of the Bible 
 more valued than by these newly-converted races : the people 
 of Samoa remitted the whole cost of the expense of printing 
 their version: when a Mission-ship touches at a port, whole 
 
( 118 ) 
 
 editions are sold off before the ship is unloaded. Free gifts to 
 the Bible Society are, tendered by less wealthy islands in the 
 form of arrowroot grown specially for the purpose. When the 
 French Priests tried to wean the people of Tahiti from their 
 Bibles, they found, that all their efforts were in vain : so firm 
 a hold had the Blessed Book been able to lay on the Souls and 
 consciences of these unsophisticated races, who read, and believed, 
 and practised. 
 
 But another still more wonderful characteristic feature has 
 distinguished the Mission-work of Polynesia and Melanesia 
 from that of every other Region in the world. I allude to the 
 universal and successful employment of Native Teachers, acting 
 independently of the European Missionaries, who trained young 
 men, collected in central spots, and then sent them out, two and 
 two, to the different islands occupied by Heathen Cannibals. 
 When the Mission-ship returned the following year, it was 
 found, that these devoted men had either worked a wonderful 
 change in the island, or had been killed and devoured. A few 
 extracts tell the story with lifelike fidelity. 
 
 In 1876 a Samoan Teacher was left on the island of Nano- 
 manga, seventy-five miles N.W. : it was the third time that the 
 attempt had been made. In 1877 the island was visited by the 
 Missionary with great anxiety for the safety of the poor man 
 and his wife. A canoe came off, and the Native, being asked 
 after the Teacher, replied in broken English, " He good man," 
 and the Teacher soon came on board, and told, how the temple 
 of the Heathen-deity had been destroyed, that a Chapel had 
 been built, that the King and many of the chiefs had become 
 Christians: out of the whole island 150 were Christians and 
 86 still Heathen. 
 
 In 1840 a party of Native Christians from Samoa visited Niue, 
 or Savage island, in hopes of preaching the Gospel. They were 
 not allowed to land, but three Natives came off to their ship, 
 and were conveyed to Samoa. One of them, named Peniamina, 
 felt the Power of the Gospel, and longed to convey it to his 
 home. He tried in 1842, but failed; in 1846 he tried again. 
 A chief of the island had come to Samoa, and being favourably 
 impressed with Christianity, the two were conveyed to Niue. 
 The chief swam ashore, told the people, that a Teacher wished 
 to come, and the chiefs agreed. The sea was so rough that no 
 boat could be used. Peniamina put his books into a cask, and 
 jumped into the sea, and on October 26th, 184.6, stood as a 
 Teacher on his own island. He was ill-treated and robbed, but 
 his life was spared. When the Mission-ship came back, after 
 two years, it was found, that the work was done, that Religious 
 services had commenced, and that they were willing to receive 
 a Samoan Teacher. Paulo and his wife landed in October, 1 849. 
 
( 119 ) 
 
 At first they were dreadfully ill-treated, but they bore it with 
 patience. Paulo laboured thirteen years and a half, and trans- 
 lated a portion of the New Testament into the Language : he 
 taught hundreds to write ; he taught them house-building and 
 carpentry; he preached the Gospel, and converted a great many: 
 he found them naked savages, he left them a community of 
 civilized professing Christians. 
 
 After much faithful labour, the Isle of Tonga was brought to 
 Christ. The Missionary urged on the Tonga Teachers the claim 
 of the neighbouring island of Fiji for help : two of the younger 
 and best men at once offered themselves willingly, and were 
 sent. Teachers from Tonga island were sent to Rotuma island, 
 800 miles distant, and were the first to learn the Rotuma 
 Language, and preach the Gospel. 
 
 The mortality among the Polynesian Teachers, who had 
 volunteered to carry the Gospel to the black, Cannibal races of 
 Melanesia, was estimated by Bishop Selwyn, who had oppor- 
 tunity of seeing their work, at fifty, mostly from Samoa and 
 Rarotonga ; yet no better proof could be desired of the earnest- 
 ness of the Christian converts in these islands than their 
 readiness to volunteer for the most perilous posts, in order to 
 prepare the way for the European Missionary. Of two Teachers 
 sent to New Caledonia, long before the French occupation, one 
 asked to be removed ; he feared for his life : the other was 
 ready to stay, or try some other island ; he wished to live and 
 die in the service of Christ. It was proposed to remove him 
 to the more peaceful Island of Mare 1 : he replied that he might 
 as well be killed in New Caledonia as at Mar6. 
 
 In the Isles of Pines, close by, the lives of the Teachers were 
 in constant jeopardy. They were surrounded by men thirsting 
 for their blood. Taunga said : " Come on, kill us ; we are not 
 afraid. Close our lips in death, but remember that you will 
 not thereby silence the Word of God." The murderers were 
 daunted, and desisted. 
 
 Teachers often had to leave, but they tried after a season 
 to return, and with success. When killed, they were always 
 devoured. There were some strange contrasts. In Mar6 there 
 were two Teachers : one died of consumption, and the Natives 
 wept, as if he had been one of themselves, and their fear was 
 lest the other should die also; they supplied him with food, 
 and would not let him run any risk. 
 
 From the Island of Aniwa, in the New Hebrides, the Natives 
 sent out three of themselves as Teachers and Evangelists to help 
 to give the Gospel to a Heathen island ; yet about fifteen years 
 ago all the inhabitants were Heathen Cannibals, in a state of 
 nudity ; now they are all professed Christians, and conduct 
 night and morning family- Worship. 
 
( 120 ) 
 
 On the Island of Fate 1 four Samoa Teachers were left. Some 
 died from the climate ; two settled with their wives and children 
 at the express request of the Natives, but within three weeks they 
 were all killed and devoured. Five years later three Rarotonga 
 Teachers volunteered to renew the attempt, and succeeded, and 
 an English Missionary soon followed. At this same island of 
 Rarotonga, some time previously, Papeiha and another landed 
 with their wives ; but they were so ill-treated and plundered, 
 that they had to retreat. Papeiha volunteered to stay alone, 
 and in a little more than a year the entire population was 
 engaged in building a Chapel. If any attempt was made to 
 remove a favourite Teacher, the men and women rose up to 
 retain him by force. 
 
 The people of Niua Tobatabu were anxious to spread the 
 glad tidings of the Gospel to a neighbouring island, and they 
 sent a canoe, which foundered, and the Teacher was drowned-. 
 His body was washed ashore, and his hand still grasped a 
 bundle of Scripture-books, from which he was not parted in 
 his watery grave : we may well believe, that by the precious 
 Truths, which he was so anxious to carry to others, he himself 
 was strengthened in his last hour : the Great Master did not 
 permit him to accomplish his loving intentions. 
 
 The Native Teachers were indeed on one side weak: they 
 could not conduct their hearers beyond the point, to which 
 they had themselves attained. They could read and write, and 
 were single-minded, believing, praying, and zealous, and their 
 labours received a manifold blessing. On the other hand, they 
 were the best pioneers : the gap between the European and the 
 low barbarian was too great to be at once spanned. The 
 Native Teacher squatted in the hut, and told in simple words 
 the story of Jesus : he had more opportunities of bringing the 
 matter home to the consciences and hearts of his ignorant 
 audience ; they knew what he himself had been, and now was ; 
 he could tell them what had wrought the wondrous change. 
 There must also be in the Polynesian race a power and a 
 dignity, for when it came to the time, that the Papuans of New 
 Guinea should be evangelized, they laughed at their dark 
 congeners from the New Hebrides, but obeyed the Polynesians 
 of Rarotonga and Samoa. There was a wonderful facility 
 and readiness for talk among the Polynesians ; they were not 
 troubled with bashfulness, and they made very active agents. 
 A visitor .to the Mission remarked, that at first sight it appeared 
 strange to see a man clad in some grotesque dress, such as the 
 old coat of a soldier, or nothing but a cotton wrapper round 
 the loins, stand up and lead the devotions of a people ; but the 
 strangeness was all on the visitor's side. These men all occupied 
 a good position in the estimation of their fellow-worshippers, 
 
( 121 ) 
 
 and expressed themselves in a way, that was true to the feelings 
 and wants of all, as is evidenced by reading many of the prayers, 
 which they have uttered, and which have been recorded. No 
 attempt appears to have been made to provide for their 
 sustenance, while they were acquiring a new Language totally 
 different from their own. They had to cultivate plantations 
 for the support of their family ; all the salary, which they 
 received, was about five to ten pounds per annum for the 
 purpose of purchasing a stock of clothing. They suffered great 
 privations from the climate, insufficient nourishment, and bad 
 dwelling-houses ; and, until the change of the dispositions 
 of the people came, lived in constant fear for the lives of all, 
 and the honour of their females. It makes the relative position 
 of the British Missionary, with all his requirements, appear 
 very small in the scale of consecration and devotion, when 
 weighed in the great balance, in which all God's creatures are 
 in His sight equal. We speak with pride of the African 
 redeemed slave, or the first generation of redeemed slaves, 
 standing out bravely in his new profession ; but these Poly- 
 nesians were something worse. It is a misfortune, not a shame, 
 to have been a slave ; but some of these teachers belonged 
 themselves to Cannibal races; they had taken part in Human 
 Sacrifices, child-murder, and Idolatrous abominations, and yet 
 the Grace of God had so worked upon them, that they counted 
 their lives as nothing compared to the Cross of Christ ; they 
 gave a reality in the nineteenth century to the eleventh chapter 
 of Hebrews ; they were neither wise nor great, nor powerful, 
 but they were faithful in life, and constant in death. 
 
 I give another story to show, that women were not wanting 
 in this holy war. I have already noted, that the wives always 
 accompanied the Teachers. In Rarotonga a Native Teacher 
 once expressed to his Missionary his desire to get married, 
 " akaipoipo vaine." The Missionary expressed his concurrence, 
 and asked if he had thought of any one: "Yes, I have been 
 thinking of Maria, the daughter of another Teacher." 
 
 On being asked, if he had made known his desires to her, he 
 replied, that he had not spoken to her, but that he had been 
 looking at her for a long time. On being told, that something 
 more than looking was necessary, he produced a letter, which ran 
 as follows: "I, Akatangi, have been now appointed to go as 
 " a Native Teacher to the Heathen in the dark lands westwards. 
 " I have been looking at you for a long time, and I desire, that 
 " you will go with me. If you love Jesus, if you love the 
 " Heathen, and if you love me, let us go together. Think of 
 " this, and let me know. Blessings on you from Jesus. Amen. 
 " Na Akatangi." 
 
 A Deacon of the Church conveyed this letter to Maria, who, on 
 
( 122 ) 
 
 being told whence it came, betrayed an expression of counte- 
 nance, which showed, that his looking at her had produced 
 no unfavourable impression, and on reading it, she was pleased 
 to accept, with her parents' consent. They were married, went 
 to Erromanga, the scene of the murder of John Williams, the 
 two Gordons, and Mrs. Gordon, and lived with, and converted, 
 the murderer of John Williams. 
 
 Perhaps, in some such way Timothy, or Titus, or Luke the 
 beloved physician, wooed and won one of those chaste and 
 sweet women, who were honoured by the Love of the Apostle 
 Paul : Pheb6, a " succourer of many and of myself also " ; 
 Tryph6na and Tryph6sa, " who laboured in the Lord," or " the 
 beloved Persis." A respect for the weaker sex, and the gentle 
 tie.s of pure conjugal Love, had been one of the earliest evidences 
 of the new Christian life, and the women were worthy of the men, 
 brave and faithful. We have to try to imagine what was meant 
 in these words : " Go with me to the savages of Melanesia, to 
 live or to die." 
 
 So they went on in the glory of their youth, and self-consecra- 
 tion. We hear no more of them : they may on some sad day 
 have been killed and devoured by their Cannibal flock, to whom 
 they came bringing life everlasting, cheerfully surrendering their 
 bodies to Him, to whom they had entrusted their Souls, in the 
 morning of their pure and unsullied lives; or they may have 
 lived on, to be the centres of a family, or a village, of Christian 
 men and women, who had forgotten, as well as abandoned, 
 their bad old customs. All these things lie in the hand of the 
 Almighty, and, as far as poor Human creatures were concerned, 
 it mattered not, if they had given their hearts to God. But 
 what a lesson it is to the gilded and pampered youth of this so- 
 called Christian country, where the cost of self-Sacrifice is so 
 closely calculated, and where in many a heart the question . has 
 never presented itself, " What shall I render unto the Lord ? " 
 
 Thus far I have alluded with honour, and praise, and fervent - 
 congratulation, to the labours of our brethren of the London 
 Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and the 
 Presbyterian Missionary Societies of the Free Church of Scotland, 
 Australia and Canada, who have laboured with such success in 
 Polynesia, and in Fiji, the Loyalty islands, and the New 
 Hebrides, which last three are a part of Melanesia. As I proceed 
 onwards I come into contact with the great and venerable names 
 of Bishop Selwyn, the elder, and Bishop Patteson, who approached 
 the Region from New Zealand. In their conceptions of Church- 
 organization they were very far apart from their excellent pre- 
 decessors, but they were both large-hearted men, and recognized 
 good and true work, when they saw it. Bishop Selwyn writes : 
 " I am much drawn to the L.M.S. by the Native Teachers, men, 
 
( 123 ) 
 
 " who in the infancy of their Faith have left home and friends 
 " to live among men of another speech, and in the lowest depths 
 " of barbarism, as the pioneers of the Gospel, by which the 
 " European Missionary may enter and take possession. My 
 " feelings are so strong and so full of affection towards these 
 " faithful men, with whom the affinity of the Maori Language to 
 " their Native idioms enables me to communicate freely, that 
 " I lose no opportunity of showing them kindness." 
 
 The Bishop, however, saw the objection, that it was not 
 likely, that men of that class would make much impression on 
 the Heathen mind : he thought, also, that it was lowering to the 
 whole character of Mission-work to confide to a subordinate 
 agency the preliminary operations of a Mission, which, by the 
 nature of the case, involve greater danger and require more self- 
 denial. If there be danger of life to the British Missionaries, 
 surely (said he) this is part of the duty, which the servants and 
 soldiers of the Cross, who are best acquainted with their Master's 
 Will, would claim for themselves. If there be no danger, then 
 the chief argument for Native agency falls to the ground : it 
 seems foreign to the high and self-denying principle of Christian 
 Love to expose a fellow-creature to danger, because his life is 
 held to be of less value than that of his British brethren. 
 
 My reply is, that in the sight of God the life of the ignorant 
 Polynesian Teacher is not of less value than that of the Doctor 
 of Divinity from England. But the Admiral and General do not 
 volunteer on the forlorn hopes ; they leave it to the younger and 
 less distinguished men : there are portions of the Mission duties, 
 which the Native Teacher could not discharge ; they can keep 
 no accounts, write no reports, superintend no great organization ; 
 but they can hold the fort, they can pave the way, they can 
 conciliate good will, they can bear up under the climate and 
 hard life ; if they fall, their place can be filled ; when men like 
 Selwyn and Patteson fall, the vacancy is hard to supply. And 
 the good Bishop did not act up to the above expressed opinion. 
 He organized a still more refined and elaborate system of Native 
 Teachers. The maximum of success hoped for was the loan of 
 a few lads from the different islands, born and bred in heathen- 
 ism, on whom the influence of Christianity could be brought to 
 bear. The Bishop had a vision of groups of boys entrusted to 
 his care, and then returning to their homes, as in some sort 
 Missionaries, and again and again coming to the College, first 
 at Auckland in New Zealand, and subsequently at Norfolk island, 
 or Sugar Loaf, alias Mota, island, in the Banks' islands Group, 
 for further Training. Some would, in course of time, be ordained, 
 and be sent back with a force, which no European could hope 
 to possess, to impress the hearts and consciences of their Heathen 
 brethren, and to build up a Church of Christ in these islands. 
 
( 124 ) 
 
 And his dream has been realized. It was set on foot by 
 Patteson, the son of his adoption, and brought to perfection 
 by Bishop Selwyn the younger, his son after the flesh. It was 
 rightly considered, that without Training Native Teachers were 
 quite incapable of conveying definite Truth to the Natives ; yet 
 the Gospel-Message, if rightly understood, and freed from the 
 hard shell of Dogma and shibboleth, is very simple. Bishop 
 Patteson expressed himself, that the careful Training of picked- 
 Scholars for future Missionaries was the most important part of 
 his work, that he must provide for the multiplication of Native 
 Missionaries to aid the permanent development of his Mission. 
 He soon threw some of his own fire into the party of Melanesian 
 lads, all speaking different Languages, but taught to understand 
 the one lingua franca of Mota. This was a sample of his 
 catechism : 
 
 Q. Whatmeans does God employto make His Will known to-us? 
 
 A. He uses men to teach. 
 
 Q. Can they do so by themselves ? 
 
 A. No ; but God makes them able. 
 
 Q. How have you heard the Gospel ? 
 
 A. Because God sentyou to us. 
 
 Q. How are the people still in ignorance to hear it ? 
 
 (The Scholars looked shy, and some said softly), 
 
 A. We must teach them. 
 
 Yes, indeed you must, replied the Bishop. 
 
 The material was supplied in abundance, as the good Ship, 
 the Southern Cross, performed its annual voyage of mercy from 
 island to island. Selwyn the elder had said, that the white corks 
 were only to float the black net, and so it proved. In the last year 
 of his life (and I knew him and Selwyn, when I was a boy at 
 Eton), Bishop Patteson writes : " The elder Scholars talk and 
 " arrange among themselves plans for helping the Natives of the 
 " other islands. Edward of Mota volunteers to go to Florida ; 
 " B. and his wife to Santa Maria; Robert P. and his wife to 
 " Matlav ; John Nona to Savo, and Andrew Lalena also. This 
 " is very comfortable to me : it is bond fide giving up home and 
 " country : it is an indication of a real desire to make known 
 " the Gospel to other lands. So long as they will do this, so 
 " long I think, that we may have the blessed assurance, that 
 " God's Holy Spirit is indeed working in their hearts. Dear 
 " fellows I it makes me thankful." 
 
 Within the year a Native canoe floated out with the tide, bear- 
 ing a body, marked with five wounds, and a palm-branch. The 
 Bishop had shown the Melanesian lads the way to live and to 
 die, and many instances have occurred, both before and after, 
 
( 125 ) 
 
 of their readiness to take up the Cross for the Spiritual welfare 
 of the Heathen, their neighbours, but still strangers to them 
 in blood, Language, and customs. 
 
 The time came, when the feet of the messengers of Good 
 Tidings were to advance further North, and occupy the island of 
 New Guinea, the greatest in the world, and the smaller islands 
 in Torres Straits to the South, and the Duke of York's Island in 
 St. George's Straits to the North. The pioneer European Mis- 
 sionaries advanced with their volunteer army of Native Teachers 
 from the islands of the South Sea, from Tahiti, Rarotonga, Samoa, 
 and the Loyalty islands, twenty-eight in number. They had 
 counted the cost and were ready : when their labours had con- 
 tinued for more than ten years, they had helped to raise up 'a 
 School of Native Teachers, who belonged to New Guinea. So 
 sure it is, that the Lord's harvest is ever ready, if we only have 
 Faith enough to go in and gather it ; and in Murray island was 
 established a Training Institution of one hundred New Guinea 
 boys to hand on the lamp to the Regions beyond. No more 
 recruits were sent for from the distant Southern islands : they 
 had accomplished their blessed work, and, as the New Guinea 
 staff of Native Teachers became efficient, the old men from 
 Rarotonga and Tonga, on whom the climate had told preju- 
 dicially, were sent back laden with blessings, blessings from 
 those, that had been once ready to perish, to their island-homes. 
 There is still much land to occupy : the advancing lines of the 
 London Missionary Society are but on the South-West coast ; 
 the Church of Australia proposes to occupy stations here also : 
 the Wesleyan Society is as yet only on the islands of New Britain, 
 New Ireland, and the Duke of York's island ; but, working on 
 the same lines, they will advance conquering and to conquer. 
 
 Are these things true ? Are they only the fancy-pictures of 
 excited piety ? One Traveller, well known as an explorer, Mr. 
 Wilfrid Powell, passes a severe judgment on the want of tact and 
 patience, evidenced by some of them in New Britain ; but he 
 narrates as an eye-witness, how the bodies of four Teachers were 
 sold in pieces to the Cannibal inhabitants of the village, and an 
 attempt was made (fortunately in vain) to get hold of their wives 
 and children. Mr. Powell took part in the rescue, and writes as 
 an eye-witness of the perils, to which these intrepid servants of 
 the Cross were exposed. On the South of New Guinea Mr. 
 Lyne, an Australian Newspaper-reporter, quotes the report of a 
 Missionary to the following effect : " How valuable were the 
 " labours of the South Sea islanders (men of Rarotonga and 
 " elsewhere) ! The Teacher at Fort Moresby is one of the 
 " foremost men ; when the European gold-seekers were sick, he 
 " went inland to carry them in and tend them ; yet his father 
 " was a Cannibal. At the East end of New Guinea, where 
 
( 126 ) 
 
 " Cannibalism still flourishes, the Teacher is a Loyalty islander, 
 " and has himself been a Cannibal. These cases show what the 
 " Gospel can do. The perils, to which they are exposed, are 
 " very great. The murder of a number of them is still fresh in 
 " our memory, and they have perils from wild beasts also." 
 
 Mr. Lyne had accompanied the expedition, which was sent 
 to annex the Southern part of the island, and he knew what he 
 was writing. Mr. Romilly, the Special Commissioner for New 
 Guinea, writes that the Missionaries commenced a system of 
 planting Native Teachers along the South coast of New Guinea; 
 some died of fever ; some were murdered by the Natives ; but 
 their general success in establishing a firm footing, and gaining 
 an ascendency over the Natives, wherever they have been, 
 shows clearly, that they are intelligent and courageous men, 
 with a great aptitude for Languages. It is to them that the 
 white man in difficulties always turns for protection, and it is 
 always accorded him. 
 
 Time would fail to tell of other Missions and other countries ; 
 the short of the matter is, wherever Missions have flourished, 
 it will be found, that Native Teachers have been employed ; 
 wherever they have been trusted, they have never disappointed 
 expectations. 
 
 Round the inhabitants of the poor islands of the South Sea 
 still hover the phantoms of dying Heathendom, the gods of the 
 water and of the land, which their ancestors had blindly wor- 
 shipped. In a remarkably practical way the early Missionaries 
 had learned the Grace to wait God's time ; to be rebuffed, but 
 not cast down ; to be persecuted, but not abashed. As their own 
 coral zoophytes went on slowly and slowly building their reefs, 
 which last for ever, so the Grace of God was found working out 
 of sight ; but the fruits were visible. From island to island the 
 fight went on, until the whole of Polynesia was conquered to 
 Christ ; each island had its martyr-tomb, its first Christian, the 
 folorn hope that invaded the island. The Natives devoured the 
 Saint, and yet the doctrine preached by that Saint fed them with 
 a new life, and passed into the flesh and blood of their children. 
 The fight in Melanesia will still last many a long year. To 
 some islands the Message will have come too late, for the 
 man-stealers and liquor-dealers, aided by European diseases, 
 previously unknown, will have done their fatal work. The weak 
 new Christians cannot entirely rid themselves of the old idea of 
 Nature- Worship : the fearful hurricanes, the famine, the epidemic, 
 the blight, suggest to them that, though their temples and Wor- 
 ship were destroyed, the god of Nature still hungered for human 
 Sacrifices, still claimed their hecatombs. In some islands, 
 notably Easter island, the gigantic Idols cut out of the rock 
 cannot be effaced, except by blasting the everlasting hills. So 
 
( 127 ) 
 
 they remain, like the great Monuments of Egypt, in their awful 
 solitude. 
 
 What, then, sustained this wonderful family of Teachers, ready 
 to hand, as if they had been waiting to be sent ; ready to go, 
 men or women, wherever they were sent ? The answer is, 
 that they were armed with Truth. It was that alone, which could 
 give victory in such an unequal struggle. Their strength lay 
 in their simple, fresh, unsophisticated, virgin, Christianity; a 
 Heaven-sent reverence for a Spiritual Teacher springs from the 
 very Spirituality, that is taught. There is a reality in God's em- 
 bassy : Death will not kill it ; ill-treatment will not get rid of it ; 
 Devils hear and tremble, but the savage children of Nature listen, 
 and are astonished, accept, and believe. These Teachers were 
 not wise, nor highly educated ; but they had the free Gift of a 
 beautiful Language, and a marvellous Gift of acquiring new 
 Languages, and in their simple Faith in what they had been so 
 lately taught themselves, they took their hearers back to the 
 hidden, and hitherto unrealized, sources of human existence. 
 They found a standing-room for argument behind the Altars, 
 behind the Idols, behind the shibboleths, and led on to the 
 fundamental axioms of right and wrong, which can be found 
 in the depths of every human heart, if we know how to look for 
 it. They showed to their hearers, that the Service of God con- 
 sisted not in words or magic forms, or ceremonies, or Dogma, 
 or Ritual, or prayer-wheels, but in personal contact with the 
 Risen Saviour ; in personal Holiness of thought, word, and 
 deed ; in gentleness and Love to all without exception ; in 
 obedience to the everlasting Law of Duty, which lifts the head 
 to the heavens, and still leaves the feet touching the hard 
 floor of daily life. Without, Christ such attainments passed all 
 poor human strength. Christ must be the motive Power, for 
 Christianity is Christ. 
 
 These examples, these touching stories, have come up from 
 these unknown Regions for our use, for the use of the nascent 
 Christian Churches of the great and civilized countries of India, 
 China, and Japan, The unconverted Heathen had found out, that 
 it was well to die for the welfare of one's people : the Christian 
 discovered, that it was still better to live for them, though this 
 proved a much longer, more tedious, and difficult, Service. It 
 was out of all human expectation and worldly experience, that 
 converted Cannibals and cruel Idolaters should, under the touch of 
 God's Spirit, not only become Christians, but become daring and 
 constant Evangelists. God's Greatness flows round our Littleness, 
 and His Rest encompasses our Restlessness. One thing is clear, 
 that there are no more islands to discover and convert, no new 
 Language to be found out ; but in the vast populations of India 
 and China there are millions, to whom the Gospel is an unknown 
 
( 128 ) 
 
 thing, and will remain so, unless the Native Churches at once 
 become the centres of Missionary effort, and send out their 
 Native Teachers. None of the frightful perils, which attend the 
 South-Sea-Teachers, need be feared. If the Native Churches 
 of India rise to the level of their opportunities and obligations, 
 they may become rays of light in Asia and Africa, as the 
 Polynesian Churches have been in Oceania. God is not slack 
 in supplying His agents, if the heart of Man is roused to 
 a sense of the dignity, and the greatness, of the work. 
 
 Without doubt, those who love their Master, and believe His 
 Precious Promises, will rejoice, even when one poor island, 
 after expenditure of labour, and precious lives, is added to His 
 Kingdom. The value of redeemed Souls is not estimated in 
 earthly balances, or by human calculations. The Lord knoweth 
 them that are His. But it is a cause of encouragement for the 
 Future, and thanksgiving for the past, to regard this blessed chain 
 of Missions spread like a necklace of pearls from the shores of 
 New Guinea and Australia right up to the gates of the Morning 
 in Easter island, almost within touch of South America. Our 
 knowledge of the Languages and customs of these races has been 
 collected solely by the Missionaries. The Civilization of these 
 ends of the world was notto be accomplished by Guns or Ships 
 of War. Commerce, Statecraft or Colonization, would not help 
 these helpless races for the short period of existence left to 
 them by the ruthless Law of Progress : it has rather aided their 
 destruction by substituting Rum, Gunpowder, and loathsome 
 diseases, for Cannibalism, Human Sacrifices, and Witchcraft. 
 But the Missionary Spirit of Europe and America has proved 
 equal to the occasion, and a voice stronger than that of the 
 lust of Gold, Earth-greed, and annexation, has been heard. 
 Instead of seeking for gold, the true-hearted Missionary has 
 given something better than fine gold : instead of sending out 
 foreign Governors and Captains to rule over these tribes, a 
 domination for good has been established over their Souls by 
 men of their own colour and race, but who .have been trans- 
 formed into Angels of light by the life-giving. influences of the 
 Holy Spirit. Instead of attempting to annex these far-off islands 
 to an Earthly Kingdom, the Messengers of Good Tidings have 
 given to these inhabitants of the ends of the world an inherit- 
 ance in the Kingdom of Heaven. A stream of light has been 
 left on the waters to mark the course of the Mission- Ship, the 
 light of Human Knowledge, Christian, culture, and Divine 
 Pardon. The one great object of Human existence is to dis- 
 cover the Knowledge of God's dealings with his creatures, and 
 the one great Duty of those creatures is to love, honour, and 
 worship that great Creator, no longer unknown. This object 
 has been obtained : this Duty has been performed. 
 
 Nov. 1895. 
 
( 129 ) 
 
 E. Missionaries in Africa. 
 Concluding Chapter of "Africa Rediviva," 1891. 
 
 I have not cared to notice the strength of the Missionary 
 parties, ordained or lay : nor would the notice remain true for 
 six months, death and disease make sad havoc in the ranks. 
 Ten recruits arrive, and of them half die or go home. Nor 
 have I ventured on the thorny question of counting adherents, 
 Church-members, baptized persons, communicants, or inquirers. 
 In the first generation such totals mean nothing, for there is 
 little consistency, or stability of conduct, in converts ; but the 
 children, that are born of, and brought up by, Christian parents 
 represent a fact : the children collected in the Schools for 
 regular teaching represent a still more important fact. Baptism 
 from the point of view of this Essay means nothing, as the 
 Agents of the Church of Rome baptize " in articulo mortis," 
 or with very inadequate previous instruction, and some Pro- 
 testant Churches do not baptize at all, or defer the rite until 
 adult years, before which date the convert may have died. As 
 far as I can judge, there is great laxness of statement on the 
 part of all. An earthly army would be very badly off, if the 
 registers were not kept with greater accuracy, and upon some 
 universally accepted principle. 
 
 Woman's work is entirely omitted, not that it does not exist, 
 or that it is by me undervalued. In both classes of Missionary 
 Societies it exists in abundance, and of the highest quality, but 
 it is necessarily ancillary to that of the ordained Missionary. 
 The Kaiserwerth Deaconesses of Egypt however represent an 
 entirely independent organization. There is a great field for 
 Female work in Africa, and a great reputation for the sex to 
 maintain. In the early centuries we read of Katharina, Perpetua, 
 Felicitas, and Monica, and Women will never be wanting, ready 
 to live or die, when the Lord's work has to be done. I rejoice to 
 read of Syrian Women, and Negresses, being found ready to join 
 the Sisterhoods. To send a young European or American married 
 woman into the Equatorial Regions with the possibility of maternity 
 without the surroundings of decent Civilized life is a downright 
 wickedness. Do we read of any such folly in the great Missions 
 of the early centuries, in those of Columba, Columbdnus, or 
 Boniface ? Celibates, and celibates alone, supply the material 
 for the Missionary Army in climates, and environments, hostile 
 to ordinary domestic life. No Woman, under any circumstances, 
 should penetrate more than one hundred miles from the Coast 
 
( 130 ) 
 
 in the Equatorial Regions : elsewhere they are a blessing and a 
 necessity, but only in the form of Sisterhoods, until the sur- 
 roundings of Civilized life have sprung up. We have lamentable 
 instances of death and disease ; of graves of poor young 
 Women, whose lives were thrown away without any result ; of 
 the craven retirement from his chosen and consecrated work 
 of a so-called soldier of Christ, because his wife could not 
 stand the climate ; the reports of Missionary Societies, instead 
 of telling us of the new birth of children of God amidst the 
 long-neglected Africans, are full of lamentations about the 
 death of white babies, who ought never to have come into 
 existence. I know, that these remarks will draw down upon 
 me the censure of those, who are committed to the opposite 
 policy, who have gone in for youthful Matrimony, and who do 
 not see the absurdity and un-Scriptural half-heartedness of their 
 position. Think of a Missionary leaving his sacred duties, his 
 Chapel, his School, his class of converts, his cluster of inquirers, 
 to proceed to a better climate for the confinement of his wife ! 
 If a soldier or public Officer in British India were to do this, 
 the world would cry out, and justly so. I heard this year (1891) 
 on a Missionary platform a Colonial Bishop, who ought to have 
 known better, say, that the exhibition of a white baby to the 
 simple African or Indian people was favourable to conversion. 
 This seems to my mind sheer folly. As a matter of surprise, 
 and excitement of interest, the exhibition of a spaniel, or 
 still more of a ferret, would have the same effect. It seems 
 monstrous to anticipate any Spiritual advantage from a Mis- 
 sionary's nursery. 
 
 Is this a proper paragraph for a Missionary report of labours 
 among the Heathen ? I copy it from a Periodical dated July, 
 1 89 1, now lying on my table. 
 
 Naissance de Violette. 
 
 April 9, 1891. "J'ai la joie de vous annoncer la naissance 
 " de notre neuvieme enfant, une petite Violette, n6e la 4 Avril 
 " a onze heures de matin. Notre chere fillette, image de son 
 " frere ain6, est vigoureuse, et sa mere a de quoi entretenir ses 
 " bonnes dispositions." Then he goes on to describe details 
 of the confinement. It was foolish to write such things, but 
 still more foolish to print them in a serious Religious journal, 
 and circulate it to subscribers : there should be a chaste reserve 
 on such subjects : they are the accidents of material life, not 
 the objects of Spiritual life. 
 
 I pointed* out this passage to an ex-Missionary of the neo- 
 Latin race, who defended it, and remarked, that subscribers to 
 the Mission naturally took a great interest in the domestic events 
 
( 131 ) 
 
 of their Missionaries. This shows how low the type and ideal 
 of a Missionary has fallen. Gallus and Columbanus worked 
 their way in 61 1 a.d. to the Lake of Constance, and founded the 
 Monastery of St. Gall, at a time, when Helvetia was little better 
 than Africa in the scale of Christian belief. They gave up all 
 for Christ. What should we think of Venerable Bede in his 
 priceless volume, had he recorded such stuff as the passage 
 above quoted ? 
 
 Some writers with light-heartedness allude to trained Sisters 
 being sent up to the remote stations on the Kongo, to Lake 
 Tanganyika, and Victoria Nyanza : will any live to return, and 
 will any live at all ? and in case of rebellions and uprisings, 
 what would become of them ? We have a sad illustration in 
 the fate of the poor Sisters of the Institute of Verona left at 
 Khartum. It is true, that such Sisters may be Native females 
 trained for the purpose : of these some may be widows, or 
 married women may be made use of; but, when it comes to 
 have to deal with bodies of celibate Native Women, the head 
 of the Mission will have a problem to deal with of unparalleled 
 difficulty, for the Women of Africa and Asia are not as the 
 Women of Europe, at least of that class of Women in Europe, 
 who would enter Sisterhoods. Scandals have arisen in India 
 under a realm of Law : in Africa, and in Regions beyond the 
 limits of any fixed Civil Government, the difficulties will 
 be greater. 
 
 So of all records of the invaluable services of the Medical 
 men, and Medical Societies, of the Educationists, and the 
 Fraternities, who devote themselves to this blessed work, of the 
 Industrial Teachers, the Artificers, the Engineers of Steamers, 
 and the Lay Brothers generally, I make no mention, not because 
 I undervalue their services, but because the detail of Methods 
 does not fall within my present scope. 
 
 The. names of the Foreign Societies are necessarily translated 
 into English : perhaps some of these names are too fanciful. 
 The first object of a name is, that it should explain itself. So 
 also the nationality of each Society is given, except in the case 
 of such world-wide known congregations, as Jesuits, Franciscans, 
 Capuchins, etc., which belong to Christianity, rather than any 
 nationality. 
 
 A Bishop lately remarked, that a great part of the time of the 
 wise was wasted in trying to control, or remedy the effects of the, 
 unwisdom of the good: and it is so. In no other effort of man- 
 kind does the will-worship, the ideXoOpijoiceta, more strongly and 
 painfully develope itself than in the starting of a Mission, nor 
 in any class of Publications is more fatuous nonsense written 
 entirely in good faith than in Missionary narratives or reports. 
 The national egoism of the Briton, and Frenchman, is con- 
 
( 132 ) 
 
 spicuously painful on a subject, where boasting should be 
 excluded. Nothing so wild and mad as the schemes of the 
 solitary itinerant, who does not know a word of the Language, 
 but undertakes a ride on a camel through South Africa, and to 
 preach through an interpreter ! The isolated Missionary, and 
 the "one family" Mission, like shadows pass over the paper 
 of the recording chronicler, and they are gone. One night of 
 cholera, or two days of fever, puts an end to them. While 
 I have been drawing up these returns, I have received replies 
 to queries, and had to expunge entries too trustingly made upon 
 data collected a few years ago. There are some organizations, 
 which, humanly speaking, will last as long as Human hearts are 
 open to the influences of pity and devotion, of sympathy with 
 the sad state of others, of gratitude for their own happier state, 
 and recognition of the Hand, which gives. The fate of every 
 Missionary organization must be sooner or later to die, unless 
 it is based on a permanent Congregation, Brotherhood, or 
 Association, renewing itself in a spontaneous way, the same 
 great reservoir, though the water changes from year to year, 
 whose object is to send out recruits, and maintain those, that 
 represent them in the Lord's warfare. We learnt this lesson 
 from Benedict in the fifth century. There must be fixed and 
 understood Methods, tried, though elastic, rules, a selection of 
 suitable agents, and a Training of them in their new duties : 
 there must be a trust in Spiritual guidance, and yet a means of 
 tapping the fountain of material resources. Only those, who 
 for many years have had their eyes on Africa, are aware of the 
 great wreckage, through which they have to find their way. 
 
 ( i ) Schemes proposed grandiloquently, but never carried out. 
 
 (2) Schemes commenced, but owing to the death of some 
 
 leading person abandoned. 
 
 (3) Schemes too weak to be of any permanent use ; mere 
 
 subjects of Personal glorification on platforms to 
 imperfectly instructed audiences : Egoism and will- 
 worship of the worst character. 
 
 (4) Schemes crushed out by violence, or gagged by ex- 
 
 pulsion, or starved to death by having no root in 
 a Christian country. 
 
 And what shall be said of the Methods used to get in funds, 
 of the unreal and fictitious transcendentalism of the Missionary 
 Periodical, in which all is praise, and no allusion is made to 
 mistakes or worse : of the traps set to catch children, and the 
 violent attacks made upon others so as to meet the prejudices, 
 and the worst weaknesses, of the reader ? What more acceptable 
 in a French Journal than to paint the ineptitude, the stupidity, 
 
( 133 ) 
 
 the utter want of success of la Societe biblique, l'h6retique 
 Anglais, le ministre Methodiste, le Pseudo-Eveque ? What 
 more acceptable in an English Journal than a hit against the 
 Priests of Rome, all called Jesuits, the untruthfulness of their 
 conversions, the insidious character of their Methods ? I must 
 admit, that some Periodicals on both sides are free from such 
 blemishes, and in no one paper of the vast literature in the 
 Languages of Europe, which have passed under my eye, have 
 I ever met the least insinuation or innuendo against Moral 
 character : in fact, it is clearly a device to get in funds, and 
 some Protestant Periodicals attack the Opium-Trade with the 
 same object. One result is, that the general public sternly 
 declines to read anything about Missions, or to subscribe the 
 smallest sum, because the form, in which it is placed before 
 their eye, is so unnatural, and the real merit of the enterprize is 
 disguised by conventional and highly-seasoned phraseology. 
 All earnest students of the great Movement deplore the tall 
 "ad captandum" talk of the official, who has got hold of the 
 Society's Printing, for the committee itself is neither consulted, 
 nor in most cases is capable of controlling the ideosyncracies of 
 the " man at the inkpot," whose conventional style, favourite 
 quotations from the O.T., and stock-phrases are so well known. 
 There are some Missionary Periodicals, which I regularly read 
 out of a sense of duty to the greatf subject, to which 1 have 
 devoted my life's thoughts, but the phraseology, and the mode 
 of treatment, quite go against my intellectual stomach, or in 
 other words I take them medicinally, and I quite realize, why in 
 many families of good people a Missionary Periodical is not 
 allowed on the table, not that the subject-matter is objected 
 to, but the sensational, pharisaical, self-laudatory, and narrow- 
 minded style, which is calculated to render the ordinary reader 
 hostile, not to the subject, but the mode of presenting the subject. 
 It must be admitted, that the Civilization of Africa after a 
 Christian type will never be worked out by the Men of Commerce, 
 who flock thither with liquor and lethal weapons, or by the high- 
 handed men, who go out as Governors, or Military Commanders : 
 even if these last had the will, they have neither the knowledge, 
 nor the leisure : they stay a very short time, and have to inflict 
 punishment upon so-called rebels, who are really patriots of the 
 Bruce and William Tell type : to burn, and destroy, and to kill. 
 This leads me to remark, that the Missionary should carefully 
 avoid any connexion with Commerce. In Algiers I visited the 
 Trappist Convent, and found these excellent men distilling 
 liquor, and I was pressed to taste it. In a Mahometan country 
 -this seemed a singularly inappropriate manufactory. If there is 
 a form of Missionary effort worse than that backed up by Gun- 
 boats, it is the first appearance of the true Faith amidst a people, 
 
( 134 ) 
 
 one of whose few merits is total abstinence, in the form of 
 Spirituous liquor. The African has survived Slavery, Slave- 
 trade, Tribal-wars, Cannibalism, Human Sacrifice, and Murder 
 for Witchcraft : is he to fall a victim to the distilleries of London, 
 France, Germany, and the. United States? I read, how Mis- 
 sionaries made presents of Rum to the King of St. Salvador on 
 the Kongo ; on the Niger at one time the ordinary wage of the 
 day-labourer was paid in Gin. Every visit to a Native was 
 preceded and concluded by a " dash " of liquor. Strong drink 
 seemed to be the beginning and end and continuance of life, 
 and respectable families in Europe and North America live in 
 an atmosphere of piety and refinement on the unhallowed profits 
 of this accursed trade, and are not ashamed. 
 
 Another rock to be avoided is the following. In the Middle 
 Ages there is no question, that the Missionary operations 
 commenced by the patronage of some fanatic Sovereign, 
 himself an unrepentant and profligate sinner, or a pious Queen, 
 or even of a licentious Royal Mistress. The Arm of the Flesh 
 was too much sought after, and I must admit, that in the Church 
 of Rome there is still evidence of a hankering for. such support. 
 I read how arrangements were made with the King of Portugal 
 to enable French Missionaries to settle on the River Shir6 and 
 on Lake Nyasa. Now it so happens, that this Region is in the 
 British sphere of influence, and the French Missionaries are 
 heartily welcome : what reason was there then for negociations with 
 Portugal? (Missions Catholiques d'Afrique : Bethune, p. 182.) 
 Missions must be supplied with means by the individuals and 
 Churches of Nations, not by the Secular Government, and on 
 arriving in Africa they must work upwards through the Natives 
 of the country, and not downwards from the ignorant, often 
 infidel, local Governor. The Lord's Treasury, situated in the 
 hearts of His people, is never empty. Universal Toleration is 
 the greatest of Earthly Powers. All that the honest Missionary 
 requires is a free field, and no favour, or prejudice, such as he 
 has always found in the last half century in British India. If 
 funds are wanted let the call be made to Christian Hearts, not 
 to the antechamber of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or to 
 a profligate Monarch. 
 
 What shall be said of presents of lethal weapons made by 
 Missionaries to Chiefs or influential people, of Natives of Africa 
 flogged, fired into, and even put to death by Missionaries ? 
 What shall be said of secret-service-money supplied by Govern- 
 ments to Missionaries in order to advance National interests ? 
 What shall be said of thousands of Pounds collected from the 
 supporters of a Mission to enable a Chartered Commercial 
 Company to maintain its hold in a Region, which it had un- 
 lawfully invaded, and to slaughter Christian converts of another 
 
( 135 ) 
 
 Denomination ? What shall be said of intrigues at home, or 
 in Africa, to secure Parliamentary majorities, protection of 
 Consuls, the influence of Ambassadors, or of craft and chicanery 
 made use of by one set of Missionaries to outwit, or anticipate, 
 or exclude, another ? Missionaries must recollect, that the 
 scorching glare of public opinion is now fixed on them, and 
 that they act under the burning electric light of a Public Press 
 in all the Languages of Europe. Things done in a corner of 
 Africa will be proclaimed in the streets of Paris, London, New 
 York, Berlin, and even Rome. 
 
 Some Missionary books with regard to Africa are quite 
 sickening. I instance two : a young English woman, used to 
 the comforts of European life, appeals in favour of the Women 
 of Africa : so far I am with her. But the two Females are in the 
 antipodes of human culture, racial habits, and personal wants, 
 and the exaggeration of the appeal is ridiculous : the instances 
 of cruelty are magnified, the position of the African Woman is 
 painfully travestied, as if comfort and decency, and Holiness, and 
 Christian Faith, could only co-exist with the secondary wants, 
 and Civilized ways, the smart dresses, the cooked food, and the 
 culture of London and Paris. Those, who have had years of 
 experience in British India, can realize with how little food, 
 raiment, and kindly treatment, an Asiatic and African Woman 
 is satisfied, and how unwise it would be to connect the Christian 
 Religion, which in its origin is Asiatic, and a Gospel, which 
 was intended for the poor, with the environments, and snares, 
 of Middle Class European culture. Let them be Christians, 
 but still remain Africans* on their own platform of human 
 Civilization. 
 
 I have to thank the compiler of Bethune's Mission Catholiques 
 d'Afrique for much information, but it is a marvel, how he could 
 have written some passages. It is possible to understand, that 
 the Egoism of a Frenchman, an Englishman, or a German, 
 might induce him unwisely to write a book about Christian 
 Missions in Africa, of which the main object seems to be to 
 puff up his own Nation, and to show how very important his 
 people have been, and how nothing even in Africa can be 
 done without them. The good taste of such a book might be 
 doubted. But that the member of a Nation like Belgium, 
 a mere geographical, or rather political, expression, transferred 
 by the chance of war from Germany, Spain, France, and Holland, 
 should permeate a book on African Missions with praise of his 
 own Nation, is an astonishing literary phenomenon. There is 
 also a bad spirit through the work, constant sneers against 
 Great Britain, France, and Holland, an entire ignoring, not only 
 of the vastness, and devotedness of Protestant effort in the 
 same field, but of their very existence, which implies a total 
 
( 136 ) 
 
 ignorance of the general subject, a suppression of a Truth 
 amounting to a' suggestion of the false. To me it seems im- 
 possible to write an account of Protestant Missions in Africa 
 without noticing the presence, the importance, and the zeal, of 
 the Missionaries of the Church of Rome, as the Missions are 
 geographically so closely interlaced. The Author alludes to 
 the Intolerance of the British Authorities, as if he had never 
 heard of the serene indiiference to any form of Religious 
 conception, which is the glory of the Rulers of British India : 
 and besides 
 
 Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditiope querentes ? 
 
 Surely the Inquisition of Spain, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
 the Annals of the Missions of the Church of Rome in past 
 years, tell the one story, " semper, ubique, ab omnibus," of 
 determined opposition to the work of any other Church but 
 her own. Let us be silent as to the bad past, and, wiser in our 
 generation, each, in his own way, try to spread the Gospel of 
 the common Saviour. 
 
 Another feature of the book is the jaunty air of prophecy, 
 which pervades the whole : where 'there has been no success, 
 immediate success is expected : where there is only a beginning 
 of an effort, a magnificent work is fondly predicted. Those, 
 who have studied the work of Missions from the time of 
 Benedict to the present Epoch, know how uncertain are the 
 issues of life and death, success and failure. I read with 
 astonishment the barefaced statement, that the French Mis- 
 sionary was the pioneer of the influence of France in Tunis 
 and on the Kongo. It may have been so, but it is to be hoped, 
 that it was incidental, and not the object of the Mission : and 
 it is stated, that occasionally the Religion of Christ is called by 
 the Natives "the French Religion."- This must be the result 
 of very imperfect teaching; and what will the Propaganda of 
 Rome say to this ? The work of the Church of Rome in Great 
 Britain is rightly called the " Italian Mission." 
 
 May I be very bold ? As regards Africa, where, since the 
 times of Aristotle till now, there is always something new, 
 
 'Ael (fiepei Aiftvrj T< Kai'vov, 
 
 cannot there be a truce, a'concordat, a partition, a modus Vivendi, 
 a benevolent recognition of the great merits of the individual 
 in each of the two armies, of the Christian Graces, which are 
 the charm of the combatants On either side ? Sometimes the 
 secret seems to come out, that there is a mutual respect for 
 each other. Hear what a Roman Missionary at Bagamdyo wrote : 
 
( 137 ) 
 
 "II suffit de parler a quelques protesfants sinceres pour se 
 ' convaincre, que entre eux et nous il n'y a que des meprises, 
 " des equivoques, des erreurs, des prejuges d' Education." 
 
 The English Missionary, who reports the death of Mackay at 
 Usambir6, writes : 
 
 "I wish that I could have been here to nurse him a bit: his 
 " brother Missionary was helplessly ill himself, and sent off to 
 " Bukumbi to the French Priest to help him, but ere the good 
 " Samaritan came, our dear friend had died." 
 
 From the Niger I quote a letter from a Missionary of Rome 
 to the late Sir John Marshall : 
 
 " Father Zappa came to see me off, and so did Mr. Macaulay, 
 " the Protestant Minister, with whom we had been on the best 
 " of terms from the first. I introduced them to each other, 
 " assuring Father Zappa, that he would find a friend in Mr. 
 " Macaulay." 
 
 And again : 
 
 "A Protestant Missionary at Asaba on the Niger in 1888, 
 " in returning thanks for a toast, included the Missionary of 
 " Rome, and expressed his regard for him, adding that on 
 " the Niger there was room for both, and that all might unite 
 " to raise the Natives out of their savage state!' 
 
 I read how in U-ganda the differences between the converts 
 of the two'Churches appear to be political rather than Religious, 
 and now that the political question is settled, the bad feeling ■ 
 will subside : it is a misfortune, if the representatives of the 
 two parties, instead of preaching to their ignorant hearers the 
 great central Truths, as fixed by the great Councils of the early 
 centuries, in which they both absolutely agree, should be 
 tempted to dwell upon the points, on which they differ : they 
 thus seem to be preaching a rival Gospel, when it is not so, 
 and, if this continues, the Pagan hearer will become a sceptic : 
 the same Christian Graces, and purity of life, are manifest in 
 both : for the Protestant to go out of his way, and tell his 
 simple flock, that the Missionaries of Rome are Idolaters, 
 because they have Images in their Church, is as wrong as for 
 the Missionary of Rome to teach that the Protestants, because 
 they refuse to pray to other than the Three Persons of the 
 Trinity, are Atheists : the Moral Law of both parties is 
 absolutely identical, and the way of Salvation that is preached 
 is the same. 
 
 I think that the majority of Protestants would be . ready 
 absolutely to abstain from uttering or printing anything hard 
 against their fellow-labourers of Rome : the discussion of 
 human Methods is allowable : the imputation of motives is 
 unjustifiable : the idle abuse is unworthy of a Christian. As 
 long as men are men, they will be tempted to justify themselves, 
 
( 138 ) 
 
 and claim undue praise, and to question the reality, or undervalue, 
 the work, of another : I read the reports of all : the usual thing 
 is to state 
 
 (i) That all the conversions of the other side are nominal. 
 
 (2) That the other party makes use of unlimited resources 
 
 to induce people to be baptized. 
 
 (3) That the other party uses the influence of Chiefs 
 
 and Consuls. 
 
 (4) That the people love them and hate the other party. Stock- 
 
 quota'tions of speeches by Natives appear with 
 only change of words in rival Publications: it is a 
 mournful instance of the weakness of good men. 
 
 Very few indeed read the reports of the other side : they often 
 do not know each other's Language : 
 
 " Damnant, quod non intelligunt." 
 
 Can we not hope that good and honest men, holding fast to 
 the great Central Truths of Faith, Hope, and Love, with the awful 
 problem of the near approach of Christ's second coming, and 
 in view of the abject necessity of the African races, and the 
 opportunity now afforded for a season, can be induced to look 
 over the fences, which, reaching only breast-high, separate 
 Churches from Churches, and Nations from Nations, and fix 
 their eyes solely on the form of the Crucified Saviour. 
 In the Day of Judgment it will not' be asked of the pious 
 African freedman, whether he was a Roman, or a Protestant, 
 but whether he loved the Lord, and tried to lay hold on 
 the means of Salvation, which the last decade of the Nine- 
 teenth Century had so wonderfully brought to him by the hands 
 of men, on all of whom God's blessing will rest. Let the 
 French and British Missionary abstain from unseemly conflict in 
 the presence of Mahometan and Pagan in Central Africa, 
 remembering what happened to the Early Church in North 
 Africa : the unseemly quarrels with the Donatists and the 
 Arians were quenched by the utter destruction of all by the 
 Mahometan, and the conversion of Europe was delayed for 
 centuries by ceaseless Theological controversies. In a Region 
 of entire Toleration, at an Epoch, when such persecution, as 
 seemed good to Charlemagne in the Ninth Century, and the 
 Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century, is impossible, because 
 men's thoughts have become wider with the progress of the 
 Sun, when all good men recognize the differing, yet equally 
 good, Gifts of their neighbours, and are ready to offer to each 
 other every possible material assistance, it may be possible to 
 
( 139 ) 
 
 make a new departure, a Holy Truce. Let Ephraim no more 
 vex Judah, or judah vex Ephraim: in the Crimean War the 
 difference of Creed, and nationality, and the mighty History of 
 the two great rival Nations, were forgotten, or rolled up and 
 put away by the soldiers of France and Great Britain in the 
 presence of a common foe. Oh ! let it be so now in the presence 
 of a more deadly antagonist with the soldiers of Christ ! 
 
 And let me urge another consideration : the opportunity of 
 Evangelizing Africa may not last : the Arm of Europe may be 
 shortened : the Power of Great Britain and France may dis- 
 appear as the Power of the Empire of Rome vanished : their 
 Commerce may " fade away like the dyes of Tyre, or moulder 
 like the palaces of Venice." The Missionary goes out to do 
 a specific work at an Epoch fixed by God, who has opened a 
 ' great door, which has been closed since the Creation of the 
 world : let him reflect that in opposing the Christians, with 
 whom he does not agree, he is retarding the coming of Christ's 
 Kingdom. To the Pagan Polytheist, to the Mahometan, who 
 denies the Divinity of Christ, to the Infidel unscrupulous in- 
 truder, who would try and destroy the lives of the men, and the 
 Morals of the Women, he should not yield for an instant : his 
 eye should not pity, nor his tongue spare, for they are the 
 emissaries of Satan, but they cannot say this of each other. 
 They must cast their thoughts forward to the Day of Judgment, . 
 and think what reply will they have to give to the great question : 
 " How hast thou employed thy talents ? " 
 
 Will the Missionary of Rome say : " Lord ! I saw heretics 
 " preaching in Africa what I had been taught in my European 
 " Seminary to consider ' Error.' I admit that they were good, 
 " holy, and benevolent men, and preached Thee Crucified ; 
 " but I opposed them, got up a party against them, encouraged 
 " my converts to oppose theirs : if, as in centuries past, I had 
 " had the power, I would have tortured them, and burnt them, 
 " and uprooted their congregations : for Thy sake, Lord, and 
 " for the People of Africa ! " 
 
 Will the Protestant Missionary say : " Lord ! I found the 
 " Missionaries of Rome coming as wolves into my flock, as 
 " rivals into my pasture, as hostile neighbours into my city. 
 " I admit that personally they were amiable and good. When 
 "I was sick, I sent for them; when I was in danger from a 
 " common foe, I joined with them, and shared their fare, and 
 " means of escape ; yet I hardened the minds of my flock 
 " against them ; I spoke evil of them ; I tried to get them 
 " ejected from my part of Africa; I prevailed on the Chief of 
 " a neighbouring tribe to exclude them ; I refused to see the 
 " great goodness, the devotion, and the charity, under the 
 " exterior, which they assumed, and which I had been taught 
 
( 140 ) 
 
 " in my Theological School in Europe and N. America to detest 
 " and condemn, and thus for ten years the poor Africans' died 
 " without the chance of being Christians, for I preferred that 
 " they should die Pagans rather than Papists : for Thy sake, 
 " Lord, and for the People of Africa ! " 
 
 We dare not imagine the reply. We have only His Words to 
 fall back on : 
 
 " Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold : these also I must bring, and 
 they shall hear ray voice, and they shall become one flock and one shepherd."— 
 John, x, 16. 
 
 And again : 
 
 " I pray, that they may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, 
 that they all also may be in Us." — John, xvii, 21. 
 
 I remark how agreeable it is to writers on the side of the 
 Church of Rome to quote the words of Protestants, or in fact 
 of men apparently without Religious element in them at all, 
 men living without God in the world, in favour of their work, 
 as contrasted with those of the Protestants. Now before any 
 one takes the opinion of another person as to the merits of a 
 horse, a commercial company, or a literary work, he satisfies 
 himself, whether the person giving the opinion has any know- 
 ledge of the subject: when I glance down the names of. the 
 non-Catholics (for I cannot admit some of them to be Pro- 
 testants) I find rarely any name, which is of any value : if it 
 had suited him or her, or if it should suit them hereafter to turn 
 round, and abuse the Missionaries of Rome, and say false and 
 unkind things about their converts, I should treat their remarks 
 with the same profound contempt : is there then no test of 
 excellence of Method, of devotedness of the worker, of God's 
 blessing on the work, or what men foolishly call God's blessing, 
 i.e., success, for God's blessing sometimes comes in the form 
 of affliction ? I quote the words of a deceased Bishop, and I 
 will not state to what Church he belonged. 
 
 " We must allow the principle that, wherever we see the fruits 
 " of the Spirit, we must refer them to the works of the Spirit, 
 " and acknowledge not only theoretically, but practically, that 
 " from Him, and Him alone, proceed all Holy desires, all good 
 " counsel, and all just works. We shall be able then to rejoice 
 " at any good work done, though not done by ourselves, and 
 " done outside our own Church, perhaps in ways, which we do 
 " not think desirable, and of which we cannot approve, because 
 " of the good work, that has been done by the Grace of our 
 " Father in. Heaven, by the help and blessing of our Lord. We 
 " may not be able to agree, as regards Church-Government, or 
 " Doctrine, or the best mode of bringing the Truth of Christ 
 " home to individual Souls, and keeping alive the Divine life 
 
( 141 ) 
 
 " quickened in them by the Grace of the Holy Spirit : but there 
 " is one subject, in which we can all agree, that it is the Duly, 
 " which we owe to God and to Man, to do all the good we can 
 " within the circle of our influence." I should not think much 
 of the man, who, owing to different views of Church-Govern- 
 ment, could not recognize the excellence of the work of good 
 Pere Horner at Bagam6yo, of the industrious Trappists of 
 Marian Hill, of the English Universities-Mission in East Africa, 
 of the Spanish Benedictines at New Nourse in Western Australia. 
 It was remarked by a great English writer of last century, that 
 he did not envy the feelings of the man, whose heart was not 
 touched, when he visited lona, and thought of Columba, and 
 no doubt many a kind-hearted Missionary of Rome has looked, 
 perhaps with a sigh, but still a sigh of human sympathy, at the 
 outward prosperity, and the internal peacefulness, of a Protestant 
 Missionary Station in British India, or South Africa. When 
 our friends of the Church of Rome omit all notice of the 
 Schools and Hospitals, and Churches, of Protestant Missions, 
 it looks, as if they were afraid of letting their supporters know, 
 that there are other agencies in the fields of a gigantic nature 
 with the same meritorious object. When our Protestant friends 
 allow in their Publications and Meetings no allusions to be 
 made to the great efforts of the Church of Rome, except in 
 terms of depreciation and condemnation, how like they are to 
 the ostrich hiding his head in the sand ! 
 
 I was conversing with an African Missionary of a Protestant 
 Society on the possibility of such a concordat working. His 
 reply was, that individuals of the Missions of - the Church of 
 Rome were most amiable and pleasant ; but it seemed, as far 
 as his experience helped him, impossible for them to abstain 
 from intruding into their neighbour's vineyard, and trying to 
 decoy away their neighbour's flock. It is sad to hear this, and 
 difficult to believe it ; but at any rate the course of the Protestant 
 Missionary is clear : he will admit at once, that such is not the 
 policy of the Protestant Churches : our Lord's reply to His 
 disciples will not warrant it (Mark, ix, 38). The great cities, 
 and capital towns, in 'every Region, are the common property 
 of all the Churches. In rural districts care should be taken 
 not to sit down within a reasonable distance of a Mission of 
 the Church of Rome, and abstain from all attempts at pro- 
 selytism. The resources of the Protestant Societies are admitted 
 to be vastly in excess of those of the Church of Rome, and the 
 non-Christian area in Africa is practically boundless : there can 
 therefore be no justification for collision, either on grounds of 
 economy, or want of space. 
 
 A wise Governor of an African Province, a Consul General, 
 who knows his work, will recognize the extreme value of the 
 
( 142 ) 
 
 Missionary Stations within his Region. He will not, for one 
 instant, allow himself to be influenced by them or guided. The 
 idea of a Governor or Consul General being selected to such, 
 posts on account of his Religion, or at the request of a Cardinal,' 
 or a Protestant Missionary Society, is so monstrous, that no 
 Government would listen to such an application ; but, whoever 
 may be the Official, he will recognize that the presence of an 
 honest, independent man, dwelling in peace among the people, 
 is a great factor in his administration, whether that man be a 
 German, a Frenchman, an American, or an Englishman, or 
 a subject of one of the smaller Continental nationalities. The 
 man of Commerce, or the land-grabber, is naturally an object 
 of suspicion ; but we may take it as an axiom, that a true 
 Missionary, whether' of Rome, or some Protestant Denomination, 
 can be trusted, so long as he keeps himself to his own Holy 
 vocation. Armed bodies of so-called Crusaders must be 
 deported at once from the Region, and let no Missionary 
 attempt to set up a Court of Justice, except within his own 
 flock and enforced by Spiritual penalties : any attempt to form 
 an imperium in imperio, establish a walled station, or usurp 
 a jurisdiction, should be sternly put down. The Missionary's 
 weapons are not carnal. There can be no benefit allowed to 
 Clergy. If they offend the Laws of the Colony, which gives 
 them shelter, they will be punished. In British India such is 
 the case, and the reason why no Missionary has ever been 
 punished is simply because the Missionaries of all nationalities 
 and Creeds have been good honest men, who never broke the Law. 
 The use of certain terms should be guarded. Why describe 
 Bishop Hannington as a Christian martyr ? He was trying to 
 work his way from the Coast by a route to U-Ganda, which was 
 not permitted by the arbitrary Sovereign, who in a fit of abject 
 fear of invasion ordered him to be killed : the same fate would 
 have fallen to Joseph Thompson, the explorer, if he had not 
 wisely stopped short of U-Sogo. The word "Martyr" means 
 a witness to Christian Faith : we have plenty of instances from 
 the time of Cyprian to that of Cranmer. The word is laxly 
 used when applied to martyrs to the pestilential climate, or the 
 severity of a long journey. And Missionaries must not in some 
 cases try to appropriate the credit of a Martyr on a Missionary 
 platform, while they and their friends are teazing the Foreign 
 Office to give them material protection. It is not a part of 
 Christian Duty for men to expose themselves to certain risks, in 
 spite of warnings from the Official Authorities, and then to set 
 up a howl for Protection by a distant European Government, 
 and pose as Martyrs. And in time of peril the African Mission- 
 ary must, if the Lord wills it so, die at his post, and rejoice to 
 do so. He must not in time of affliction, or oppression, desert 
 
( 143 ) 
 
 his poor sheep in the wilderness, and save his own miserable 
 body, or flee for the sake of his wife and children. He has 
 taught Jhe African how a Christian can live : he must show him 
 how he can die ; and except in extreme necessity he must not 
 use lethal weapons even in self-defence, remembering the example 
 of his Master. It is recorded of Bishop Maples, that on the 
 occasion of the invasion of the Mission-Station by a tribe for 
 plunder, he and his converts lay themselves down flat on the 
 ground, and their lives were spared. Nor, if a Missionary fall 
 a blessed Martyr, must his friends and relations make frothy 
 demonstrations on French or British platforms calling for 
 revenge or money-compensation. For such Service they were 
 called, and in this prosaic age we ought to be glad, that we 
 have still Heroes in our midst, and that we take the spoiling of 
 our goods joyfully. 
 
 Concession must be made to Native prejudices, but we cannot 
 expect European Missionaries to live Native lives, adopt Native 
 dress, and Native food : the certain end of such a policy is 
 disease or death. They should live industrious, civilized, and 
 exemplary lives, and be content, at least in the first year of their 
 sojourn, to inculcate true Christian principles, and practises, 
 rather than Dogma, and Ritual. The erection of ornamental 
 Chapels, fitted out with European decorations, is to be depre- 
 cated. I have sat in Mount Lebanon on the ground by the 
 side of a Maronite Priest in his little almost empty place of 
 Worship, and he and his congregation were satisfied, and had 
 the root of the matter in them' as truly as a Minor Canon of St. 
 Paul's. In a late letter from the Victoria Nyanza the Romish 
 Missionary mentions, that his ponderous harmonium, which he 
 had dragged all the way from the Coast, had sunk to the bottom 
 of the Lake, and he begged his friends in France to supply 
 another. Surely the converts could do very well without such 
 ecclesiastical luxuries. The unchained music of the Human 
 voice singing glory to God is better than all Human instruments. 
 
 And to the poor converts some mercy should be shown, if 
 they should relapse into Paganism, be seduced into Mahome- 
 tanism, or fall back into licentious lives. When the Slavonians 
 of Europe were forcibly converted, a.d. 866, Pope Nicholas 
 ordered "that apostates were to meet with no Toleration, 
 if they persisted in refusing obedience to the monitions of 
 their Spiritual fathers." The Mahometans could not do 
 worse than that, but such things are impossible now, and 
 one of the great trials of Missionaries of the next generation 
 will be to see whole congregations, the fruit of so much 
 labour, carried away by some new wind of doctrine, and 
 adopting new forms of Worship, or even new Creeds, under 
 the influence of carnally-minded men of their own Nation. 
 
( 144 ) 
 
 There is no help for it. It is in vain, that the Missionary 
 seeks for a high state of piety in a newly-converted congrega- 
 tion, surrounded, by an atmosphere of rank and foul Paganism. 
 Paul did not find it in Greece or Asia Minor, nor will it be 
 found in Africa, and the enforcement of a too severe discipline, 
 and the absence of Christian Love and pity on the part of 
 injudicious and inexperienced Missionaries, may bring on the 
 catastrophe of the destruction of a once-flourishing Mission, 
 and the loss of hundreds of poor creatures now living, or still 
 to be born. 
 
 It is a comfort to think, that in this nineteenth century we 
 have as yet no case recorded of a Miracle in Africa. The 
 troubles at U-Ganda might have been settled off-hand, and 
 the lives of the French Missionaries of the Holy Ghost, who 
 were cruelly murdered in Cimbebasia on the River Kun6n6, 
 might have been spared, had some Thaumaturgus, such as we 
 read of in the Middle Ages, been forthcoming. A blind man 
 was opportunely healed by Augustine with the purpose of 
 influencing the Bishops of the British Church in Wales. 
 Xavier is reported to have wrought miracles in W. India. 
 The Infidel Press of France, Great Britain and America, is 
 on the look-out for such demonstrations, and in these days 
 it will be hard to satisfy the Law of Evidence : yet Legends 
 are palpably growing. The story of the martyrdom of the 
 converts of U-Ganda of both Churches is receiving large 
 expansion, so much so that one Missionary had to write to 
 deny the truth of certain incidents: the ignorant world of the 
 quasi-Religious, sensational, emotional, type is as credulous 
 as ever. 
 
 " Populus vult decipi, et decipiatur." 
 
 With the Church of Rome rests the monopoly of modern 
 Miracles. No Protestant Church would tolerate them ; but it is 
 remarkable, that the celebrated Romish Missionaries of. Africa, 
 Massaia, Duparquet, Depelchin, Bessieux (who laboured forty 
 years in Western Africa), had never pretended to exhibit 
 miraculous power, except the one great Miracle of their Faith 
 and devotion : and wisely so. Those, who have lived in the 
 midst of Mahometan and Pagan populations, know that Miracle- 
 working is the common property of all fanatics and crazy 
 enthusiasts ; they have visited shrines, and been informed, that 
 there barren women would become pregnant, and illnesses are 
 cured, and heard that great profit accrues to the custodians of 
 the temple, or shrine, or tomb. I read that how a fire broke 
 out in the City of Lahore in 1849, burned down a number of 
 houses, and was only arrested, when it reached a house, which 
 
( 145 ) 
 
 • 
 
 contained a pair of paijamah, or nether garments, said to have 
 been worn by Mahomet. The Christian cannot war with such 
 weapons, which belong more properly to the Arsenal of Simon 
 Magus. In the nineteenth century the great Miracle is, that 
 the four great Nations of the world, Great Britain, the United 
 States of N. America, France, and Germany, are full of such 
 holy zeal in the interest of Africa : the silent witness of 
 Christian Books in the Languages of Africa is a Miracle in the 
 eyes of the African, which cannot be over-estimated. The 
 Medical Missionary brings with him a Science, which has the 
 same results, as were imputed to Miracles in an age less severely 
 critical. The presence of Men and Women in their midst, 
 come with the strange object of doing acts of kindness, must 
 be a Oav/u,a, a Swafii?, a Miracle, utterly beyond previous 
 experiences. The medicine-man, and the magician, give up 
 the contest with a Power, which does not depend upon Legend, 
 or vague report, but is visible to the eyes of Men, and is lasting 
 in its effects. What greater standing Miracle can the heart of 
 man conceive than the mighty transformation of an African 
 village, or of the population of an island in the Southern Seas, 
 when the Spirit of the Lord has overshadowed them in the 
 person of the humble Christian, who has come they know not 
 whence, has asked leave to sojourn among them, has taught 
 them useful Arts, and in the course of one generation has 
 changed them from being filth)-, naked, helpless, ignorant of 
 the very name of God, and fearing and hating their neighbours, 
 into the freedom of a Christian Community, dwelling in huts, 
 living with monogamy, decency, and a certain amount of humble 
 culture, with their Chapel, their School, their Minister, and the 
 open Bible in their own Language, set up and printed by their 
 own tribe in their own village, and deriving from that Bible 
 Love to their neighbours, Faith in their Saviour, and a certain 
 Hope beyond the grave ? Such things have been, may be, and 
 will be, if the people of Europe and North America know how 
 to use humbly, faithfully, and with a Spirit of self-Sacrifice, 
 their marvellous opportunities, and the unparalleled means at 
 their disposal. 
 
 If the new teaching of the simple ignorant people were 
 restricted to the great central doctrine of Christ Crucified and 
 Risen again, and the necessary consequences of Repentance, 
 Pardon, and Holiness through Faith in His finished work, it 
 would be a boon to the infant Churches. The object should 
 be to wean their poor weak intellects from their fetishes, their 
 Idols, their rain-makers, their medicine-men, their professors of 
 magic arts, after which their unstable temperaments will go 
 hankering for many generations, as did the Hebrews of the 
 Kingdoms of Judah and Israel ; but the African would have, 
 
( 146 ) 
 
 what the Hebrews never had, the presence of Holy and good 
 men in their midst, teaching by their example and precepts the 
 necessity of living a life of extreme purity, exhibiting a tender 
 Love, for the bodies and Souls of the poor African, gentleness 
 to children, respect to females, and honour to old age. Such 
 an expedient has never been tried on unsophisticated races on 
 so large a scale before, as is now going on in Africa. I think, 
 that there is danger in some Methods, indicated by the 
 following anecdotes : A Missionary could not prevail on a Chief 
 to allow him a site in his village ; so, according to his own 
 narrative, published in a French Missionary weekly, he turned 
 round on St. Joseph, and said that it was his business, and that 
 he must do it\ on calling on the Chief next morning, he found 
 that the Chief had seen a vision of an aged man in his dream, 
 who ordered him to give the Missionary a site, and he did so 
 accordingly. Another Missionary attributed the rains, which 
 had come at a period suitable for the harvest, to the celebration 
 of a particular festival. We detect in these narratives a survival of 
 the flavour of the old magician and the rain-maker. The extreme 
 left of the Christian Churches fall into analogous errors. I read 
 in a Missionary report, how the child of African parents was ill : 
 they were not baptized Christians, but enjoyed that singularly 
 anomalous position of being adherents : they were taunted by 
 the Heathen with the question, "Can your God heal him?" 
 The Medical Missionary took this as a direct challenge, and 
 claimed him of God. In a week's time, after proper medical 
 treatment, he was healed, and the little negro boy went back 
 to his dirt, and Pagan Ignorance: it cannot but occur to the 
 Reader, that, if any one is to be claimed, he should be of some 
 value, past, present, or future, and worth claiming ; and he 
 might have died : can the Ruler of the Universe do wrong ?■ 
 There are also wild enthusiasts, who forbid their agents to take 
 medicine in case of illness, trusting to Faith, and discourage 
 study of the Languages of the country, trusting in a Pentecostal 
 Gift of Tongues. In no branch of Human affairs is such folly 
 exhibited, as in the work of Missions. 
 
 Cardinal Manning remarked fifty years ago on a Protestant 
 Platform, that the English people had at that time the choice 
 to make, whether they would be the " beasts of burden " or the 
 " Evangelists " of the world : the same sentiment applies now 
 to all nationalities so long as the Missionary occupation - is 
 solely, entirely, and truly, for the good of the people evange- 
 lized, and not a mere snare, like the Political occupation, which 
 is solely for the purpose of obtaining new outlets to Commerce, 
 and to promote free and unscrupulous landgrabbing, or the 
 Commercial occupation ; which works to the destruction of the 
 Souls and bodies of the defenceless Natives of Africa, and fills 
 
( 147 ) 
 
 the pockets of the Gin and Rum-manufacturers of Europe and 
 North America. The Pharisaical pretence of benevolence, and 
 the hypocritical show of desiring to do good to the African, 
 makes the policy of the Statesman, and the great Manufacturer, 
 more odious. In the streets of Smyrna the fruit-sellers cry out, 
 " In the name of the Prophet Figs ! " This is a fair condensation 
 of the Spirit of the new African Policy. In the name of the 
 Saviour, slaughter by the great Geographical Explorer, confiscation 
 of land by the great Companies, and poisoning of Millions by the 
 great Distilleries ! The Missionaries of different Churches must not 
 quarrel with each other, when they have these three antagonists 
 to contend with under the leadership of Giant Pagan, and Giant 
 Islam. In a ship, which this year reached the Kongo from 
 North America, there were nine Missionaries (five of their 
 predecessors had died soon after their arrival), and one hundred 
 and twenty thousand gallons of Rum. The Chinese Missionaries 
 fill the air with their lamentations, because the people of British 
 India export opium to China, a Commerce licensed by the law 
 of the country, which receives the drug, and which within its 
 own boundary is a far greater producer of opium than India and 
 the rest of the world put together. The Emperor has but to 
 forbid the import of Indian opium, and it would cease ; but 
 Africa produces no such deadly stimulants as Brandy, Gin, and 
 Rum, within its boundaries, and there is no organized Govern- 
 ment like that of China, with armies and fleets, which can arrest 
 the import from foreign and Christian countries. Surely here 
 is a much more reasonable case for an outcry and lamentation 
 on the part of real and not pretending philanthropists. 
 
 This presses home the greater and ever-increasing necessity 
 of the Missionary occupation of Africa. Though France, Great 
 Britain, and North America, have done well, still they must do 
 more: the efforts of other countries are comparatively small. 
 But let the man of pleasure, the man of the world, the avowed 
 Atheist, the doubter of the great Future of the Human race, the 
 Pharisee, who passes by pn the other side, pause and reflect on 
 the grandeur of what has been done, is doing, and will continue 
 to be doing. The world, the worn-out European world, sated 
 with lust of money, pride of greatness, and frivolity of pleasure, 
 cannot spare such proofs, that the heart of man is still as 
 capable of evidencing its Divine origin by its works, as it was 
 in the freshness of the centuries of early Christianity, and in the 
 pre-Christian ages of the Juventus Mundi, when Jephthah's 
 daughter was ready to Sacrifice herself for the service of her 
 God, when the Roman Hero leapt fully armed into the pit 
 to save the Republic. A dying world lies at the door of Europe, 
 a world ignorant, but not by its own fault, of Christ's great 
 Sacrifice : from every rank of the community of the Neo-Latin, 
 
( 148 ) 
 
 and Teuton Races, and of no other, men and women leap out and 
 cry, " Send me, send me to my dying fellow-creatures, dying in 
 " body and Soul. Never mind, whether their colour is black, 
 " or brown, or red, or yellow. Never mind, whether they are 
 " cruel, or gentle, and tractable. Never mind, whether they are 
 " healthy or leprous. Never mind, if I die just when I land on 
 " their shores, or live to see them pass from their barbarous 
 " nakedness into the decent form and order of a Holy Church : 
 " send me! I have but the desire and a few poor talents : the 
 " issue is with God." 
 
 The heart beats high, when it hears of it, even the heart of 
 the unconverted and unbeliever: it forgets, or does not care 
 to ask, whether the man or woman, who evinces such grand 
 sentiments, hails from the Churches of Rome, or of Great Britain, 
 or of North America, or of the European Continent : their 
 utterances and actions betray, that they belong to the Church 
 of Christ : Christianity is Christ, and Christ alone ; and the true 
 Christian lives and dies like Christ. Well may they be called 
 the Heroes of Africa. 
 
 Depend upon it, that these Missionaries are in a higher degree 
 makers of future History than the Provincial Governor of a 
 forcibly and unscrupulously annexed sphere of influence, the 
 Chairman of the great Company, that intends to exploit the 
 territories stolen from their hereditary owners, the gold-digger, 
 the diamond collector, the liquor-distiller and exporter, who has 
 found a new market for his poisonous wares. Columbanus and 
 Boniface were men of a higher type : sprung from the British 
 isles, they left their mark on Europe, while we know nothing 
 of their worldly contemporaries. There were possibly in those 
 days also specimens of unscrupulous Trading Companies, 
 reckless land-grabbers, gold-grabbers, and diamond-grabbers, 
 unprincipled exporters of alcoholic poison. " Vse victis ! 
 Quocunque modo rem." Such has always been the motto 
 of the stronger Nation, and stronger individual in all Epochs 
 of History, when Christianity has been unknown or forgotten. 
 
 Hear the dying words of a Missionary of Rome, who passed 
 away nearly half a century ago in West Africa, at a period when 
 it was not so fashionable as now to be a Missionary: 
 
 " Dites a ma famille, et mes amis, que je suis heureux d'avoir 
 " tout quitt6 pour mon divin Maitre : si mon sacrifice 6tait 
 " a refaire, je le referais encore mille fois : je ne changerai pas 
 " ma position pour tout le bonheur du monde." Forty years 
 later an English Missionary, in an exhausted state, left the 
 Kongo to die at Madeira : these were his last words taken down 
 by a stranger in the hotel, who visited him out of pity : " Lord, 
 " I gave myself, body, mind, and Soul, to Thee. I consecrated 
 " my whole life to Thy Service, and now, if it please Thee 
 
( 149 ) 
 
 " to take myself, instead of the work, which I would do for Thee, 
 " what is that to me ? Thy Will be done ! " Could Martyrs at 
 the stake, or in a vessel of boiling oil, do more ! 
 
 There is a higher consanguinity, which unites the Neo-Latin 
 and Teuton Races, than that of the blood, which runs in their 
 veins, viz. that of the high spirit, which makes their hearts beat 
 with indignation, when they hear of suffering ; with pity, when 
 they read of Ignorance ; and glad joy, when they hear of noble 
 men and women giving ther lives to relieve that suffering, and 
 to enlighten that Ignorance. It is the most profitable invest- 
 ment of talent, and the profession, which heaps up the most 
 enduring fortune, which the possessor takes with him, when 
 he is no more seen on earth ; it is the achievement, which sheds 
 the greatest lustre on a particular nationality, to have been the 
 mother of Christian Heroes, who died for their Master, and 
 for the poor African ; and it creates a glory which lives for ever ! 
 
 London, July 15th, i8gi-i8gs- 
 
( 151 ) 
 
 CAP. III. INCIDENTS AND DANGERS. 
 
 A. Worldly Obstructions. 
 
 B. Want of Sympathy with the non-Christian world. 
 
 C. Missions and Science. 
 
 D. The extent of the Duties and Rights of the Evangelist. 
 
 E. Arm of the Flesh. 
 
 F. Polygamy not possible to a Christian. 
 
 G. Caste. 
 
 H. Difficulty of Missions. 
 I. Religions of the Ancient World. 
 
 A. Worldly Obstructions. 
 
 i. A wish expressed too late. 
 
 2. A word to those, who do not recognize the divinely inspired 
 
 duty of Evangelization. 
 
 3. Civilization without the Gospel is profitless. 
 
 I. A WISH EXPRESSED TOO LATE. 
 
 Oh ! that I had done something to spread the Gospel of Christ ! 
 
 He was lying on what he knew would prove his death-bed : 
 free from pain, but overcome by weakness, his thoughts beyond 
 his control ranged back over the whole period of his past life : 
 his boyhood, his early manhood, came back to him with vivid 
 distinctness, even as the events of yesterday. At the age of 
 eighty he could clearly recall the events of sixty-five years, and 
 the conclusion, that was forced upon him, was that God had 
 been very kind to him : no Father could have been kinder, as 
 men judge kindness. 
 
 For He had hedged him round from the vulgar ills, and 
 commonplace afflictions of life. He had never hidden His 
 face from him, nor appeared unto him in all His storms : as 
 a youth, as an adult, as a man in middle life, in declining years, 
 and in old age, he had had all things very much as he wished, 
 
( 152 ) 
 
 and now his end was approaching calmly, gently, smoothed by 
 every comfort, free from all anxiety about the future of the loved 
 ones, who stood round his bed. 
 
 Nor was his a solitary instance : to many this same easy life, 
 accompanied by a dull conscience, is conceded. Their family- 
 ties are unbroken : their eyes swell with fatness : they wish well 
 to all, because all has been well with them, for why' should they 
 be afflicted like other folk ? They have always done what to 
 them seemed their Duty, and never broken the Decalogue : 
 they have paid their taxes and their debts : they have put the 
 miserable shilling into the plate, and subscribed to the Hospital, 
 and repairs of the Church, and to the Dorcas-club : it did not 
 require much thought or any Sacrifice : others did it, and it 
 looked respectable, and so they did it also, and felt com- 
 placently satisfied with their lot, and their conduct. Of any 
 saving truth in Christ they knew nothing : perhaps the Minister 
 had forgotten to tell it, or perhaps they did not understand it 
 when told. They thanked God, that they were neither psalm- 
 singers, nor hypocrites, but according to their light respectable 
 Christians, who had been baptized, and hoped to be decently 
 buried. 
 
 And now the end, that comes to all, had come to him, and he 
 lay a dying. He had made his will, paid his debts, left a dole 
 to the parish, and was submissive. He recalled how fifty years 
 ago his father and mother had done the same thing. He re- 
 membered how his sisters had repeated the Lord's Prayer, and 
 read portions of the New Testament to them, and he asked his 
 daughter to do the same for him also. 
 
 As she repeated the Lord's Prayer, a new wonder came over 
 him, as to the meaning of " Thy Kingdom come," and he asked 
 her : she belonged to a different epoch of Christian culture from 
 her father, and unhesitatingly replied, "that all the world might 
 acknowledge Christ as King." In reading the last chapter of 
 Matthew, when she came to the last two verses, " Go ye into all 
 the world, etc.," he asked what those verses meant. Her reply 
 was given with the tone of conviction : " The Duty of Christians 
 to evangelize the non-Christian world in obedience to the parting 
 command of the Saviour, who had redeemed us." He listened 
 and was silent : this was a view of the case, which he had never 
 heard, or at least never understood until now : he had indeed 
 heard of and met people, who called themselves Missionaries : 
 a Negro Clergyman had once preached in his Church : he had 
 some friends, who seemed to take a lively interest in the subject, 
 but for himself he had considered the subject out of his line, he 
 had pushed it aside : he remembered how half a century ago 
 he had heard his father laugh at the Movement as humbug, and 
 he had steadily through life declined to read any of their reports, 
 
( 153 ) 
 
 or subscribe a shilling to their objects : " Look to your poor at 
 home " was his reply to any applicant, but he had given little 
 practical effect to that reply except paying his Poor-Rate. 
 
 He fell into a doze, and the subject came to him again in his 
 dreams : he had lately expressed to his own children his parting 
 wishes as to their conduct, when he should be taken from them, 
 and he hoped and believed, that they would conform to them : 
 it struck him suddenly, that by parity of reason he himself ought 
 to have complied with the clearly stated wishes of his Saviour, 
 who had done more for him, than any father can do for his 
 children, and had left him a parting command. 
 
 Then in a dream came before him the picture of distant lands, 
 occupied by non-Christian races : some in a state of barbarism 
 and savage cruelty : some in lethargy and stupid Ignorance : 
 some again great, learned, and rich, but worshipping stocks and 
 stones, and giving heed to false doctrines, invented by erring 
 men, and allowing themselves to commit atrocious crimes, and 
 indulge in monstrous immorality : to his memory came snatches 
 of Missionary hymns, which he had sometimes heard children 
 sing in his Church about multitudes calling on Christians (in- 
 cluding him) to deliver them from the bondage of darkness. Some 
 earnest words suddenly forced themselves on his recollection, 
 as if the Holy Spirit had recalled them, of a casual Preacher, 
 who in the flower of his youth had occupied the Pulpit, and told 
 them, that he (the Preacher) had given up everything in this 
 world, that he might go forth to convey the Message to these 
 poor sinners : he had tried to bring home to the hearts of those, 
 who heard him, their manifest duty to their Risen and Ascended 
 Lord ; but as far as concerned many, and more particularly the 
 now dying man, he had spoken in vain. 
 
 At eventide there shall be light, and so it was : the light came 
 to him, and the gusts of earthly passions, and the clouds of 
 worldly cares, being removed, he saw things clearer: he weighed 
 his life in a balance, and it was found wanting : he had indeed 
 cared for the people of his own home, he had been a faithful 
 husband to the mother of his children, and a kind father to the 
 orphans, whom she had left to his charge : he had put up a 
 painted window to the memory of his parents and his wife, he 
 had repaired the Church, and built a new School-house: he died 
 in good odour with his neighbours : that was well, but in doing 
 one duty he should not have left the other undone : there 
 was the error, and it was too late to remedy it now. To the 
 saving of one Soul he had not contributed by thought, word, or 
 deed ; how could he expect to be saved himself? If his neigh- 
 bour's ox or ass were in a pit, he would have taken personal 
 trouble to get them out, and asked no reward : but here was his 
 neighbour himself in peril of his Soul, and yet he had never 
 
( 154 ) 
 
 stretched out his hand to save him. Where would he himself 
 have been, if some one in past ages had not exerted himself to 
 bring his ancestors to Christ, and thus led to the happy result, 
 that he was born in Christian culture and surroundings ? He 
 thought of words, which he had read in the New Testament 
 without attaching any particular meaning : "Occupy till I come," 
 " Trade with the Pounds lent to you." Had he made use of the 
 talents entrusted to him ? Was he not then an unprofitable 
 servant ? What reply could he give, when the Lord came to 
 take account with His servants ? 
 
 His heart sank within him : he had lived a long life in those 
 few moments. He seemed to have divided his individuality, 
 and thought of his poor ignorant self, as he now appeared to 
 his enlightened Soul, with pity and dismay, as the most wretched 
 of men. " Something for me " was the burden of a hymn, 
 which came back to him, as sung by the children in the Sunday 
 School, and then, as if in mockery, came the words " Nothing 
 for me," "Nothing for me, who did so much for Thee." 
 
 His thoughts then went off in another direction : how much 
 happiness, real happiness, he had lost ! A conviction was 
 brought home to him of the intense genuine happiness, of the 
 indescribable joys felt by those, to whom the Grace {for after all 
 it is Grace alone) was given of obeying their Lord's command in 
 childhood, in youth, in manhood, in old age, - with tongue, with 
 brain, with hands, with purse, with personal labour, with the 
 great offering of self-Sacrifice ; who had given up wealth, and 
 station, wife and children, parents, and country, health, and even 
 life itself, lying down meekly on the Cross to fill up what 
 remained of the sufferings of Christ for the redemption of Souls. 
 It is not by works, that we are saved, but by Grace alone ; but 
 we can glorify God by works after the Grace of Salvation has 
 come to us. The little child, when at Christmas-tide he offers 
 to his Parents a little present bought by money, supplied to him 
 by them, or a shell from the Sea-shore, or a flower from the free 
 gifts of the Earth, sets us the example of gratitude and Love. 
 All that we can do is to offer of our abundance, our sufficiency, 
 our deep penury, something however worthless out of the store, 
 which He has given to us. Whether it be a widow's mite, or 
 a king's ransom, the service of a few weeks, or of half a century 
 of years : a cornucopia of saved Souls, or the great life-sorrow 
 of long labours uncrowned by a single conversion ; it matters 
 not : the Lord weighs them in His own scales, the scales of 
 Love. "Lovest thou Me!" "Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I 
 Love Thee": " Feed my Lambs." " Something for Thee, Lord, 
 " something for Thee ! Nothing in my hand I bring, but oh ! 
 " with my prayers let a perfume of work done in a humble 
 " Spirit, of sufferings patiently endured, of ardent enthusiasm 
 
( 155 ) 
 
 " in the interest of my fellow-creatures, go up to the foot-stool 
 " of Thy glory ! " 
 
 " Working with Thee " is another thought, that passed through 
 the dying man's brain. From the Cross Christ looked down on 
 all Mankind past, present, and future, on Regions which Csesar 
 never knew, on isles of the sea, dimly seen by the inspired 
 Prophet, on the Gentiles, to lighten whom a bright light had 
 suddenly appeared in Galilee : we are the heirs of all the ages, 
 foremost in the ranks of time, and shall we not be foremost in 
 the work of the Lord, in the work, which He works with us, 
 through us, and by our poor instrumentality ; for it is by His 
 Grace alone that we are able to do anything worth doing. " Oh ! 
 that I had done something to spread the Gospel of Christ ! " 
 
 Then his thoughts went off in another direction, and fixed 
 themselves on those features, which stood out very clearly 
 
 (i) Guilty leisure, talents not made use of, opportunities 
 lost. 
 
 (2) Wilful Ignorance, or rather refusal to listen to in- 
 
 struction. 
 
 (3) Culpable niggardliness, wealth misapplied. 
 
 His understanding seemed at last to be opened to the com- 
 prehension of these words : A Cry for Missions. 
 
 (1) First came the idea of " Guilty Leisure." Are there no 
 men and women in the community, for whom God has provided 
 in his bounty an abundance, or a sufficiency, and who pass 
 through a long life of ease, and health, who have unemployed 
 Gifts, who do nothing for the Lord, who bought them ? This 
 is what is meant by " Guilty Leisure." No substitutes are 
 allowed to exempt from Military Conscription. Personal Service 
 is required : there is something more valuable than Gold and 
 Silver, and every Christian is bound to render this to the Home 
 and Foreign Missions, or to both. How do many get through 
 their long tedious days, sanctified by no labour, unenlightened 
 by any interest ? Have they done what they could ? 
 
 (2) Next came the idea " Inexcusable Ignorance." And yet 
 this is an age of enlightenment, and the Missionary Societies 
 flood the world with interesting information, but there are some, 
 who will not read them. The Sunday-School is instructed in 
 the details of Paul's Missionary Journeys, but knows nothing, 
 or next to nothing, of the great work of the successors of Paul. 
 And yet the reports of Missionary Societies, and their Periodi- 
 cals, are filled with greater interest than the most fascinating 
 romance, and have the advantage, or perhaps disadvantage, 
 
( 156 ) 
 
 of being true. Perils by land, perils by sea, perils by robbers, 
 perils by the Heathen, perils in the city, perils in the wilder- 
 ness, perils among false brethren : in weariness, in painfullness, 
 in watchings often, in hunger and thirst : in fastings often, in 
 cold and nakedness, besides the care of all the Churches : 
 moving accidents by flood and field ; disappointments and 
 successes : triumphs and abasements : all these and more are to 
 be found. As the narrative flows on in its simplicity, the narrow 
 walls of the room seem to expand, and the Reader is trans- 
 •ported in thought to the great cities of Asia, the inhospitable 
 Regions of North America, and the vast deserts of Africa. 
 There stands an honest God-fearing man, one of the Reader's 
 own race and kin and Language, sent out to preach the Gospel 
 by his Church; and is he not something in this cold, self- 
 seeking material, age to be proud of? He has given up the 
 prospect of wealth and honour, and ease, in his own country, 
 and has gone out to endure hardship for the safe of the suffering, 
 the oppressed, and the ignorant: nor has he gone alone, for by 
 his side there moves a form, scattering sweet flowers round his 
 life in those God-forsaken Regions, attracting to herself hearts 
 by the strange sight of the Beauty of Holiness : they call her 
 in their untutored accents an angel: he calls her, wife, who like 
 Ruth will not leave him. Are such Stories as these not worth 
 reading ? Is not this " Inexcusable Ignorance " as to the 
 continuity of the Missionary Spirit from the time of Paul to 
 the present hour ? 
 
 (3) Next came the words " Culpable niggardliness." He has 
 given us all, all that we possess in this world, all that we hope 
 for in the next. Shall we not give something ? Do we value the 
 privileges, which we possess, if we do not assist to extend them 
 to others. The free Anglo-Saxon on both sides of the Atlantic 
 is not content to enjoy freedom, but wishes to impart it to others.' 
 The Christian wishes the Message of Salvation to be conveyed 
 to the whole world. On the Clock of History the hour for 
 Missions has sounded. The Church, the family and the in- 
 dividual, who do not place the duty of conquering new Kingdoms 
 to the Lord in the first line of their obligations, abdicate their 
 position. Those, who are most liberal to Home-requirements 
 are not less forward in aiding Foreign Missions. Nor is it 
 money alone, that the Lord requires. What shall be said of 
 those, who withhold Personal Service, if the Message come to 
 them, that the Lord calls them to his vineyard, if they find 
 themselves in possession of talents, and leisure, and means, and 
 opportunities ? What shall be said of Parents, who withhold 
 their children, when they are ready to go, and fit to serve, and 
 who have no field of usefulness at home ? Where that exists, 
 
( 157 ) 
 
 and they have unmistakeable domestic claims on their Services, 
 or a vocation in Home-Missions among the poor and suffering 
 of their own people, it is mere idle will-worship, and a romantic 
 desire of change, that tempts them to new, and not necessarily- 
 better, things. But, when they are sitting at home with folded 
 hands, crushed by the conventionalities of home family-life, or 
 are dragged along like Slaves attached to the car of unprofitable 
 social worldliness, Parents ! Parents ! if the Lord calls them, 
 let them go ! Early death, tedious disease, some kind of mis- 
 fortune, may hereafter come upon you for robbing the Master 
 of his own. What happened to the Servant, who wrapped his 
 talent in a napkin ? 
 
 The true Missionary is undoubtedly the highest type of Human 
 excellence in the Nineteenth century. He has the enterprize 
 of the Merchant without the narrow desire of gain, the daunt- 
 lessness of the soldier without the occasion for shedding blood, 
 the zeal of the Geographical Explorer, but for higher motive 
 than the advancement of Human Knowledge. The Missionary 
 is the salt of the Earth. 
 
 Such were his thoughts, but to him it was too late : he had 
 allowed his useless life to glide by like water, that is spilt, and 
 cannot be recovered. Are none of us in the same plight ? Why 
 were we born ? Why is our life prolonged to manhood, to old 
 age ? Is it not sad to contemplate the life of some around us ? 
 We are not to judge others, and yet we cannot help seeing, 
 that for a long period they have done nothing for their fellow- 
 creatures : and yet God has given them some kind of talents, 
 plenty of time, freedom from labour, social position, ample 
 opportunities, abundant means ! 
 
 What is the reason ? It is not far to look for : the reason 
 why people care so little for the Souls and bodies of others, is 
 because they care little for their own Souls, and in fact are not 
 converted themselves : they do not realize at its full value what 
 the Saviour has done for their individual Souls : if they did, 
 would not their hearts burn within them to hand over the free 
 Gift of Salvation ? The intense joy of Personal Salvation would 
 spread towards a desire to save others. 
 
 January, 1892-1895. 
 
( 158 ) 
 
 2. a word to those, who do not recognize the 
 Divinely Imposed Duty of Evangelization. 
 
 A friend mentioned to me one day the secular addresses, 
 which he made to hard-headed good men, who would decline 
 to be considered Christians, though their actions and mode of 
 life showed, that, in spite of their protestations, the law of Christ 
 had engraved itself upon their life ; and suggested to me the 
 idea of writing a Missionary address upon secular lines. Was 
 I afraid to face such an audience ? Certainly not. As an 
 advanced Liberal, yet true to the Union of the three Kingdoms, 
 I had on political platforms boldly expressed my sentiments in 
 spite of the yells of infuriated Home-Rulers : I had not been 
 afraid to ' look boldly into the face of the Anti-opium-trade 
 enthusiasts in Exeter Hall, while I tried in vain to temper with 
 common sense their unreasoning enthusiasm. 
 
 I respect real bona-fide Atheists, and Agnostics, who are so 
 from profound convictions, who lead moral lives, and who 
 themselves respect the Religious opinions of others : they are 
 feelers for the Truth. And I feel, that but for the Grace of God, 
 acting through the circumstances of my early life, I should 
 probably have been among them, for I still rejoice in the title of 
 a Freethinker, in the Christian sense of that word, one who 
 must know what he believes, and be able to give a reason for 
 his belief, involving no hard points in fog, and not afraid to look 
 difficulties in the face. If I had not witnessed so many a Hindu 
 and Mahometan go bravely and unshrinkingly to their death, 
 I should wonder, how a man could dare to die without hope in 
 Christ. If experience had not convinced me, that round me 
 were many good men, who professed unbelief, I should wonder, 
 how a man would dare to live without the aid of the Holy Spirit. 
 To grasp the subject of Christian Missions, omitting the name 
 of Christ, is hard. To seem for an instant, and only for a 
 purpose, to treat the life and death of Christ as a beautiful 
 Legend, to roll up out of sight the all-absorbing Love of the 
 Saviour, is harder still. Still, it must be done, in order to draw 
 from Human experience, from actual results, from the History 
 of our Epoch, evidence of the reality of an hidden inner Power 
 behind the scenes, on which such marvels of Human benevolence 
 are being represented. 
 
 It is an uncontestable fact, that no body of men (except the 
 Theosophists and Mormons) has up to the present moment 
 deliberately started Missionary enterprizes to convert to their 
 views the Heathen on any other basis than that of the New 
 
( 159 ) 
 
 Testament. A great deal has been written about Mahometan 
 Missionaries. I can only reply, that I never came across one. 
 A Mahometan, no doubt, is ready to circumcise his male slave, 
 and to make his female slave nominally conform to Islam, and 
 be his concubine, but nothing beyond is proved to my satis- 
 faction, either in Asia, or Africa. Conversions may have been 
 effected by force in times past, and by fraud, or worldly induce- 
 ment, in times present, but I never read of money collected to 
 send out emissaries. In India there is a fair and open field, and 
 most capable, and accomplished, and good Mahometans, but 
 a proselyting Mission has not been entered upon. The Buddhist 
 Missions, whatever they were (and certainly they were successful), 
 are things of the dim and remote past, and no tendency has 
 been developed by the Millions of existing followers of Buddha 
 to propagate their peaceful, and much-corrupted, doctrines, by 
 the practice of which in their purity the happiness of man would 
 be advanced. As a fact, the Religion of Buddha is so choked 
 by the parasitical growth of Heathenism, that it would require 
 to be itself reformed, before it could be conveyed as a Message 
 to others. The same remark applies to the Mahometan and 
 Christian Religions. It is possible, that there may be an out- 
 burst of Mahometan Wahabi, or Reformers, who may be fired 
 with the desire to preach the doctrines of Mahomet. We know 
 as a fact that, previous to the great Reformation of the Christian 
 Religion in the sixteenth century there was little attempt to 
 carry the Christian Religion to the Heathen out of Europe. 
 But, when the Church of Rome had purged itself from its worst 
 errors of Mediasval practice under the new impulse given by the 
 new order of the Jesuits, it commenced its great career of 
 Christian Missions, in which, after two centuries of torpor, it has 
 been followed by the Reformed Churches of Europe and America. 
 This leads me up to my first position that : 
 
 (i) No other Religion, but that of Christ, has furnished the 
 motive, and the power, to induce men and women to sacrifice 
 their personal comforts for the sake of converting unknown 
 and distant races to their views of thinking. 
 
 Our countrymen, who do not agree with us as Christians, are 
 still unconsciously so imbued with Christian feeling, have 
 lived so entirely in the atmosphere of Christian thought and 
 practice, and display in their every-day life so much goodness, 
 and purity, and benevolence, that it would not seem strange, if 
 they were to send out Missions. We should then bring to the 
 test the fact, upon which Christians insist, that it is the Love of 
 Christ only, that constraineth men to undergo sufferings, and that 
 it is the Power of Christ only, that enables them to conquer them. 
 
( 160 ) 
 
 These may seem bold words, but History testifies to their 
 accuracy. I cast no blame upon any one for having exercised 
 only passive virtues : such was our position also last century, 
 but we have been roused to a sense of certain facts, which 
 underlie our Faith, that : 
 
 I. God made men in His own image, and that, to all has 
 been granted the Gift of articulate speech and Religious instinct, 
 by which they are separated from the rest of Creation, and they 
 resemble each other much more than they differ. 
 
 II. Christ looked down from the Cross on all mankind, 
 from the Creation, and died for them, every one, without any 
 exception. 
 
 III. The parting words of our Saviour were an order to preach 
 the Gospel to every creature in all the world, and a Promise to 
 be with us to the end of the world. 
 
 The next consideration is : 
 
 (2) The wonderful change, which has come over European. 
 Nations, since they became Christians, the Duty imposed upon 
 them, and the aid derived from the Missionary Spirit. 
 
 Now this is a matter of History, as it has all happened since 
 Julius Caesar, the first Roman Emperor, was killed, and we 
 know from Roman authors what the state of Europe was only 
 eighteen hundred years ago, and we know what it is now. It is 
 scarcely necessary to waste time on this argument, nor is it 
 possible to disconnect Christianity from our Civilization. I am 
 very familiar with the History of Rome and Greece, and the 
 great Kingdoms of Asia, and North Africa, and I cannot say of 
 them, that they were great, wise, enlightened, and sympathetic : 
 they did not care to stamp out abominable crimes ; the men, 
 possessed of wealth and power, openly vaunted of the com- 
 mission of vices, which, if committed at all under a Christian 
 Government, are matters for concealment and shame. I can find 
 no proof in their History, that with the rare exceptions of such 
 men as the Emperor Titus, and King As6ka in India, they 
 were ever possessed with a great idea of doing good to their 
 neighbours. 
 
 It is a poor argument to say, that we did very well without 
 Missions : this seems to be said in forgetfulness, that the 
 Religious Spirit of a man advances just as much as his scientific : 
 our Fathers did very well without the effects of physical Science 
 of to-day. As our day, so is our strength : as our strength 
 increases, and our opportunity, so increases our Duty. As a 
 fact, we have been forced into contact with non-Christian races 
 
C 161 ) 
 
 in Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania : can we be content to 
 fold our hands, and do nothing ? Somehow or other the 
 nobility of our character compels us to consider the problem, 
 whether we cannot do something to ameliorate their condition, ' 
 for in some particulars it is sad. The great Darwin admitted, 
 that the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego were human, but in 
 culture very little above beasts: this is not satisfactory infor- 
 mation, and. makes the ears of benevolent men tingle. Now, as 
 a fact, will the excellent men, who are unable to accept the 
 Promises of Christ, the good people, who tell us mildly, that 
 they expect to go after death to the place, where other good 
 people go, the good old Heathen of the Augustan type of 
 Juvenal, and Seneca, of Antoninus Pius, and Adrian, who have 
 lived down to our time : will any of them, full of benevolence as 
 they are, band themselves together to collect tens of thousand 
 Pounds in every town and village in Great Britain, to send out 
 below cost price Moral treatises, or Fruits of Philosophy, or 
 Supernatural Religion, for the instruction of these inferior 
 races ? Will they send out devoted Atheists, and consecrated 
 Comtists, and self-Sacrificing Agnostics, to live among wild 
 tribes, acquire their Languages, soften their rough manners, 
 win their Love, and Love them in return, die for them, and 
 teach them how to die, worthy of life beyond the grave ? 
 
 There must be something in the Movement. An American 
 this year said to me, that he had come over to see all the sights 
 of London ; and he did not think his visit accomplished, until 
 he had seen the committee of a Missionary Society assembled 
 in their room of business. It so happened, that he came at a 
 moment, when four Agents were receiving their instructions 
 previous to their departure to different quarters of the world : 
 there was a mechanic going out to construct a Mission-boat on 
 Victoria Nyanza in Central Africa : a medical man going to 
 China : a Female Evangelist to Mombasa in East Africa, and an 
 ordained Missionary to the wild tribes in Canada. It struck him, 
 as noteworthy, but it was the ordinary routine : the Engine 
 Room, the Hospital, the Mission-School, and the Mission-Chapel, 
 can all be instruments of Human benevolence to the poor Human 
 creatures, whether black, or red, or brown, or yellow, if only the 
 motive Power can be found, and the sole Power, that History has 
 yet revealed to us, is Christ. Take the islands of New Zealand 
 as an example : they belong to Great Britain and to Christ, simply 
 because one earnest man, a century ago, Samuel Marsden, was 
 smitten with the desire at the risk of his life to carry to them the 
 Gospel. Every Briton burns with a desire to put an end to the 
 African Slave-trade, but how could all the Governments of Europe 
 effect it, without the aid of interpreters trained in the Mission- 
 School, and what would become of the poor released Slaves, but 
 
( 162 ) 
 
 for the Homes established by the Missionaries ? When Lord 
 Wolseley went up the Nile to relieve Gordon, he was accompanied 
 by interpreters trained by Missionaries, and so was Henry Stanley, 
 when he visited King Mtesa on Victoria Nyanza, and discovered 
 the course of the Kongo. 
 
 (3) The Christian Missions have been a blessing to the 
 countries, in which they were located, as far as concerns things 
 of this world. 
 
 Darwin is my first witness: "There are many, who attack 
 " both the Missionaries, their system, and the effect produced 
 " by it. Such reasoners never compare the present state with 
 " that of the island only twenty years ago ; nor even with that 
 " of Europe at the present day; but they compare it with the 
 " high standard of Gospel-perfection. The lesson of the Mis- 
 " sionary is the enchanter's- wand." 
 
 Vice-Consul Johnston, of the Kamerims, West Africa, in an 
 article in the " Nineteenth Century," noticed the personality of 
 Missionaries rather flippantly, and of the Negro rather unkindly, 
 and is evidently not a supporter of Missionary Societies ; but, 
 somehow or other, he makes the following remark: "It is 
 " consoling to reflect on the immense services, which Mission- 
 " enterprizes have rendered in Africa, to the world at large, 
 " and to Great Britain. When the History of the great African 
 " States comes to be written, the arrival of the first Missionary 
 " will be the first historical event (as Julius Caesar in Britain) : 
 " he, gave them their first idea of the Printing Press, Steamboat, 
 " and Saw-Mill : he first navigated their rivers, and lakes. 
 " Missionary enterprize has widely increased the bounds of 
 " our Knowledge, and has conferred benefits on Science." 
 
 A writer on India says : " No one, who has lived long in 
 " a Heathen land, can have any doubt upon the immense 
 " advantage of the diffusion of the Gospel : the suppression 
 " of Heathen rites and usages : the creation of a public con- 
 " science : the formation of a public opinion in favour of the 
 " pure, the honest, and the true, the elevation of the Moral 
 " standard, the vindication of the rights of Man to exercise 
 " the faculties given by God: all these are unspeakable blessings, 
 " and they accompany the Gospel." 
 
 Speaking myself from the point of view of a Heathen Philo- 
 sopher, of Socrates, Plato, and Cicero, I must record my opinion, 
 that, if the Christian Missions to West Africa had, during the 
 last half century, produced nothing but the sweet, and holy, in- 
 telligent, and gentle, personalities of my dear friends, Samuel and 
 Dandeson Crowther, Henry and James Johnson, pure Negroes, 
 
( 163 ) 
 
 yet accomplished gentlemen, as keen on the subjects of Educa- 
 tion, Philosophy, Geography, and Philanthropy, as any of us, 
 the expenditure of scores of British lives, and thousands of 
 British Pounds, has not been in vain, for they are living samples 
 of many, who will come hereafter ; they are living refutations of 
 the assertion, that the Negro is incapable of culture : and without 
 the Power of Christ working upon British Souls to commence 
 their great enterprize, without the Power of Christ, working on 
 the Souls of those four men, and holding them in subjection, 
 they would not have been what they are. 
 
 We may wonder, how in a Heathen country the domestic 
 virtues managed to keep themselves alive ; how conjugal fidelity, 
 love of offspring, obedience to parents, and the other sweet 
 gentle virtues, managed to maintain a precarious existence, in 
 spite of Ignorance and oppression ; but my long residence in the 
 midst of my people in Upper India convinces me, that domestic 
 virtues there at least do exist, that there is in the heart of man 
 a fountain of goodness, that is inexhaustible. But, when the 
 contact of the low abandoned white Man takes place, new forms 
 of violence, new seeds of disease, new varieties of crime, and 
 vice, come into existence, poisoning the quiet stream of non- 
 Christian life : and this points to the necessity of the same 
 Nation, which sent the poison, sending also the antidote, to 
 correct the notion, which had forced itself on secluded tribes, 
 that the white men were bad devils, and bringing something in 
 return for much evil suffered. We must all feel a desire to 
 elevate these fallen races, and lift them up from their helpless, 
 barbarous state. Who can do it ? Who has time to do it ? 
 Who can find the means to do it ? The operation is dangerous, 
 costly, tedious, and as far as human eyes see, thankless. We 
 have to get rid of Cannibalism, and Human Sacrifice, at once, 
 and Slavery, Polygamy, Magical rites, and Cruelty, gradually. 
 The Government of a European country cannot do it. A 
 Commercial Association would not find it pay a dividend. 
 The Traveller and Explorer cannot stop to do it. Will any 
 Benevolent Association, which is not bound together by the 
 cement of the Love of Christ, undertake it ? Yet our hearts 
 go out in pity and Love to them ; we recognize in some their 
 natural goodness, their hospitality, the kindness of the women, 
 their Love to the children. Will no one go forward ? Yes ! 
 Brother : the Love of Christ constraineth us. We believe, that 
 these also are men, and that Christ looked down from the Cross 
 on these also, and died for them, and our hearts burn within us 
 to carry them also the Gospel of Salvation. God hateth nothing 
 that He has made. 
 
( 164 ) 
 (4) There is a very weak side to Missions. 
 
 I often hear this, or similar remarks, and it is true : there is 
 a very weak side : the men employed to carry the Gospel are very 
 Human, and in no respect Angels. Their Publications have been 
 worse than their actual deeds : people complain of so much cant, 
 and false sentiment, such Ignorance, Intolerance ; such impertinent 
 attempts of some to set the world right according to their idea 
 of right : denouncing a great Commerce betwixt two great 
 countries ; prying into the unsavoury details of a Military 
 Barrack ; trying to persuade a just Government to let them have 
 the control of the Education of a great people ; tilting against 
 ancient customs : then, according to others, they are divided 
 against themselves, and speak evil of each other : they want to 
 be too comfortable, and share the luxuries of the rich rather 
 than the simple lives of the poor : they attack the great Religions 
 of antiquity, without informing themselves about them : they 
 talk a great deal about Miracles, which happened centuries ago, 
 but can do none themselves : then some of them marry, when 
 mere lads, and are a frightful expense to the Society, which sends 
 them out : pennies collected under the influence of prayer from 
 little children go to maintain Homes to bring up Missionary 
 children in a position of life above that of their parents : then 
 some are always coming home : some throw up the Service of 
 the Lord, just when it suits them : a sick wife, a sick child, a 
 snug bit of Church-preferment at home : there is a want of life- 
 consecration : there is not the same amount of devotion to the 
 Service, the Service of Christ, which a soldier, or a Civil Officer 
 of the State, gives gladly to the Service of his Queen. Some of 
 them appeal to the Arm of the Flesh, and invoke Treaty-rights, 
 and gunboats, and get up meetings to urge expeditions, pro- 
 tectorates, annexations, payment of money compensation, on an 
 unwilling Government. A good deal of this is true, and nobody 
 denounces these mistakes more pertinaciously than I do. But 
 there is a strong side also : there have been wise men, to balance 
 the fools : humble men as an equipoise to the proud ones, men 
 who have given their lives to the cause, who have lived in poverty 
 and suffering, and worked what we might call Miracles in the 
 change of the feelings of their people. Read the lives of Bishop 
 Steere of Equatorial Africa, and Bishop Patteson of Melanesia : 
 read on your knees the lives of Carey, of Judson, of Saker, of 
 Livingstone : men of very different theological views, very diverse 
 Gifts, men who never met, and perhaps would never have cared 
 to meet each other, and yet we, from our point of view, can note 
 their strong resemblance. There are lives still to be written. 
 I have seen many men pass away before me into another world, 
 whose names are now mentioned even as Saints, and Confessors, 
 
( 165 ) 
 
 and there are men of the same type still moving in our midst, to 
 whom the next generation will tender the same honour. Not 
 long ago (on the 13th August, 1888), I presided at the General 
 Meeting of the Church Missionary Society, and we had to take 
 leave of the venerable Bishop Sargent of South India, who was 
 returning to his people, and his converts, and his adopted 
 children, to die among them. As he entered the room, the 
 whole assembly rose : it was the same greeting, which was 
 awarded by the Roman Senate to a great Proconsul, when he 
 returned to Rome, laden with the spoils of the East, trophies 
 won from the Parthians and the Medes, and the dwellers of 
 Mesopotamia. When he had seated himself (for he was too 
 weak to stand), I told him in the name of the Committee, 
 that we welcomed him, as one of our oldest, most faithful, and 
 beloved friends. His words were few : he told us, that during 
 the fifty years of his Service the Lord had never failed him, that 
 all His dealings had been kind and wise, that he felt the in- 
 firmities of the flesh coming upon him, and he wished to return 
 to his people. One of our ordained Members committed him 
 to God in tender words of earnest prayer, and the good man 
 gave us his Episcopal blessing, and left us, sorrowing that we 
 should see his dear face no more. Am I not right in saying, 
 that there is a strong side to Missions also ? How small seem 
 the Services of Generals, and Governors, compared to the life- 
 devotion of this great and good man ! He went to India five 
 years before I went, and he was there till he died. He has 
 accumulated no competence, carried off no ephemeral honours, 
 but his life is an additional proof of my argument, that Christ 
 is the Power of God unto Salvation, both to the people amidst 
 whom he laboured, and to himself. 
 
 A secular newspaper, not much given to Missions, writes thus : 
 " The plain truth about modern Missionary-work we believe to 
 " be this. It has become a profession, a most noble and very 
 " successful profession, and, like every other profession, has 
 " drawn to itself men of all kinds, of whom a large majority are 
 " qualified by inner disposition for its Duties. At an expense of 
 " about a million a year, the Protestant Churches send out to 
 " most parts of the Heathen, and some parts of the Mahometan 
 " world, a perpetually renewed force of men and women, to 
 " teach to those, who know them not, Christianity and Civiliza- 
 " tion. These men and women are of all sorts, some unfit, one 
 " or two in a thousand hopelessly unfit, a few fit to a degree no 
 " words of ours will adequately describe, but a majority well 
 " qualified in extremely varied ways for the burdensome Duty 
 " they have to perform. Many are Teachers, many Preachers, 
 " many Scholars, many born Rulers of men ; but in all, except 
 " a very few, there is one quality rare in any other profession, 
 
( 166 ) 
 
 " absolute devotion to the work to be done. How is it possible 
 " for Christians of any sort to condemn such a profession with 
 " such results r" We can no more conceive how a Christian 
 " Church can be fully alive, yet never wish to proselytize." 
 
 Then the process is very slow : the pace, at which conversion 
 proceeds, is very funereal : there are many insincere converts, 
 many relapses : we sometimes hear, that nominal Christians still 
 steal away to a secret place in the mountains, and make offerings 
 to the Spirits of their ancestors, as they were once accustomed 
 to do. The number of Missionaries has greatly increased. Some 
 selections have been very unhappy : the best have often died : 
 the worst survive : they do not all come up to the ideal of Paul, 
 or of the Nestorians, or of Columba of Iona, or of Xavier, or of 
 the Moravians : the reply is, that the externals of men are very 
 much as the age, in which they live, and their social environment 
 make them : they may be better suited for the requirements of 
 this Epoch than Paul or Columba would have been ; at any rate 
 they are as good, and, in my opinion, a good deal better than 
 the secular men of their own Epoch in the same strata of life : 
 as a body they are free from the vulgar vices, and cruelty, and 
 covetousness : admitting the necessity of sending Missionaries 
 full of ardour, free from mercantile motives, strong in health, 
 determined in character, I doubt, whether they are not fair 
 representatives of the energy of their country. 
 
 (5) Let me now draw attention to the Power of Christian 
 Faith, where nothing else would succeed. 
 
 This is a bold challenge. Take the case of putting a stop to 
 Slave-holding and arresting Slave-dealing. What but the strong 
 Christian influence would have done it, and who, but Mission- 
 aries, would have supplied the facts about Slave-dealing, and 
 been foremost in the conflict ? The Christian Mission is the 
 complement of the Slavery -Abolition Society: the two make 
 one power. Sierra Leone and Frere Town are proofs of this. 
 
 For when a Slave-ship is captured, to whom, but the Mis- 
 sionary, can the released starving creatures be made over ? We 
 have numerous accounts of this Holy work from men of very 
 different type, unable to act together on any other conceivable 
 subject, the High Church Party of the Church of England, and 
 the Society of Friends, and in this blessed work they are as one 
 man. It makes one proud of our Human Brotherhood, to think 
 of our Brothers and Sisters, day by day, in a bad climate, and 
 most uncongenial surroundings, giving themselves up to the 
 feeding, clothing, and training, of the Negro, bearing with their 
 unsavoury smell, and gross habits, leading them onwards. When 
 does the Anglo-Saxon appear at a higher level of Human 
 
( 167 ) 
 
 greatness than on such occasions ! But, nothing but Grace gives 
 the Power. What by himself could the worldly man do ? 
 
 The impulses of Humanity and benevolence are laudable, and 
 have led to laudable results : but they are not sure to be lasting, 
 nor have they Power in themselves. Obedience to the Will of 
 God is the Christian's motive, and brings with it a Power to 
 secure continuousness of action. Moreover, when benevolence 
 has done its work to a barbarous race, what guarantee is there, 
 that it will so remain, unless there has been implanted in their 
 hearts a desire to do the Will of God ? Take the case of Sierra 
 Leone : there were fifteen hundred slaves landed by cruisers, 
 speaking scores of different Languages : filthy, abominable, 
 unmanageable. William Johnson, by his Christian kindness, 
 formed them into a congregation, made them useful and 
 respectable citizens. The Civil Governor in reporting this 
 remarked : " The hand of Heaven is on this." It was a memorial 
 of good wrought by one man, through the controlling Grace of 
 the Almighty. 
 
 But how is the work set about ? How does the Man of God 
 commence his blessed work ? Read one sample : it is an echo 
 from the savages of Melanesia, recorded by one, who gave his 
 life for his flock : and no one dreamt of avenging him, for he 
 had followed the steps of his Master, even unto death : " Then 
 " comes the task, that you too may experience, when dealing 
 " with some neglected child in England, but which under the 
 " cocoa-nut tree, with dark naked men, has a special im- 
 " pressiveness. It was the old lesson of the Eternal and 
 " Universal. Father, who has not left himself without witness, 
 " in that He gives us rain from Heaven : and our ingratitude, 
 " and His Love : of His coming down to point out the way 
 " of life, and of His death and rising again, of another world, 
 " Resurrection and Judgment. All interrupted now and then by 
 " exclamations of surprise, laughter, or by some one beginning 
 " to talk about something, that jarred sadly on one's ear." 
 
 But Civilization has its troubles and dangers as well as the 
 savagery of Melanesia: let us consider the piteous position 
 of the young Native of India. Secular Education at the State- 
 School has destroyed his Faith in his own Religion, and set him 
 on a higher walk in life : but he is out of rapport with the old 
 folks at home. He feels a profound contempt for all, that his 
 Father holds dear, and for the old Village-Priest : he is ashamed 
 of the Idols, shocked at the indecent stories, disgusted at the 
 folly, and heartbroken at the lies ; but he does not like to vex 
 his parents. The world seems a hopeless tangle, till he some 
 day meets a wise and sympathetic Missionary, who tells him the 
 simple tale : all then seems clear, his doubts vanish and his 
 hopes revive : he tries to believe : if he could but believe, he 
 
( 168 ) 
 
 would be a happy man. That Power of belief comes from God, 
 and at the hour, and in the manner pre-ordained. " Only believe, 
 and it shall be done unto you according to your belief." 
 
 The rite of Baptism and the Chapel are but the outward signs 
 of the work of the Mission, for they become the centre of gentle 
 influences. The lessons of Morality are taught : the Bible in 
 the Vernacular, like a bright light, illuminates dark corners : 
 quarrels are settled by umpires without fighting : the idea ot a 
 compromise with mutual advantage, and reciprocal concessions, 
 is a new one. We read of a Missionary visiting a robber-band 
 in their lair, and bringing them back to decent lives. Another 
 young Missionary walked three hundred and fifty miles alone, 
 without arms, to redeem some poor native converts from bandits. 
 A feat such as that would have received the Victoria-Cross, had 
 it been done by a soldier. The soldier of Christ rejoices in no 
 Cross, but that of Christ and Him Crucified, and in serving 
 Him has his exceeding great reward. The Power of God still 
 performs Miracles. The Missionary finds nobility of character in 
 the converted Cannibal, and the Heathen Priest, and sorcerer, 
 forgetting their evil ways, become humble worshippers in the 
 Chapel : the murder of little children is discontinued, and women 
 are elevated to their proper position, as helpmates of men. It 
 is the Lord's doing : it is marvellous in our eyes. If the facts 
 are doubted, test them: if the facts are admitted, admit also, that 
 the Power of the Holy Spirit still dwells in the tents of Men. 
 
 (6) Consider the grandeur of the human character developed. 
 
 One of the greatest sources of wealth of a Nation is its 
 share of great qualities : self-Sacrifice, dauntless valour, high 
 aspirations, noble unselfishness, absence of greed, or pride, 
 effacement of self: these things ennoble a family, one member 
 of which possesses some of them. This is the true nobility: 
 where can these qualities be found in such abundance and 
 brightness as in the Missionary band ? They are the leaven of 
 the whole Nation. Such Gifts come direct from God. Some 
 have laid all their literary ambition, and pursuits, all their 
 scientific attainments, all their laborious hours, all their social 
 success, upon His Altar, forgetting all in Christ, counting all 
 loss for Christ. If Stephen set the example of the way, in which 
 a Christian should give up his life, Paul taught us the harder 
 task of keeping it, accompanied with a Sacrifice of the whole, 
 living only by Faith : and he has been followed by many, who 
 deemed it not lawful to spend their few years in any pursuit, 
 however noble, which fell short of the highest, the Saving of 
 Souls : who felt, that eloquence was only given to win and sway 
 an audience for one definite object, that the pen had but one 
 
( 169 ) 
 
 sole and inspired purpose: "The great Chinese Missionary 
 " Morrison's desire to be a Missionary arose not from any strong 
 " excitement, or external influence, but from a calm, deliberate, 
 " review of the state of the Heathen, and his own obligation to His 
 " own Lord and Saviour. Duty was his pole-star ; the burden of 
 " his prayer was, that God would station him in that part of the 
 " field, where the difficulties were greatest, and to all human 
 " appearance the most unsurmountable." 
 
 An echo of this sentiment comes from the mouth of a Priest 
 " of Rome : " L'unique grace, que je vous demande, c'est de me 
 " donner tout ce qu'il aura de plus penible, et plus mortifiant 
 " dans la Mission." Here we have a survival of the spirit of 
 Paul of Tarsus. 
 
 Such a man would under other circumstances lead a forlorn 
 hope, or take out a life-boat to save the crews of sinking ships. 
 Great Britain cannot spare the development of such characters. 
 Her greatness must be an all-round greatness. In after-ages 
 her reputation will rest as much upon her Missionaries, as on 
 her soldiers and sailors. The Queen's army is numerically 
 smaller than . any of the great Continental armies. Christ's 
 army, recruited in Protestant Great Britain and its Colonies, 
 exceeds in number all the Missionary armies of the world col- 
 lected together, and the allied army of the same race on the 
 other side of the Atlantic is next to it in number, and united, as 
 one man in purpose. 
 
 (7) And what a field of aspiration does it afford to the youth 
 of Great Britain, male and female ? 
 
 There is a danger in a great, and strong, and rich, Nation 
 settling down on its lees, and being content, like the rich man 
 in the parable, to eat and drink, and worship the poor body : 
 some nobler spirits sigh for a career, a wider space, in which 
 they can spread their wings, and a purer atmosphere. Time is 
 for work : Eternity for rest. Sometimes there comes a breeze 
 from a far-off country, calling those, who are weary of the dull 
 routine of Europe, to come out. Some one whispers in their 
 ear, that a corner in God's vineyard has by them to be tilled, 
 and by each and all there is a Mission to be fulfilled. Is it 
 nothing-worth to conceive in your youth a great idea, which 
 will accompany you through manhood, through decline of life, 
 to the grave ? The great work of the Hebrew Prophets was, 
 that they established an Ideal form of Faith, Holiness, and self- 
 Sacrifice, leaving it to future years to work up to it. The great 
 Masters of Greek and Latin song caught up the refrain from 
 their Semitic cousins on the other side of the Mediterranean, 
 and sent it, as their great inexhaustible legacy, down the corridors 
 
( no ) 
 
 of centuries into our Schools and Colleges, electrifying each 
 generation, as it sprang into consciousness of its own powers, 
 and therefore of its own Duties. Whence did they get the idea, 
 shadowed in the story of Ulysses, of Prometheus, of ./Eneas, an 
 Ideal of something to be striven for, suffered for, bought at 
 a great personal price, the striving for which satisfied, even if 
 not attained ? And by the far-off Sanskrit Poets the idea had 
 been conceived of working for the work's sake, and never for 
 the mere results of the work. Thus labour is honoured, and 
 nothing is below the dignity of a true man. Such thoughts 
 ennoble a Nation, and, when directed in the highest of all 
 channels, sanctify it. After all it is a good God, that governs 
 the world :. we cannot find out His ways : but we feel, that He 
 is leading us. Roads are cut across countries previously un- 
 tra versed: paths are found in the pathless ocean: doors long 
 shut are thrown open : opportunities exceed all expectations : 
 the thousand voices are heard of tribes secluded for ages in 
 sealed gardens : and the youth of Great Britain, sated with vulgar 
 joys, seeks a nobler sphere of action than that, with which their 
 Fathers were satisfied. Men and women are wanted everywhere 
 to exhibit Christianity in its practical form, not of Dogma, or 
 Ritual, or Psalm-singing, but of actual life. Hear what Bishop 
 Patteson said : " Men are needed, who have a strong Religious 
 " common sense to adapt Christianity to the various tribes 
 " without compromising any doctrines or principle of conduct: 
 " men who can see in the midst of the errors and superstitions 
 " of a people, whatever fragments of Truth, or symptoms of a 
 " yearning after something better, may exist in them, and make 
 " that the point (Tappui, upon which they may build up the 
 " structure of Christian teaching. 
 
 " How shall I try to teach them to become industrious, perse- 
 " vering, honest, tidy, clean, careful with children, and all the 
 " rest of it ? What a different thing from going about and 
 " teaching the first principles of Christianity ! The second 
 " stage of the Mission is the difficult one." 
 
 I heard a Bishop this year at an annual Meeting tell us how 
 a Missionary on his furlough took lessons in thatching houses, 
 to give his people better ideas on this practical subject. I read 
 of another Bishop in his Diocese seated on the ground, and 
 showing the way to plait grass for thatching. Not that there 
 is any merit in the act itself, but the Spirit is the one, which 
 should actuate all, of bringing to the Lord's Service whatever 
 Gifts they had received of Him. 
 
 (8) The advantage of a Christian Civilization. 
 
 Would any one wish, that all the dawning Civilizations of Asia, 
 
( 171 ) 
 
 Africa, and Oceania, should be Heathen and Mahometan; not the 
 
 good old Heathendom of Horace, and Maecenas, and the Emperor 
 
 Augustus, but the compound Heathendom of the indigenous 
 
 vices of abject races mixed with the poison of a corrupt and 
 
 fallen Christianity. If the leaven of the Gospel is not in the new 
 
 Civilization, in what hideous form will it develop ? I read how 
 
 shipwrecked mariners have been carefully cared for, where the 
 
 islanders are Christians : they would certainly have been devoured 
 
 a few years earlier. The Special Commissioner of New Guinea 
 
 reports, that the Polynesian Native Teachers gain an ascendancy 
 
 over the savage Papuans, and it is to them, that the white man in 
 
 difficulties always turns for protection, and it is always accorded to him. 
 
 Such facts ought to bring home to us certain convictions, that 
 
 in this world also Christianity is profitable, and that without it 
 
 Civilization is dangerous. Hear what experienced men tell us : 
 
 ' No hindrance was so great to the success of the early Missionary 
 
 ' as the notion of beginning with Civilization, instead of Heart- 
 
 ' conversion : our first and constant business must be to tell the 
 
 ' people of Sin, and of a Saviour from Sin." 
 
 And again: " Missionary Societies had not then (1806) the 
 ' experience we now possess, and had not yet so fully learnt, 
 ' that, however valuable Civilization is, as a hand-maid to 
 ' Evangelization, it is in itself but of little value as a fore- 
 ' runner, and that the simple preaching of the Gospel is the 
 ' power of God unto Salvation." 
 And again : " It was the increasing conviction of all the 
 Missionaries, that the plan of gradual approaches by means 
 ' of Civilization had been tried long enough, and that the 
 ' citadel must be stormed at once with the weapons of God's 
 ' own armoury : in short, that Evangelization must take precedence 
 ' of any attempt to improve the social condition of the people ; they 
 ' were much hindered by their secular employment." 
 
 And again : " It was his impression, as he drew near the close 
 ' of his life, that he had given an undue proportion of time and 
 ' strength to merely civilizing influences, and the material prosperity 
 ' of the people. This may account in part for their Spiritual 
 * weakness, when the supporting hand of their Pastor has been 
 ' withdrawn. How slow we are to learn, that Civilization is 
 ' a Messing to a barbarous people only so far as it is permeated by the 
 ' Spirit and Power of the Gospel ! " 
 
 I cannot divest myself of the feeling, that I myself have two 
 individualities : the one that of a Christian Statesman, who can 
 tolerate no injustice being done to an inferior race, because they 
 are not Christians, and who is ever ready to combat any fictitious 
 cry, any craze of the moment, any intolerable humbug and 
 delusion, whether the offender is a Missionary, a pseudo- 
 philanthropist, or an ordinary person : the other that of a 
 
( 172 ) 
 
 humble believer, who places the conversion of Souls to Christ, 
 as the one object of existence, the sole goal of every talent, 
 every opportunity, every life : this feeling makes me honour, as 
 an angel from Heaven, the Missionary indeed, and spurn the mere 
 hireling, the mere semblance of an unrealized vocation, the false 
 reflection, as in a glass, of an ideal consecration. 
 
 I here insert the opinion of Bishop Westcott, who has given 
 three sons to be Missionaries, and therefore may be said to 
 practice what he preached : " The thought of the results of 
 ' Missionary work as a clear sign of the presence of God, a 
 ' living God among us ; and the thought of the scantiness 
 ' of our own offerings to the Mission-cause, which seems to 
 ' bring powerfully home to us the utterly inadequate conception, 
 ' which we have at present formed of what the work is. First, 
 ' then, I say that the results of Missionary work are, so far as 
 ' I can judge, a clear sign of the presence of a living and a 
 ' speaking God among us. It is by no means uncommon for 
 ' those, who speak from personal knowledge of the Mission- 
 ' field to come before us somewhat in the spirit of apologists, 
 ' and tell us, almost with excuses, how few are the fruits, to 
 ' which they can point, how necessarily slow their progress 
 ' must be, how manifold are the difficulties by which they are 
 ' beset. Well, I confess, that the way, in which I regard the 
 ' results of Missionary work is very different. When I see the 
 ' results, which have been produced, I am startled, touched, 
 ' humbled by the wholly disproportionate magnitude of what 
 ' has been done, when compared with the means, which have 
 ' been used to effect it. I seem to feel that I am in the presence 
 ' of a Power far greater and far other than those Human agents, 
 ' whose work I can trace. I will admit to the full the fewness, 
 ' the weakness, the errors, the frailties, if you please, of the 
 ' workers. But what then ? That is not all I see. I see men 
 ' in one case fallen, as it seemed to Human judgment, beyond 
 ' the hope of restoration, raised to the dignity of Christian men 
 ' by the simple story of the Cross. I see in another place races, 
 ' long sunk by self-indulgence and corruption to the lowest 
 ' depths, disciplined by the self-mastery of the Gospel to pure 
 ' and sober lives. I see in another place an English Bishop 
 ' travelling among the Native Churches of Tinnevelly, who tells 
 ' us, that his Faith was strengthened by what he looked upon. 
 ' I see a powerful and ancient Civilization, which has penetrated 
 ' into every department of the life of a great Nation eager now 
 ' to point out its correspondence with details in the Christian 
 ' Faith, which the Soul naturally recognizes as necessary to its 
 ' wants. I see all this, and seeing it I must believe, that I 
 ' recognize there the Power of that which is indeed the Gospel 
 ' of the Grace of God. I see that there is working now before 
 
( 173 ) 
 
 " our eyes a Power other than man's power, and those, who 
 " listen to their call, tell us what is the secret of their success. 
 : ' They tell us they do find that when they pray their prayers are 
 " answered, that when they seek communion with God, they are 
 " heard and answered by One, who still listens and speaks as a 
 " loving Father. I know quite well we are told, that the East 
 " passes by the Message, which we have to bring with in- 
 " difference, or with hostility, or with scorn. I confess that 
 " such an interpretation of the facts does not seem to me to be 
 " justified by the testimony of those, who can speak with direct 
 " knowledge." 
 
 I have no space to record the opinions of Viceroys, and 
 Governors, and Ambassadors, of Scholars, of Natives of India 
 and Japan, of Public Officials, as to the enduring blessings, 
 conferred on the people of a country by Missionaries : the 
 germs of Public Instruction, a pure literature, the influence of 
 upright and unselfish characters, are part, and part only, of the 
 benefit conferred. We are much safer in doing our Duty than 
 neglecting it, and many of us have had it revealed to our 
 consciences, that this is our Duty, and that, as the harvest time 
 is short, we should not lose an opportunity. Intelligent people 
 can hardly repeat the Lord's Prayer without giving some 
 meaning to "Thy Kingdom come" : it must mean " the spread 
 of His Gospel." We do indeed feel human pity for all these 
 Heathen races, and we can therefore in full confidence convey 
 to them the message of Divine pity. Experience has convinced 
 us, that the Divine Presence is still very near to us, and that, 
 even if we for argument's sake set aside the truth of the Miracles, 
 no other form of belief is clothed in so magical, so touching, 
 so profitable, so simple, an external form as the Life of Christ. 
 Infinite Love, inexaustible pity, undying Hope, seem to have 
 been the only instruments, which could have any effect. Some 
 have come out of darkness per saltum into a marvellous light, 
 without struggle, without a cloud of doubt, accepting the 
 Message. We seem carried back three thousand years in the 
 history of Mankind, when we come in contact with the un- 
 sophisticated races : we can take them at once to the pure 
 fountain of Christian Truth, free from the Philosophy of the 
 Greeks, the Law and Order of the Romans, the Superstition of 
 the Teutons. Of all the wonderful mouldings of our Civilization 
 by the discipline of centuries they knew nothing : had we never 
 come into contact with them we might have passed them by : 
 but irresistible destiny has brought them within the influence of 
 our poison. Shall we withhold the antidote ? 
 
 Eastbourne, August 15, 1888-1895. 
 
( 174 ) 
 
 (3) Civilization Without the Gospel is Profitless. 
 Address delivered at Oxford House, London. 
 
 A distinguished African Traveller in 1889 wrote an Essay in 
 the Fortnightly Review, in which he says a good word for 
 Missionaries in Africa, of whom he may know something, and 
 of Missionaries in North America, Oceania, and Asia, of whom 
 he knows absolutely nothing. He clearly knows little of saving 
 Christian Truth himself, and thinks that the non-Christian races 
 can do very well without it. He hazards the idea, that, had 
 Charles Martel not conquered at Tours, and had Great Britain 
 accepted the Mahometan Religion, the result in the Nineteenth 
 century as to the social condition and development of Society 
 amidst the British people would have been very much the same. 
 It is sad to read such opinions from the pen of an accomplished 
 servant of the State, for the privilege of having been born a 
 Christian is generally considered the very greatest blessing of 
 the British people. He would allow the Missionaries to continue 
 their work of instruction of the Natives in " their Duty towards 
 man : " he would let them dogmatize about the things of God in 
 return for the Education and Civilization which they introduce. 
 If the great Missionary-propaganda of Great Britain would 
 confine itself to being a kind of School-board to the Heathen 
 and Mahometan, it would save time and money in unprofitable 
 preaching of the Gospel of Christ. 
 
 It is worthy of an answer, because the ring of the argument 
 indicates either a mind hostile to Divine Truth, or ignorant of 
 the ways of God with man, as evidenced by History in the past, 
 and by what we see around us at present. I believe, from my 
 knowledge of the Author, and I hope, that the latter is the cause. 
 I am not thin-skinned or strait-laced in my Religious views, but 
 I freely admit, that I prefer the open and avowed enemy of 
 Missions to this insidious friend. 
 
 St. Clement, in the first century after Christ, wrote as follows ; 
 " 'H atrvveTos, ical euKOTrnmivrj Sidvoia tjvuiv avaOaXkei els to Bav/iaaTov 
 Avtov 0uSs." Our understanding is indeed like a flower in a sun- 
 less cavern, till the Light of God falls on it. It is almost as 
 vain to seek for the Divine elements in the constitution of the 
 Human mind, as it would be for the chemist to try by analysis 
 to find the sunbeams, that are locked up in the tissue of the 
 gourd. We know that it is there : the understanding must be very 
 darkened, or the survey of mankind must be very superficial, if 
 signs of the excellency of even the unregenerate Human race 
 
( H5 ) 
 
 had not been discovered ; but it requires the Grace of God, 
 acting by His own multiform methods on the hearts of the most 
 careless, the most -wicked, the most savage, the most insensate, 
 the most supercilious, the most alienated from the Divine light, 
 to give it a chance to develop. 
 
 There is a seed of good in all men, a Divine Word and Spirit 
 striving with the hearts of all men, a Christ knocking at the 
 doors of all men, and ready to enter, if the Minister of the Gospel 
 would but preach a true Gospel, a full Gospel, a Gospel unstained 
 by poor Human stupid misconceptions, and not dried up by 
 symbolical mediaeval Ritual. 
 
 A powerful writer has thus expressed himself: "When we 
 " limit our view to the field of Nature, and see how many of us 
 " are handicapped in the race of life, and are called to bear in 
 " their vitiated organizations the sins of long lines of evil 
 " ancestors, we must not forget the inner compensations, that 
 " come down to them from the imported Grace of Jesus Christ : 
 " the sin of Adam is more than outweighed in its influence over 
 " us by the Righteousness of Jesus Christ : the new pulse of life 
 " from the Cross is mightier than the tainted life, that comes to 
 " us from the fruit of the forbidden tree." 
 
 If it be objected, and with much force, that the white, red, 
 black, and yellow, man with different skulls, and physical features, 
 could not not have descended from the primeval pair, we need 
 not stop to argue this out, but reply that just as Christ is but 
 a vicarious and symbolical blessing to us, so we may humbly 
 conceive, that Adam or " Red Earth " is but the vicarious and 
 symbolical representation of the hypothetical common ancestors 
 of the genus Homo. 
 
 " Let it never be forgotten," the same writer remarks, " that 
 " we inherit a great deal more good than evil, that all things are 
 " created in Christ, that the capacity of Man for Righteousness 
 " transcends the innate temptation to falsehood and guile, and 
 " that to the unholy bias in every life there is an offset of latent 
 " Grace and benediction." 
 
 I lay stress on this, as it accounts for the latent and easily 
 developed goodness of so many savage Heathen men and 
 women, as soon as the Ithuriel-spear of the Gospel touches 
 their intellects, consciences, and hearts. The word avOptlnros 
 is said to be derived from ILvw ILOpmv. 
 
 I read a great many Missionary reports, and many statements, 
 depreciating the Native races, greatly offend my sense of natural 
 equity. I hear from some Pulpits what, with all due deference 
 to the Preacher, seems to me mere nonsense, and which must 
 considerably tend to the hardening of hearts of those, who are 
 hostile to Evangelization, but certain facts are brought home 
 with irresistible conviction to the careful observer and reader, 
 
( 176 ) 
 
 that in these last days the Gospel is the best, and indeed the only, 
 instrument of Civilization. I quite admit, that in the long 
 centuries preceding the Christian era many Nations attained to 
 a great external Civilization as regards Arts and Science, and 
 Commerce and Manufacture, but enough is known of the interior 
 life of those Nations to prove, that there was a contempt of 
 Human life, a contempt of the liberty of both sexes, a disrespect 
 for the chastity of the female sex, a degree of ferocity, and 
 unscrupulous cruelty, to which even savage Nations never 
 attained. Take for instance the Civilization of the Roman 
 Empire from the time of Tiberius to Antoninus Pius, the period 
 of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, and of the culmination of 
 pre-Christian Civilization amidst a population speaking Arian 
 Languages. Could the annals of any savage race produce such 
 characters as Messalina and Faustina ? 
 
 I quite admit the moral excellence of the precepts of the 
 Hindu and Buddhist sacred books. I have been familiar with 
 them from my youth ; but they are deficient in practical purpose, 
 nor have they ever exercised a motive, power on their reader, 
 or rather hearers. In fact, neither the Hindu nor Buddhist 
 Religions are elements of Civilization in modern times. Of 
 Mahometanism I wish to speak with fairness. It is not the 
 same thing in its written tenets as its daily pratice. In past 
 centuries it has effected marvels in the advance of Civilization 
 of Asiatic and African races. Under a compact, central, 
 powerful Mahometan organization it might do so still; but the 
 Religion itself is in its decadence, and no Mahometan State 
 exists, which is independent of its powerful Christian neighbours, 
 and the life of the modern Mahometan differs widely from its 
 Arabian Ideal. We might as well expect the germ of Civilization 
 from professors of the fallen Christian Churches of Abyssinia, 
 Egypt, Syria, Georgia, and Armenia. 
 
 The savage races of Mankind in North and South America, 
 Oceania, Africa, and Asia, in former years stood apart from the 
 fierce light of European Civilization ; if not entirely inaccessible, 
 still they went their own way. Intercourse by way of Commerce 
 was uncertain ; it had not entered into the hearts of European 
 Churches to desire to Civilize them. If the curse of Slave-dealing 
 existed, the more deadly curse of the liquor traffic had not come 
 into existence. The explorer, the emigrant, the miner, the man 
 of Commerce, were not yet on the War- path, which has led to the 
 extinction of so many tribes, and an amount of Human misery, 
 far exceeding the butchers' bills of the Assyrian, the Babylonian, 
 the Roman, the Vandal, and the Ural-Altaic, hordes. 
 
 Some would recommend, and some practise, extermination 
 of the weaker races. Let the Confiscation-Laws, the Colonial 
 Land-Acts, the liquor-traffic, the sale of arms, work their 
 
( 177 ) 
 
 civilizing process, and clear the land of the red, the black, the 
 yellow, and the brown, vermin-races, which stand in the way 
 of the land-hunger of the white man. God forbid that we 
 should affirm this wicked policy ! If they are poor, ignorant, 
 fetish-worshippers, they are still what their God and our God 
 allowed them to be ; they are God's children and our brothers. 
 They deserve all the more pity at our hands ; we do not kill our 
 halt, and blind, and idiots, because little use can be made of 
 them. God has just sent us this problem to solve. Men are 
 made good by the work assigned to them ; God has no need of 
 their work to aid Him in His work. A Nemesis will surely come 
 on the Anglo-Saxon race for their conduct to the inhabitants 
 of North America, Africa, and Oceania. 
 
 Since the beginning of this century the uttermost parts of the 
 round world have been discovered and visited ; it is quite 
 impossible for any Nation, like China or Japan in old times, 
 to sit apart, and keep foreigners out of their land. It is equally 
 impossible for barbarous tribes in Central Africa, the South 
 Seas, or North and South America, to escape the contact of the 
 European and American. He is ubiquitous ; he is mischievous ; 
 for trading purposes he forces himself upon shy and unwilling 
 savages, and by his presence disturbs the secluded quiet of 
 centuries. 
 
 As regards countries like India, China, and Japan, possessing 
 an ancient Oriental Civilization, the touch of the European is 
 deadly. Somehow or other, a certain state of incomplete 
 Morality, supported by Religious sanctions, had been attained. 
 Had they lived up to the level of their written precepts, it would 
 have been a good Morality, but there was no latent Power in the 
 Religious sanctions to enforce the Morality, and, as Occidental 
 ideas crept in, the buttress of Religious sanction disappeared ; 
 men became a law to themselves. Such is the position of the 
 modern student of the great State-Colleges of British India. 
 All the old notions are swept away ; nothing remains. The 
 Municipal Law forbids crime and criminal offences, some of 
 which were tolerated by the old Religious sanctions, but does 
 not interfere with the private life. In the meantime, European 
 luxuries, liquors, warlike arms, and customs, creep in : this is 
 called Civilization. However, such Nations can, and no doubt 
 will, take care of themselves, and would resent alien dictation. 
 I must leave them alone, as outside the scope of my present 
 argument. 
 
 The effect upon barbarous races, or tribes in a lower state of 
 culture, who have not reached to the stage of having a book- 
 Religion, i.e. a form of Worship reduced to writing, like 
 Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mahometanism, is different. All 
 travellers testify with surprise to the unexpected discovery of 
 
( 178 ) 
 
 flashes of goodness among such low types of Human creatures ; 
 nobility of the males, kindness of the females, docility of all. 
 With rare exceptions, however much their vision was obscured 
 by the clouds of Ignorance, and the environments of outward 
 circumstances, still they had arrived at a central Truth, that God, 
 or at least some Power greater than themselves, encompassed 
 them. It was forced upon them, that, in some mysterious way, 
 they were subject to the guidance of some one greater than man. 
 They saw their fellows perish by disease, or by the powers 
 of the elements, and they could not help them. Personal life 
 seemed to be a mere game of chance, and they played it to the 
 last card, heedless of the future, forgetful of the past. This is 
 particularly manifest in the characteristics of the Red Indians 
 of North America ; they had dignity, and patience, and fortitude, 
 and stoicism. The powers of Nature, which they worshipped, 
 were not unchangeable : they were peculiarly capricious ; there 
 was the hurricane, the volcano, the drought, the pestilence, the 
 invasion of hostile tribes, the fire, the insect-world, and the 
 attacks of wild animals. They could not measure the extent 
 of these forces. They ate, they drank, they fought, and they 
 died ; they grew old, and became infirm, they did not know why 
 or how ; they were like the beasts that perish, without remorbe 
 for frightful crimes, without pity for the sufferings of their 
 victims under- horrible torture, without hope for the Future, or 
 regret for the Past. 
 
 These poor people had no proof, or conception, of the 
 existence of a kind Controller of Human events beyond the 
 indefinable elements of Nature ; yet it was forced upon their 
 convictions, that He or It was kind and merciful to them, and 
 they were grateful. Each felt that, somehow or other, he had 
 got what he desired, or, in other words, what was suitable to his 
 limited wants. The process of their Education was not rapid, 
 but it still existed, for they were so far above the beasts and 
 birds, that they could improve upon the habits and ways of their 
 ancestors ; they could manufacture and barter ; they had learnt 
 to forbid some things as sins, and to praise some things as excel- 
 lencies. Hume, who was a very free writer, remarks : " Look 
 out for a people entirely destitute of Religion : if you find such 
 a one, be assured, that it is but a few degrees removed from 
 brutes." Essay II, 425. They had been used to little contact 
 with their neighbours, which was not hostile. When the Euro- 
 pean came among them, and did not seek their destruction, they 
 were surprised. The touch of the unscrupulous trader was ruinous 
 to them. They had not had the discipline of a gradually in- 
 creasing Civilization ; they had formed no idea of malum per se, 
 of what was wrong at all times and in all circumstances ; their 
 unbridled appetites led them on to their ruin. Of all Human 
 
( 179 ) 
 
 curses, conveyed by one race to another, of all sins, which the 
 history of the Human race has recorded, perhaps the im- 
 portation of Arms, Gunpowder, and intoxicating liquors, by 
 so-called Christian men for the purpose of gain, is the greatest. 
 Future generations, when they read the history of the last half- 
 century, will shudder, when they find, that the destroyers and 
 debasers of these simple, unsophisticated races were men, who 
 called themselves Christians, and who came from Great Britain, 
 Germany, France, and the United States. Attila and his Huns, 
 Genseric and his Vandals, Gengis Khan and his Mongols, could 
 not have done worse. They at least did not put forth the 
 pretence of Civilization, for they had it not. They burnt cities, 
 and destroyed the bodies of the citizens. To the European and 
 American export-dealers of Arms, Gunpowder, and liquors, was 
 reserved the more shameful superiority of destroying both body 
 and Soul of races, whom they were pleased to call savages, and 
 yet who never had done injury to their ruthless invaders. The 
 last state of the savage man became worse than the first. 
 
 Nor have Christian Governments behaved better than Christian 
 traders. American writers describe the hundred years of the 
 existence of the Republic as a " century of dishonour," on 
 account of the unjust treatment of the Red Indian tribes within 
 the limits of their territory. Their lands have been seized, and 
 they have been pushed back to restricted reservations, and many 
 tribes have been totally extinguished. The British Government 
 has done the same in many parts of the world, Canada, South 
 Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the South Sea Islands. The 
 indigenous races have been improved oif the soil ; they have 
 been cut down, exterminated, and their lands occupied by im- 
 migrants. If there were diamonds and gold-dust in their 
 country, this was imputed to the unhappy Africans as a sin, and 
 they were mowed down as wild beasts, and their land taken 
 possession of by Christian freebooters and Chartered Companies 
 on the Warpath, on the grounds of a Higher Civilization. This 
 also is a form of Civilization in the mouth of the Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 Would it then be better, if it were possible to do so, to leave 
 the savage races in their savagery ? It would be neither possible 
 nor better. It is not possible to control or restrict the move- 
 ment, which impels the white man to spread himself, any more 
 than it was possible in past ages to stop the advance of Alaric, 
 Attila, and the swarms of Central Asia. Whether it is better 
 depends upon the opinion formed upon a faithful picture of 
 savage life. The Rev. James Chalmers, in " Life in New 
 Guinea," writes: "A savage seldom sleeps well at night: he is 
 " in constant fear of attacks from neighbouring tribes, as well 
 " as the more insidious foes created by his superstitious mind. 
 " If midnight is the favourite time for Spirits, there is another 
 
( 180 ) 
 
 " hour, when he has good cause to fear the attacking enemy. 
 " Men, women, and children are killed in such attacks, which 
 " are produced by the most trivial offence." 
 
 However wild and barbarous the tribes may be, they are 
 capable of committing acts of cruelty, tortures, Human Sacrifices, 
 burning alive, Cannibalism, taking away Human life without 
 respect of person, or any compunction, poisoning or drowning 
 on the imputed charge of Witchcraft, infanticide, and parricide. 
 All the accounts that come, whether from the East, or West, or 
 North, or South, in whatever Language they are reported, tell 
 the same sad tale of unregenerate man, fallen in some respects 
 to a state lower than that of the wild beast, which does not prey 
 upon its own species, and is so far nobler than man. 
 
 I have thus presented to view the three alternatives : 
 
 (i) Extermination by the white immigrant. 
 
 (2) Extinction by the liquors brought to them by the white 
 
 trader. 
 
 (3) Permanence of the savage state in all its cruelty. 
 
 Miss Gordon-Cumming, in her work, "At Home in Fiji," 
 describes the terrible state of things in that island-group before 
 the Wesleyan Missionaries arrived, intertribal war, slaughter, 
 Cannibalism, portions of the body of the victim being cooked 
 and eaten before the eyes of the still living victim, sick buried 
 alive, widows strangled, living victims buried under each part 
 of a chief's new house, living bodies laid on the ground as 
 rollers to launch a new canoe ; and now in each village the 
 traveller receives a cordial welcome from kindly men and 
 women ; in each village is a tiny Chapel, and a pastor paid by 
 his flock. This has not been accomplished without loss of life 
 and great devotion ; two Missionaries' wives, at the risk of 
 their own lives, rushed into the banquet-hall of a great Chief, 
 and by sheer Christian audacity saved the lives of five women 
 from the very hands of the butcher. The touch of the Mis- 
 sionary on the soft clay of the savage was permanent and 
 beneficial. A strong Government like that of British India 
 would have stamped out crime by the execution of the offender : 
 the Christian minister in Fiji brought it gently home to the 
 ignorant barbarian, that it was wrong, and evoked the dormant 
 feelings of Human nature to his assistance. The Grace of God 
 blessed his faithful endeavours. Such anecdotes in Oceania can 
 be multiplied indefinitely. 
 
 Let us turn to North America. No greater proof is found of 
 the unity of the Human race, than the fact that, when we deal 
 with a man's understanding, heart, and soul, we can use all over 
 the world the same influences with equal success. He may use 
 a different Language, tattoo-marks, or clothes, colour of skin, 
 
( 181 ) 
 
 antecedents, and environment, but man is the same man for all 
 that, made in the same divine Image, endowed with the same 
 Human and Divine faculties and conceptions, if they only can 
 be called into action. In the report of the United States 
 Government I read that: "Wild savage Red Indian tribes, as 
 " fierce as lawless, as intractable as many, that are still in their 
 " rude state, have been taught the arts and ways of peace, have 
 " subjected themselves to Law, and are now living in orderly, 
 " peaceable, industrious Communities. The savages have been 
 " changed. How was this transformation wrought ? Where 
 " the Government wholly failed, the voluntary effort of the 
 " Churches have been crowned with success. The preaching of 
 " the Gospel has done the work, and it alone." 
 
 It has been well said by one writer, that the Red Indian of 
 North America has passed in one century through stages of 
 culture, achieved by the Anglo-Saxon in more than one thousand 
 years, and this blessed result has come from the personal labour 
 of Missionaries, and not from secular institutions, wealth, and 
 benevolence. We read how the Red Indians will halt on Sunday 
 on their travels, and have family-prayers morning and evening, 
 and in one instance a Red Indian family effected a conversion 
 of a nominal European Christian. 
 
 The story of Africa is well known ; it has become the glory 
 of all the Churches of Christendom : it took a long time before 
 the Moravian Schmidt made an impression on the Hottentots, 
 and Moffat on the Be-Chuana; it would have been a much 
 simpler process to exterminate them like vermin, as in Van 
 Diemen's Land ; but Christian Love triumphed, and they remain 
 as Monuments of Christian benevolence. Their Christianity may 
 indeed be an imperfect one : we must not expect too much ; in 
 our highly Civilized and wealthy Communities we are apt to do 
 so. We must think of the villages in Palestine, in India, Africa, 
 Oceania, and North America, and not expect too much in the 
 first and second generations. But of one thing we may be 
 certain, that it is wrong to expect, that culture and Civilization 
 should precede Christianity. It may accompany it ; it may, or 
 may not, be the result of it ; the terms are not convertible. The 
 Greenlander may still wear skins, and drink train-oil, and yet 
 have accepted Christ as his Salvation. The Civilization, as we 
 know it in Europe, is not the object, or Method, of the true 
 Missionary, Christianity can adapt itself to every phase and 
 stage of Human culture : Civilization, pressed with undue haste 
 and zeal, may choke the good seed ; the worldly side of the new 
 creature may be developed at the expense of the Spiritual. The 
 manifest transformation of the personal character of an entire 
 Community is one of the gracious signs of God's presence in 
 answer to the prayers and labours of His servants. 
 
( 182 ) 
 
 Now let me quote the opinion of competent persons as to 
 Civilization without the Gospel. The Rev. James Chalmers has 
 had experience of the Natives of Oceania in their raw state, and 
 when passing into higher and better things ; but he states 
 emphatically that : " He never met with a single man or woman, 
 " that Civilization without Christianity has civilized. The 
 " Gospel must precede Commerce. Wherever in the Southern 
 " Seas there has been the slightest spark of Civilization, it has 
 " been where the Gospel was preached ; and whenever you find 
 " in New Guinea a people, that will welcome you, it is where 
 " the Missionaries of the Cross have been preaching Christ. 
 " Civilization ! The rampart can only be stormed by those, who 
 " carry the Cross." 
 
 If I have not stated the problem correctly, let any omission 
 of inexactness be pointed out. Are there any other alternatives 
 possible to the unassisted wisdom of Man ? Can History point 
 out any single instance, in the time of the ancient monarchies 
 of Asia and Egypt, at the time of the Empire of Greek Wisdom, 
 or Roman strength, at any subsequent time through the darkness 
 of the Middle Ages or in the new birth of modern Civilization, of 
 a man, or company of men, going forth with the sole object of 
 civilizing uncivilized races from honourable and benevolent, 
 though entirely secular, motives ? Worldly men have been found 
 at all times ready to die for the liberty of their own country, or 
 to maintain, or to enlarge, its imaginary greatness. Men have 
 been found, from motives of pure benevolence, to feed the 
 hungry and visit the sick of their own or kindred people, and 
 in many other ways to shed lustre upon the Human race ; but 
 has there ever been found the will, the power, the Wisdom, the 
 patience to control uncivilized races without destroying them, 
 and introducing among them a Civilization, which shall not 
 prove in the long run a more formidable devil than the devils, 
 which it is proposed to drive out ? 
 
 In my systematic survey of the Languages of the world, I have 
 read books relating to the less well-known races of Asia, Africa, 
 America, and Oceana. I have seen much to love, much to 
 honour, much to marvel at. I have everywhere recognized the 
 excellencies even of the natural Man, if they had a chance of 
 development, and the longing of the Human race to Worship, 
 if it can find an object for its Worship ; but I have failed to 
 trace any attempt of a superior race to benefit an inferior one, 
 and to make a Sacrifice of wealth, a career, and of life, to do so 
 on the Human ground of benevolence. The motive, the Power, the 
 command, the high ideal of self-Sacrifice and self-consecration, 
 the unworldliness, the sublime folly, as the worldling may call 
 it, that looks over the near horizon of earthly advantages, and 
 fixes its vision on the further horizon, on Power given by One 
 
( 183 ) 
 
 that is Powerful, on rewards, that follow- obedience, on fulfilment, 
 that follows Precious Promises, on life following death, have 
 been wanting. 
 
 Man's weakness is God's opportunity. In these last days, 
 when all things are weighed and tested, some additional, and 
 unexpected, and palpable, evidence of the Truth of the Christian 
 Ideal was required, and it has been found. This brings me 
 to close quarters with the author of the Essay, with which 
 I commenced. He tells us what the Missionaries have done, 
 but he has either not inquired, or not understood, what sent 
 them there ; who supplied the heavy expenditure ; why they left 
 their quiet homes to run the risk of disease and death, with the 
 certainty of exile, narrow means, uncongenial society, a noxious 
 climate ; why in their old age many clung to the land of their 
 adoption ; why men and women were always found ready to go 
 out and fill vacant places ; what it was that supplied the 
 incentives, which other men found in honour, rank, wealth, and 
 distinction. Paul tells us one motive : 
 
 " The love of Christ constraineth us." 
 
 John supplies the other : 
 
 ' ' God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
 believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." 
 
 Matthew makes the practical application, quoting the last 
 words of the risen Saviour : 
 
 "Go ye, therefore, and teach all Nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost : 
 
 ' ' Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you : and, 
 lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. " 
 
 The question is thus narrowed to the one simple fact : Are we 
 followers of Christ, or are we not ? 
 
 The writer in the Fortnightly has not inquired, how it came to 
 pass, that these simple men, not highly educated, not greatly 
 gifted, not superior men, as men are counted, have found Power 
 to do what they have done, and which is described by one older 
 and wiser and more experienced than the writer, " as the work 
 of the enchanter's wand." • In another of his Essays our Author 
 has good-humouredly, though not very gratefully, caricatured 
 his Missionary hosts, male and female, who received him, nursed 
 him in sickness, and cared for him. I accept his description 
 of the workmen as truthful ; but the Power of God, which sent 
 them out, which sustains them, has enabled them to perform 
 a work, which it is not easy to describe, but one side of which 
 our Author has done justice to : " The Missionaries constitute 
 " themselves the tribunes and advocates of the Natives : they 
 " interpose themselves as buffers between the rude onslaught 
 
( 184 ) 
 
 " of the unscrupulous trader and miner, and the scared, 
 " bewildered savage ; by their fearless clamour they compel the 
 " reluctant intervention of higher authorities ; they educate the 
 " savage, safeguard his rights, perform an important service to 
 " Humanity at large, and for this end alone are deserving 
 " of support and sympathy." 
 
 This is but one segment of the great circlet of blessings, 
 which the Preacher of the Gospel has brought to these poor 
 races, yet how great it seems, and how little it has been 
 appreciated ! 
 
 From other quarters I gather testimony to the same effect. I 
 have arrived at the firm conviction, that it is better to leave the 
 poor races to die out in their congenital Ignorance than to supply 
 them with a bright weapon without the Grace to know how to 
 use it. 
 
 We are apt to ask for too much of the externals of Civilization, 
 as well as Religion, from these weak races. Our ancestors in 
 the British Islands had them not in the early days of their 
 emerging from barbarism and paganism. Under the slow dis- 
 cipline, of centuries we have attained to our present standard. 
 The minimum to be desired would be as follows : A decent 
 man, living in decency, comfort, and security, supporting his 
 children, keeping to one wife, and bearing himself bravely, 
 honestly, and yet humbly, before his fellow-men, living in a Com- 
 munity, where the persons of both sexes are decently covered, 
 where age, and sex, and childhood, are respected, where the 
 poor and weak are not oppressed, and Human life is regarded 
 as a precious treasure, for which the whole neighbourhood is 
 responsible. It was not prima facie impossible, ■ that such a 
 moderate state of culture could have been obtained without the 
 intervention of the Christian idea ; but a careful examination 
 of the records of the Past, and the actual state of the present, 
 has not supplied me with the power of quoting a single island 
 or tribe, which has been elevated by purely secular agencies since 
 the time of our Lord's appearing on earth. Such a man, as I 
 have above described, would walk humbly, because the Holy 
 Spirit has convinced him of his past, present, and tendency to 
 future sin : and yet he will walk hopefully, because he has realized, 
 that he also is a child of God by adoption and Grace, and that 
 Christ died on the Cross for him and his also. 
 
 Even were an expedition of Unitarians, Brahmoists, Theo- 
 sophists, and Agnostics, to attempt in these last days a benevo- 
 lent Crusade among barbarous tribes to introduce Civilization 
 without the Christian idea, they might probably succeed, because, 
 though denying Christ in name, their practice would be that of 
 Christian people, and they would unconsciously be carrying 
 with them the outcome of the teachings of Him, whose Divine 
 
( 185 ) 
 
 person they to their own grievous peril, denied. The fact of 
 the Incarnation, and the admitted doctrine of a Future State 
 of Rewards and Punishments, insensibly changed the features 
 of the Problem of Human Life. The Hebrew had neither, and 
 the professors of the other great Religious conceptions saw, as 
 it were, in a dim mist: but from the time of Anno Domini, these 
 great Truths have been felt by the human heart, and insensibly 
 influenced the environment of all, who came into contact with 
 them. Let me illustrate my position by referring to what happens 
 in the material world. In North India a new irrigation-canal 
 has the unexpected result of filling with water wells, which had 
 been dry since the memory of man, rendering sweet wells of 
 bitter water, and pouring into wells, previously scantily supplied, 
 an abundant store. This takes place by an underground perco- 
 lation over an area beyond the sphere of proposed irrigation, 
 and nothing can be demanded for an unsolicited blessing. So 
 is it with regard to those, who live in the midst of a Christian 
 people, and yet deny their Lord : they partake of the children's 
 bread without thankfulness, and drink of the wells of Salvation, 
 and convey it to their own little ones, and yet their eyes are 
 blind as to the great Fount, from which the waters flow. They 
 may be the instruments of saving others, and yet themselves 
 refuse to be saved. 
 
 What shall be said of the kind of Civilization, which the lust 
 for expansion of trade of the higher races among the inferior 
 races is supposed to bring with it ; which may be described as 
 Firearms, Gunpowder, and European liquor, with a small fill up 
 of clothing for the body ? Such things were totally unknown 
 by these unhappy races previously, and they had not, like the 
 Empires of India, China, and Japan, the power of excluding 
 them. In the Day of Judgment each of us will have our sins to 
 answer for ; but when the Australian, and the Maori, of Oceania, 
 the Hottentot, and Zulu, and Negro, of Africa, the Red Indian of 
 America, rise up and bear witness against the great Teutonic 
 races of Germany, Great Britain, and North America, their 
 persecutors, plunderers, and poisoners, and so-called Civilizers, 
 what reply will the distillers and liquor-exporters, and manu- 
 facturers of Firearms and Gunpower, have to make ? They did 
 it in the way of trade, so as to have the means of decorating 
 their houses, and heaping up portions for their children, 
 according to the rules of Civilized Commerce ; but they have 
 carried ruin and death to helpless millions. "Inasmuch as 
 ye did it "to these little ones, ye did it unto Me." In the eyes 
 of the savage and barbarous races they represent the so-called 
 Civilizers, and so-called Christianity. Instead of the bread of 
 life they have given a stone ; and by the same measure in the 
 day of reckoning it shall be measured to them. It is impossible, 
 
(186 ) 
 
 when the subject is considered, to express oneself otherwise 
 than I have done, and I repeat the words with which I com- 
 menced, that Civilization without the Gospel is profitless, and 
 worse than profitless. 
 
 It is a comfort to think what an additional testimony to the 
 Truth, and Power of Divine Revelation, is afforded by the con- 
 temporary History of the Christian Civilization of the barbarous 
 races. 
 
 Somehow or other several distinct sets of Religious Books 
 of antiquity, the most modern dating back only-twelve centuries, 
 have come down to our generation, and all can be read and 
 understood, and are exceedingly interesting, with a great deal of 
 good in them ; and the reader may well pause from time to time, 
 and thank God, that it was put into the heart of men to conceive 
 such good thoughts, teach them orally to others, and leave them 
 in writing. With the exception of one set of books, all are only 
 interesting archaeological treasures : they were not intended for 
 all time, and all the world, and, being shrouded in a Language 
 unknown to the people, have ceased to be of any practical use, 
 are no longer the Law of life, the guide of the conscience, the 
 standard of morality. 
 
 But the books of the Old and New Testament live a life, that 
 never can end, in all the Languages of the world. The Law 
 of life therein laid down is still a living Law to millions : it is 
 found to be adapted to the wants and weaknesses of all Humanity, 
 however different in culture and environment, and it brings with 
 it a Power, which lasts through life, and to the border of the 
 grave. Call it a beautiful Legend, if you like, or a doubtful 
 tradition, the personality of Jesus, when brought home to the 
 understanding, hearts, and consciences of uncivilized tribes, has 
 exercised an influence, whjich it would be sheer folly to deny. 
 " By their works ye shall know them." The Greek and Roman 
 sages had developed the idea of a Nemesis following crime, and 
 of a high Morality ; but it had been beyond their experiences to 
 conceive the idea of Faith in One powerful to save, repentance, 
 pardon, peace, and Holiness. Under the Greek • and Roman 
 idea, Thakombau, the Cannibal King of Fiji, would have been 
 driven by a Nemesis following his frightful crimes to a violent 
 end : under Christian teaching this same Cannibal was brought 
 to a sense of the nature of his abominable acts, convinced of 
 sin, led to a Saviour, repentance, and baptism ; so that he be- 
 came a new man through Faith in Christ, and an example to 
 his people, and the beloved friend of the Missionarj', who saved 
 him as a brand from the burning. 
 
 July, 1889-1895. 
 
( 187 ) 
 
 B. Want of Sympathy with the poor non-Christian 
 World. 
 
 i. The Attitude, which a Christian Missionary ought to 
 
 assume to a non Christian People. 
 2. A Plea for the Poor non-Christian World. 
 
 i. The Attitude which a Christian Missionary ought 
 to assume to a non-Christian People. 
 
 Address to a Meeting of a German Young Men's Missionary Asso- 
 ciation, 1 8g4, on the attitude, which a Christian Missionary 
 ought to assume to a non-Christian people, as regards their 
 
 ( i ) Religions conceptions and Ritual, 
 
 (z) Customs {not contrary to Moral Law), 
 
 (3) Prejudices, 
 
 and on the Duty " to do Christian things in a Christian way" 
 
 The great subject of the Evangelization of the non-Christian 
 world has a great many aspects : it is as well to consider some 
 of the important aspects separately. At the close of the first 
 century, during which the subject has been taken up in earnest, 
 it is as well to notice the shortcomings of those, who have been 
 engaged in the work, not by way of censure of the Past, but 
 with a view of the errors being avoided in Future. All Human 
 efforts are accompanied by errors. 
 
 There is an essential difference betwixt the environment of 
 Paul and his companions in the First century, and of Protestant 
 Missionaries in the Nineteenth. Paul's labours were among the 
 Greeks, and Romans, the Jews, and the partially Hellenized 
 races of Asia Minor, all within the bounds of the Roman Empire. 
 All were Civilized, and on the same platform of social customs, 
 of the same colour of skin, as the Apostle himself: he was indeed 
 a Roman citizen, not a Palestinian Jew, but a native of Asia 
 Minor, as he belonged to the city of Tarsus : he was educated 
 above the average, he spoke and wrote the leading Language of 
 that period, the Greek, he spoke also the Aramaic Language, 
 and could read the Hebrew : he was uniformly courteous : he was 
 entirely free from domestic cares : he neither had, nor desired 
 to have, any patronage from the Roman Officials : had he been 
 killed, his friends would have asked for no compensation : he 
 was not puffed up by having a powerful Association in one of 
 
( 188 ) 
 
 the capital cities of the Empire at his back, sending him regular 
 supplies of money, puffing him up at crowded meetings in great 
 halls, and ready to resent the least oppression, or injury, real or 
 pretended, inflicted upon him. He did not lean on the Arm of 
 the Flesh, or on the Authority of a so-called Church, but on the 
 Commission delivered to him personally by the Risen Saviour. 
 He was prepared to undergo hardships like a good soldier: he 
 took no furloughs or sick leave to Tarsus : he died at his post. 
 
 Consider the different environment of the Protestant Mis- 
 sionary of the Nineteenth Century. His call is to Asia, Africa, 
 Oceania, and America, to black, brown, red, yellow, races, all 
 differing in the colour of their skin from him, speaking several 
 hundreds of different Languages, in totally different grades of 
 culture, under every variety of different political Government ; he 
 is supported by rich and wealthy Churches, under the Protection 
 of Governors, and Consuls. He himself belongs to one or 
 other of the six, or seven, great Empires, who domineer over 
 the Globe, he talks of Treaty-rights, his right of Protection by 
 gunboats, his right of money-compensation for injuries : in fact, 
 the Missionary of the nineteenth Century is developing into the 
 arrogant representative of an arrogant Nation, which looks down 
 on the weaker races with contempt ; Paul looked on all his 
 converts as brethren in very deed. 
 
 Let me quote one extract from The Times Newspaper of 
 Sept. 25, 1895: "The Rev. L. Dahle (secretary of the Nor- 
 " wegian Missionary Society) spoke as an eye-witness of the 
 " excellent work, which had been done by the London Missionary 
 " Society in Madagascar. The only fault, which he had to find 
 " with English Missionaries, was that they appeared apt to think, 
 " that the world was made only for their use, and that it was by 
 " a mistake that other Nations happened to come into it. In 
 " his opinion the English Missionaries had almost too much 
 " of the conquering Spirit. They took upon themselves work, 
 " that was almost too much for giants to do, and it was im- 
 " possible to do everything well. Their fault, if it were one, 
 " consisted in an excess of virtue or bravery, and was one that 
 " might be pardoned." 
 
 The Missionary himself is a good and an earnest man, but 
 totally unacquainted with the difficulties, which accompany the 
 rule of subject Kingdoms, or the diplomatic relation with Asiatic 
 and African independent Nationalities : he is so far equally 
 ignorant of the details of the administration of his own country : 
 owing to the necessity of acquiring one or two particular 
 Languages he is a man of very narrow experiences, confined to 
 the particular environment, in which he began his career: he 
 leaves his European home with certain conventional notions 
 of what is right and desirable : of course his own Moral standard 
 
( 189 ) 
 
 is of the highest order, but his views of Religion, and Church- 
 order, vary with the particular circle, within which he has been 
 brought up, and are very narrow: he is very young, is leaving 
 his home for the first time: he has never left his native country 
 before : all is new to him : he has never had leisure to study the 
 History, or Geography, or Ethnology, of the great wide world : 
 the only variation of his own home- experiences is supplied by 
 stories in the Old Testament. 
 
 On bis arrival at his Mission-Station he is amazed at what he 
 sees. He sees a great deal of which he disapproves : his 
 Duty, his sole Commission, is to preach the Gospel, educate 
 children up to the primary standard only, heal the sick, and 
 distribute edifying literature, but a great many have considered 
 themselves to be universal Reformers, endowed with the privilege 
 of abusing all the Religious beliefs and practices of the country, 
 of denouncing time-honoured customs, of tilting against deep- 
 rooted prejudices : anything, which has not the flavour of the 
 middle-class European, in his opinion is bad : there must have 
 been a class of this description in the time of the Apostles, for 
 Paul warns the Thessalonians (II, iii, n) against being "busy- 
 bodies" irepiepyagofievoi : Peter (I, iv, 15) urges his hearers not 
 to be "busybodies in other men's matters" — 'AXXorpioeTrifjicoTrot, 
 or as Tertullian renders it, " alieni speculatores." A single eye 
 to Christ is wanted. 
 
 In Africa, or Oceania, a Missionary may be forgiven for saving 
 by his timely interference a woman or a man, from slaughter, 
 Cannibalism, or ill-usage, his weapons being kindly words, and 
 Christian advice to the barbarous offender; and many touching 
 stories are recorded of this nature. In the case of the pro- 
 tection of a poor woman, or a little child, from the cruelties of 
 Witchcraft, or Cannibalism, any Christian might be justified in 
 sacrificing his own life ; but under no circumstances is he 
 justified in himself becoming a "man of blood," and taking 
 away the life of another, except in the extreme case of pro- 
 tecting life or female honour : I allude to this class of cases to 
 clear the way for an exposition of what is reprehensible. 
 
 Dr. Ellinwood, in his " Oriental Religions," thus expresses 
 himself: "The man, who goes to the Mission-field with the 
 " feelings, that it is his province to assail as strongly as possible 
 " the deeply-rooted convictions of men, instead of winning 
 " them in a more excellent way, is worse than one who beats 
 " the air : he is doing positive harm, he is trifling with precious 
 " Souls: he does not illustrate the Spirit of Christ, or follow 
 " the example of Paul." 
 
 He ought to forget that he is a European, the subject of 
 a great Power, with Armies and Fleets, and remember only, that 
 he is a Christian : he should look with pity, and Love, on 
 
( 190 ) 
 
 barbarous tribes, who are low in culture, and with sympathy, and 
 respect on Natives possessed of an Asiatic Civilization, like the 
 Indians, Chinese, and Japanese, who were Civilized very much 
 as they are now at a time when the Missionary's ancestors were 
 savages of a very low type, clothed in skins, and eating raw 
 flesh. If by the dispensation of Providence, all-wise, all-good, 
 and all-merciful, these great races have been so many centuries 
 excluded from Gospel-privileges, it is their misfortune, not their 
 fault. I heard with sorrow a Minister, whom I love, say from 
 the Pulpit, that all the poor non-Christian world were children 
 of Satan, and out of the vast populations of the world only the 
 Christians had a chance of Salvation, and of those, who bore 
 that name, how few are real Christians ! 
 
 Surely the greatest crime in the annals of the world was the 
 killing of the Saviour, and this act was not done by Gentiles, 
 but by members of God's chosen people, the Israel of God. 
 The Gentile Pilate wished to let him go. Can the Judge of 
 the Earth do wrong ? No Prophet or Evangelist came near 
 them : had it been the Will of God, centuries ago they might 
 have been converted : were it His Will now, they might be 
 brought into the fold in one night, without the intervention of 
 Missionary Associations, and Missionary agents. 
 
 Now first as regards the Religious beliefs, and practices, of 
 non- Christian races. The Missionary should be tender to 
 them : he will find it much more hopeless to preach the Gospel 
 to clever Asiatics, trained in secular Schools of the State, out 
 of whom every conception, of the Supernatural, and Spiritual, 
 has been swept away by Infidel European literature : the 
 old Devil of Paganism has been driven out of the man : his 
 intellect and Soul are empty, swept, and garnished : he is less 
 likely to accept the new idea of the Gospel than before : he 
 has become an Agnostic, an Atheist, a Humanitarian, and thinks 
 himself too clever, after having freed himself from one envi- 
 ronment of Supernatural ideas to be drawn into another, which 
 for all that he knows may be as incapable of proof as that 
 which he has left : at any rate the Faith, biswis or bhakti, of his 
 ancestors was indigenous, the Iman, and the Il/arts, of the two 
 new Universal Religions are foreign, out of sympathy with his 
 customs, destructive of his ancestral illusions : he has given up 
 the Worship of his ancestral gods, but he cannot get rid of his 
 congenital notions and prejudices. Paul at Lystra spake thus : 
 " We are all men of like passions, and preach unto you that ye 
 " should turn to the one living God, which made heaven and 
 " earth and the sea, and in times past suffered all Nations to 
 " walk in their own way, nevertheless He left not himself without 
 " witness," Acts xiv, 15-17. And at Athens Paul repeats the 
 sentiment of all Nations being of one blood, " that they should 
 
( 191 ) 
 
 seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, 
 though He be not far from every one of us," Acts xvii, 27. 
 There was no abuse of the existing Religious conceptions there : 
 no arrogance on the part of the stranger Missionary, who stood 
 in the centre of the Wisdom, and Genius, and Philosophy, of the 
 western world. 
 
 I quote the words of the Bishop of Columbo : "We could 
 ""wish, that a larger number of Missionaries had found out how 
 " to discharge their own Duties of Evangelists in an intellectual 
 " temper more sympathetic with' those, who had been similarly 
 " employed before them. No injustice to the Gospel of the 
 " Grace of God is done by thoughtful appreciative examination 
 " of 'former' Gospels, not in a cold, 'impartial' spirit, but in 
 " the frame of mind which looks ' on no Religion scornfully.' " 
 
 Secondly, as regards " customs " : it certainly is very obvious, 
 that the customs of Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and America, 
 are very different, but it does not follow, that those prevalent in 
 Europe are right, absolutely right, and applicable to all races, 
 climates, and degrees of culture : in fact I can go further, and 
 admit frankly, that many time-honoured customs in Europe are 
 per se wrong, unsuitable, and should be discontinued. At any 
 rate those, who live in glass-houses, should not throw stones, 
 and we are bound to let people alone in their customs, their 
 forms of speech, their dress, their modes of sepulture, their Laws 
 of succession, their matrimonial customs, even their weaknesses, 
 all offences against the Moral Law being excepted. Who made 
 the Europeans the lawgiver in these matters ? They have done 
 infinite mischief to the so-called lower races, with which they 
 have come into contact, by introducing among them noxious 
 liquors, filthy diseases, lethal weapons, bad practices, unknown 
 before, causing to come into existence mixed races, possessing 
 the bad, though different, characteristics of both parents. What 
 possible authority can the European Missionary have to lay 
 down the Law about the Commerce betwixt two great Kingdoms 
 such as India and China ; the sanitary precautions taken by 
 European Governments to preserve the health of European 
 soldiers ; the habits of the Natives to take stimulants, or 
 Sedatives ; the age at which their females should be married ; the 
 social distinctions, which mark off one tribe from another, as 
 regards inter-marriage and commensality ? how can they justify 
 the distribution of Tracts and pictures offensive to the Religious 
 convictions of peaceful inhabitants ? Yet all these things are 
 done by ignorant and arrogant Missionaries, because they have 
 a great Government with gunboats, and armies, and Consuls 
 behind them. The world will not be converted in this manner: 
 we read nothing about such Methods in the New Testament, or 
 the annals of the early Church. 
 
( 192 ) 
 
 I come thirdly to the prejudices of the peoples. The Chinese 
 have a real prejudice with regard to the proximity of buildings 
 throwing a shadow on their sacred places : yet this was laughed 
 at as a foolish prejudice, and a lofty Missionary Building erected: 
 this was in China, an independent country : the Missionaries had 
 to leave the spot. In India a Missionary erected a small preaching 
 booth on the edge of a sacred tank : the Hindus complained, 
 and I ordered it to be razed to the ground : Christians in a 
 foreign country would be grieved, if their place of Worship 
 were invaded, and made use of for secular purposes : yet they 
 do not scruple to make use of places of non-Christian Worship, 
 if it suits them. 
 
 The Civil Officers of the State are careful not to act in this way, 
 as their object is to let the people alone so long as they do not 
 offend against the Law: in spite of all the care taken there 
 are occasional outbursts, leading to loss of life. I read of a 
 Missionary in the South of India visiting a Hindu temple, 
 which had been destroyed by lightning, and asking the Priests 
 what kind of deity their god was, who could not protect his own 
 temple ? Are Christian Churches never destroyed in this way ? 
 The culture of these non-Christian races is widely different 
 from that of the European, but is not to be despised. 
 
 I last year heard a blustering clergyman, who had lately 
 returned from India, with a stentorian voice telling his audience, 
 how he and his friends had lately got into the Taj Mahal at 
 Agra, and made the tomb resound with ' Christian hymns : it 
 did the walls no harm, and no Mahometans were present, so 
 no danger of bloodshed was run : still it indicates an absence 
 of deep Human sympathy, and respect to the dead. Only 
 imagine Mahometans finding their way into the Mausoleum of 
 the Prince Consort at Frogmore, and repeating their profession 
 of Faith : what indignation would be raised ! I was relating 
 this story to a lady of strong Evangelical views, and she stopped 
 me by saying: "What does it signify about the Religion of 
 these people ? " 
 
 And some remarks of Missionaries in their annual reports, 
 and thought worthy of a place in the Annual report of the 
 Home Committee, are not only foolish, but wicked and un- 
 christian. The Love of children to Parents, and of Parents 
 to children, lies outside the orbit of Religious conceptions, and 
 should under no circumstances be treated with contempt : and 
 yet the compiler of an Annual report describes how a Hindu 
 Brahman father with a Satanic expression of countenance tried 
 to prevent his son, his only son, from what seemed to his poor 
 mind worse than death, being banished from his family, put 
 out of his caste, becoming an outcast and object of scorn, by 
 becoming a Christian. Where did the Missionary familiarize 
 
( 193 ) 
 
 himself with the features of Satan ? Are there not among the 
 members of the Committee excellent men with peculiarly re- 
 pulsive countenances ? I remember in one Society two excellent 
 and valuable members being called Judas Iscariot and the 
 Impenitent Thief, from their resemblance to those individuals, 
 as painted by Rubens. Besides, what a door is opened to the 
 enemy! An American Bishop, in 1894 told me how the 
 Mormonites recruit additional wives from Wales, and one of 
 the unhappy girls was the daughter of a Welsh Pastor. Imagine 
 in the Annual report of the Mormons, the father of this poor 
 girl being described " as a Welsh clergyman, with a Satanic 
 cast of countenance, trying to hold his daughter back." 
 
 I sum up with this maxim : " Do Christian things in a Christian 
 way " ; and this Christian precept : " Do unto others as you 
 would wish men to do unto you." The New Testament supplies 
 valuable hints, especially in the conduct of Paul, who had a 
 difficult part to play, and might, in his intercourse with the tribes 
 of Asia Minor and Greece, have run against many prejudices, but 
 he appears not to have done so, for the underlying principle of 
 his conduct was Charity and Love. 
 
 It is often forgotten that there are two things in Religion : 
 (1) The Dogma; (2) The Morality. It is fondly imagined, that 
 if the Dogma be accepted, the Morality will follow. It is com- 
 placently reported of an island in Melanesia : " There are still 
 a few Heathens " : all the rest had been baptized and are Census- 
 Christians. But how about the Morality ? Are they new creatures ? 
 Have they any clear appreciation in the Faith in Christ, of 
 Repentance, Pardon, and Holiness ? Can it be said of all 
 Europeans that they are Christians ? 
 
 And on the other side, can it be said of those, who had not 
 been baptized, but who led Holy, God-fearing, chaste lives, that 
 they have no part in the great plan of Salvation, that Christ did 
 not die for them also during the last nineteen Centuries that are 
 past, and those that are to come ? 
 
 Has Christianity succeeded in making men Holy ? Are the 
 hands of Rulers of Christian Nations held back from shedding 
 the blood of poor barbarous Africans, who to their own detriment 
 are found in possession of land, mines, cattle, coveted by the 
 Christian land-Pirate on the Colonization Warpath ? 
 
 London, 1894, 1895. 
 
 13 
 
( 194 ) 
 
 2. A Plea for the Poor non-Christian World. 
 
 One word to any young man, who is starting out to be a 
 Missionary. Of all professions it is the most noble, the most 
 elevating, and at the same time the most difficult, and the 
 most exposed to the risk of failure. The majority of young 
 men are not highly educated and have no knowledge of the 
 world : of blameless character themselves they have not been 
 acquainted with the blameworthy conduct of Christians exposed 
 to temptation. They come suddenly face to face with an entirely 
 new environment, totally different from the humdrum middle- 
 class life, to which they have been used : all is a surprise. The 
 man, with whom they have to deal ; the Language, which they 
 have to hear and use ; the Religious conceptions, with which 
 they have to contend, are wonderful, and undreamt of, novelties. 
 
 The Native man, however humble in circumstances, and 
 devoid of culture, is still as much an individual as the Mis- 
 sionary : he has the same fundamental conception of Self, of 
 the world, and of God : Language is the vehicle of his com- 
 munication with the world and his fellow-creatures : Religion 
 is the funnel, through which his thoughts go up to God : he is 
 perfectly innocent of having taken any part in settling the 
 environment, the Language, or the Religion, to which he finds 
 himself bound from the day of his birth : it never occurs to 
 him to -change, or wish to change, either, anymore than the 
 colour of his skin, or the fashion of such garments as he wears, 
 if he wears any. It is of no use abusing him for being what he 
 is : he did not make himself, or his surroundings, or his powers 
 of utterance, or his conception of God. 
 
 Since the commencement of the world many great, powerful, 
 and wise, races have sprung up, blossomed, brought forth fr-uit 
 in the imperishable literary and architectural Monuments, which 
 they have left behind, and passed away without any knowledge 
 of the true Nature of the Great God, and of His great plan of 
 Salvation for man. Here is a great fact : they never had the 
 chance of being Christians : we cannot believe, that they have 
 gone to perdition. Can the Ruler of the Universe do what is 
 not right, and not be merciful to His poor creatures ? They 
 used the talents entrusted to them, and had nothing beyond. 
 
 Since the great Anno Domini, when in the fulness of time 
 came the Saviour, countless Millions have been born, lived, 
 and died, in entire Ignorance of the great Truth. Is this to 
 be placed at their door as a fault ? 
 
( 195 ) 
 
 Language was given to man to differentiate him from the 
 animals, and to communicate with his fellow-creatures. Some 
 forms of speech are mellifluous, and capable of expressing any 
 possible idea ; others fail both in euphony, and word-store : is 
 the Missionary to abuse the tribe, or talk lightly of them, as if 
 they had had anything to do with selecting, or forming, their 
 Language ? The Missionary had nothing to do with forming 
 his own wonderful Language : it was given to him ready-made. 
 
 Religion was given to man still further to differentiate him 
 from animals, who have no Future state, and to enable him to 
 communicate with his Heavenly Father. No tribe is so debased, 
 that it has not a sense of the Supernatural, and some conception 
 of a Future after Death. Their oral traditions, their practices, 
 and their sacred Books, testify to this. Through generations 
 and centuries, they have adhered to their old Religious con- 
 ceptions, and still hold fast to them, as part of their very lives. 
 Are they to be abused, because they do not at once listen to the 
 imperfectly-stated arguments of a young Preacher from a foreign 
 land, speaking their Language imperfectly ? 
 
 As time went on, these Religious conceptions have become 
 frightfully degraded : such is the fate of all Religions, when 
 Ignorance accompanies it : and Priestcraft, the great curse of 
 Mankind, comes into existence, substituting Liturgies and Ritual 
 for Virtue, and Morality. The scathing words of Renan in his 
 fifth and posthumous volume of " Le Peuple d'Israel," are then, 
 and then only, true : 
 
 " La Religion est une Imposture necessaire. Les plus gros 
 " moyens de Jeter de la poudre aux yeux ne peuvent etre 
 " negligds avec une aussi sotte race, que l'espece humaine, cr6e 
 " pour l'erreur, et qui, quand elle admets la Verite, ne l'admets 
 " jamais pour les bonnes raisons." 
 
 Priestcraft has degraded all the ancient Religions, and even 
 some forms of Christianity : I have visited the Greek shrine of 
 the Virgin at Troitska, near Moscow in Russia, the shrine of the 
 Virgin at Loretto in Italy, and the shrine of Parbati, or Lakshmi, 
 at Banaras in India, and I could see a resemblance in the 
 symbols, and the Worship, of all, for they all told the tale of 
 degraded Superstition : it is the same poor grovelling Human 
 Worship, whether in Europe, or in Asia, or in Africa. 
 
 But upon this in the last days of the Nineteenth century a 
 new complication has arisen in the birth of a brood of new 
 Religious conceptions, more suited to the modern Human 
 Intellect ; at the same time Secular Education, and Civilization, 
 are purging the imagination of any belief in the Supernatural ; 
 the same deluge overwhelms the Veda and the Old Testament. 
 Nothing is believed, that cannot be proved by evidence. 
 
 The Missionary has to face this state of things, and he is, with 
 
( 196 ) 
 
 rare exceptions, totally unfit for the combat, but he can at least 
 abstain from saying unkind things of the poor non-Christian 
 world, of whom he knows so little. 
 
 Let him ask himself, who is the barbarian : the imperfectly- 
 clad African, who had never the chance of altering his lot, or 
 the European creature, who struts down the streets of a city 
 decorated, or clad, in the furs of a wild beast, the skin of a seal, 
 the feathers of a bird, the manufactured fibre of a worm, or of 
 a plant. The Oil-Painter and Sculptor would readily .prefer the 
 nude figure of the African, or the imperfectly clad figure of 
 the Asiatic, to the grotesque, and ridiculous apparel of the Euro- 
 pean. Let him ask himself, who is the atheist and unbeliever : 
 the man, who never had the opportunity of knowing Christ, or 
 the man, who, nominally a Christian, dishonours his Master by 
 his want of belief, or openly expresses contempt of His precepts. 
 A bad Christian is something infinitely worse than a bad Heathen. 
 
 The Heathen man, in spite of all his infirmities, is still formed 
 and fashioned in the Image of the Most High ; and evidence 
 gleaned from all the races of the world, and in all times, shows, 
 that the Heathen man feels after God, if haply he can find Him, 
 and his heart turns to his Creator, even as the sunflower turns to 
 the Sun, and he knows not why. In his humble way the Heathen 
 looks forward to a Heaven adapted to his merits, or demerits, or 
 his necessities : he has Faith sufficient to enable him to die for 
 his Faith ; he is not a Christian, because the Ruler of mankind 
 has not ruled, that he should have a chance of being so : he is 
 ignorant, because his environment is such, as God has ordained 
 for him, and because his more enlightened fellow-creatures have 
 had no thought for him, and, though they have received the 
 parting commands of the Saviour, had not thought it worth 
 their while to obey them. Christians are to blame, not the poor 
 Heathen ; he is an object of Pity, and Love, and Sympathy. 
 The wonder is, that he is so good as those, who know him best, 
 find him to be, and the reason is, that his Heavenly Father has 
 not left Himself entirely without a witness, that His Son died 
 for him, and all mankind, and that the Holy Spirit still hovers 
 round, ready to take up His abode in each poor child of God, 
 as soon as the so-called " God's people " in Europe succeed in 
 finding a way to their hearts by words of Human .Love, and 
 Divine Wisdom : hitherto we have failed. Much has been left 
 undone; and much has been done badly: let us find the more 
 excellent way ; place our hands on our mouth, and each one 
 cry out, " Mea culpa ! Mea culpa ! " 
 
 Let all recollect, both Christian and non-Christian, or pseudo- 
 Christian, that the knell of the Book- Religions, and the Nature- 
 Worships, which preceded them, has rung : whether Christianity 
 will take their place is a graver question, which may have two or 
 
( 197 ) 
 
 more answers. A platform-speaker eloquently and truly described 
 the growth of a tree destroying an old temple in Kashmir, which 
 had survived the attacks of centuries. Thus Christian Education 
 is gradually undermining the non-Christian edifice : it will 
 topple over as the old temple has done. 
 
 During a tour in North India nearly fifty years ago I accom- 
 panied one of the wisest, and most pious, of Governors, James 
 Thomason, in a morning-ride. We drew rein before the ruins 
 of a Castle, and a Temple, crowned with luxuriant foliage and 
 sinking into nothing under the gentle hand of natural decay. 
 " What a lesson," said he, " this teaches us ! Temple and Tower 
 " have gone to the ground under the pressure of the advance of 
 " Human culture, and Divine influences : how much better it is 
 " than if the one had been desecrated by a fanatic iconoclast, and 
 " the other had exhibited the signs of a savage bombardment." 
 
 London, 1894, 1895. 
 
 C. Missions and Science. 
 
 Many years ago my lamented friend, Dr. J. O. Means, 
 Prudential Secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions, 
 Boston, U.S., sent me the Ely Volume, or the Contributions of 
 Foreign Missions to Science and Human Well-being, by Dr. Thomas 
 Laurie. It was compiled and published at the expense of Mr. 
 Alfred Ely, a friend of Missions, who felt that the amount of 
 scientific information given to the world incidentally by Mission- 
 aries was not fully known. The goodly volume before me is a 
 treasure of information, and is worthy of notice. It relates 
 chiefly to the work of American Missionaries ; but " ex uno 
 disce omnes." A similar volume might be compiled of the 
 incidental contributions to Science, and the well-being of the 
 Human race, by the Missionaries of every Missionary Society, 
 for the Missionary is by the very necessity of his existence a 
 benefactor to Mankind. 
 
 The Missionary's first Duty, and sole Duty, is to preach the 
 Gospel and evangelize the Heathen, and he should never for one 
 moment let go of this leading and paramount object : still, in 
 spite of himself, he finds opportunities to do other good things, 
 and by so doing he is able to conciliate to himself the favour of 
 those, whose eyes are spiritually darkened, and to whom the 
 Grace has not been conceded to know, that to preach the 
 Gospel to the Heathen is the highest Duty and greatest privilege 
 of all, who call themselves Christians. Thus many messengers 
 of Gospel-Truth have developed scholarly aptitudes, have shown 
 themselves to be Philologists. Governors of Provinces, and 
 
( 198 ) 
 
 Rulers of Native States, have had the fact forced upon them, 
 that in their midst there was an unselfish, and yet dauntless, 
 man, who seemed to know some things better than his neigh- 
 bours, and who had established an influence over the Natives, 
 of a different kind to, and yet not less strong than, their own, 
 and after some hesitation their co-operation has been accepted, 
 or solicited. It is obvious, that in British India the Missionary 
 element is frankly recognized as a factor in the body politic, 
 and utilized as such. In independent States, their power is 
 daily increasing, which it requires prudence to wield properly. 
 
 In the Ely -Volume chapters are devoted to the work of 
 Missionaries in the Departments of Geography, Geology, 
 Meteorology, Natural Science, Archaeology, Philology, Eth- 
 nology and Religious Beliefs, General Literature, Bible-Trans- 
 lations,. Education, Medical Science, and General Philanthropy. 
 In the Appendices are tables of the copious literature, which 
 has flowed from their pens. Those, who are connected with the 
 Management of Missionary Societies, or have lived for years 
 among Missionaries in the field, scarcely need to be informed 
 on the subject, but to those, who scornfully ignore the existence 
 of such Societies, or undervalue their labours, and think poorly 
 of their agents, such a' book as this must come as a Revelation. 
 The civil and military Services of British India are notoriously 
 a body of men of marked talent and accomplishments, but it 
 may be doubtful, whether the out-turn of their combined labours 
 within a given period would surpass that of an equal number 
 of Missionaries. 
 
 In considering the subject of contributions to Geographical 
 Science the compiler enumerates, with just pride, in great detail 
 all that the American Missionaries have done towards the ex- 
 ploration of America, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. No one, who 
 has watched the progress of Geography for the last quarter of 
 a century, can fail to acknowledge, how much directly, and 
 indirectly, the Missionary has done to extend our Knowledge. 
 He is not a mere Traveller, hurrying through unknown Regions, 
 and unable to communicate with the inhabitants ; but he is 
 a sojourner in those Regions, able to test the accuracy of his 
 information, to map down the routes actually traversed, and to 
 record, with a certain degree of approximate accuracy, routes 
 taken down from the lips of Native merchants. The Proceedings 
 of the Royal Geographical Society, and of kindred European 
 Societies, teem with narratives compiled by Missionaries. I 
 have myself prompted, and encouraged, the preparation of such 
 papers, more especially in Africa. To those, who have their 
 eyes fixed on the world as on a chess-board, the name of 
 Livingstone stands conspicuous above that of any other Mis- 
 sionary of ancient and modern times, from the Epoch of 
 
( 199 ) 
 
 Rubruquis the Franciscan, in 1253, to the date of Krapf, who 
 mounted a high tower at Mombasa, and looked out over Eastern 
 Equatorial Africa, and set the ball rolling, which led to the 
 unveiling of the great Lakes of the Equator. It is without 
 any feeling of boasting, or undue rivalry, that the Missionary 
 Societies read the names of their agents amidst the successful 
 explorers of the age. Nor do the committees consider the 
 money misapplied, which popularizes in the eye of the learned 
 world their efforts to Evangelize, and at the same time opens out 
 new vistas of usefulness, and gives to new tribes the opportunity 
 of hearing the Gospel. 
 
 The contributions to the Science of Geology, quoted by the 
 compiler of the Ely Volume, are not numerous or important, 
 nor am I able to add to them as regards other Missionary 
 Societies. The tables of Meteorological observations, recorded 
 by the American Missionaries in Western Asia, seem to be of 
 the highest value, and it would be worth the consideration of the 
 Royal Society, whether the assistance of all the Missionaries of 
 Great Britain, scattered as they are in hundreds all over the face 
 of the globe, in .regions of extreme heat and of intense cold, at 
 considerable altitudes, and again on the sea-level, could not be 
 utilized. The trouble would be very inconsiderable, and the 
 record of the temperature and the climatic changes would be of 
 the highest interest to the Mission, as conducive to the choice 
 of the healthiest stations, and the adoption of suitable pre- 
 cautions and appliances. I am not aware, whether any registers 
 have been systematically maintained in any of the stations of 
 any Missionary Societies. The subject is worthy of attention. 
 
 The American Missionaries appear to have been contributors 
 to Natural Science. It is not pretended, that a Missionary can 
 have the leisure, or the technical knowledge, to be a thorough 
 naturalist, but some gifted men have been accurate and intelligent 
 observers. Science is now prosecuted too thoroughly to admit 
 of much untrained help, and it has been remarked, that the 
 contributions of Missionaries on Natural History lacked that 
 accurate knowledge and detail, which are now requisite. It is 
 remarkable, that among the American Missionaries there should 
 have been men devoted to their proper work, and yet zealous 
 ornithologists, naturalists, and conchologists, taking the latter 
 work by way of restful and healthful recreation, without which 
 they would not have retained cheerfulness and vigour. When I 
 read of 800 specimens of birds, and many hundred specimens 
 of shells, and Essays contributed to scientific Journals, I begin 
 to doubt, whether it is wise to yield to the fascination of 
 inquiries so wholly alien from the work of teaching the Gospel. 
 No conscientious public Officer in India would, I think, be able 
 to lend himself to such pursuits without dereliction of his secular 
 
( 200 ) 
 
 Duties. I have heard a Viceroy condemn a man, because he had 
 an absorbing passion for some inquiry alien to his Duty, and I 
 remember the circumstance of a man being passed over for 
 promotion, because he was too devoted to his photographing 
 machine. These were not the acts of a Philistine, or of a man 
 without sympathy for Science, but of a wise Ruler, who knew 
 that it was dangerous for an administrator to have a taste for 
 anything but the trade of ruling men, and caring for the men 
 ruled. For twenty-five years I had to roll up, and put away, 
 one or two particular talents in a napkin, and I should recom- 
 mend faithful Missionaries, who have a single eye to their 
 blessed vocation, to place away such talents, if they have them. 
 I should not think highly of them, if I came upon them in the 
 act of stuffing birds, transfixing butterflies, or photographing. 
 
 Under the next head of Archaeology much is said of the 
 contributions to Science made by American Missionaries ; and 
 the circumstance of their having large and important Missions 
 in Turkey in Asia, a country teeming with records of the Past, 
 enabled them to advance Knowledge. One positive addition 
 to our Knowledge was made by the discovery and the careful 
 description of the Nestorian monument of Sin-Gan-Fu in China ; 
 but even this falls into the shade, when brought into comparison 
 with the discovery of the Moabite Stone by one of the Church 
 Missionary Society's agents, and the copying of a Hittite In- 
 scription by a Presbyterian Missionary. 
 
 "Paulo majora cariamus." When we come to the chapter on 
 Philology and Bible-Translation, we recognize the imposing 
 results of the work of the Missionary in his own legitimate field.. 
 Leibnitz, when he formed the plan of the National Academy at 
 Berlin, anticipated this phenomenon. He made it a prominent 
 object of the National Association for Literature and Science, 
 that a zeal for extending the Gospel to the Heathen might be 
 encouraged over the whole earth, for they were, according to 
 him, to be an important means for attaining this object, since 
 Christian and Heathen would reap mutual benefit. Literature 
 and Science would aid the Missionary, who in his turn would 
 send home Knowledge of new facts from distant fields. The 
 name of Leibnitz had great influence in introducing the same 
 idea into other Continental Academies. The least efficient of 
 the agents of a Missionary Society should be able to converse 
 with and instruct the people in their own vulgar tongue. Any- 
 thing short of this is a mockery. I hear with great mistrust of 
 Missionaries to aboriginal tribes in India, or to the barbarous 
 tribes of Africa and Oceania, making use of an interpreter, or 
 insulting a tribe by educating the children in a Language not 
 known to their parents, but which the Missionary happens to 
 have learnt. Imagine the process of a Sunday-School in 
 
( 201 ) 
 
 England, in which an interpreter was used to explain the words 
 of the teacher to the children, or the children taught indifferent 
 French and German so as to be able to understand their 
 teachers. Imagine the difficulty of arguing upon the most 
 solemn Truths of man's Salvation, which a Missionary must feel, 
 who has not mastered, not only the leading Language, but the 
 patois, of his flock. I repeat, then, that the least efficient of a 
 Society's agents should understand and speak the Vernacular. 
 But from their ranks at all periods, of all Nations, and belonging 
 to all Societies, have come forth Linguistic giants, who have 
 compiled grammars, and dictionaries, and textbooks, who have 
 rendered teaching possible by reducing the words of the tribe 
 to writing. The compiler of the Ely- Volume takes credit for 
 the great work performed in this department by the Missionaries 
 of the American Board. All honour to them ! Their labours 
 are known in the fields of Asiatic, African, American, and 
 Oceanic, Missions, but they are but a unit among many, and 
 in some instances they had the advantage of the preceding 
 and contemporary labour of others, though in several they 
 stand alone. So great a subject can only be handled collec- 
 tively, treating the Missionaries of all Societies as one body. 
 When this is done, it can safely be stated, that no Government, 
 no secular Association, and no University, have done one tithe 
 towards extending our Knowledge of the living Languages of the 
 world, that Christian Missionaries have done, without hope of 
 profit, or distinction, or personal advantage, but simply in the 
 legitimate and single-minded desire to render possible the work 
 of Evangelization. Scientific bodies, and Scholars in their 
 studies, must be dead to all sense of feeling, if they do not 
 rise from their chairs, and gratefully thank the Missionary, 
 the Society, and that wonderful Missionary feeling, which is 
 the life of all living Churches, as each grammar and vocabulary 
 finds its way to their library, revealing new forms of vocables, new 
 rules of syntactical arrangement of ideas, new and marvellous 
 and symmetrical developments of the logical brain-power of 
 barbarous tribes, who out of their own consciousness, or rather 
 unconsciousness, have evolved new laws of vocal euphony, and 
 new methods of differentiation of meaning, and delicate shades 
 of expression. 
 
 But there is a loftier level still, to which we must rise, when 
 we consider the work of Bible-Translation. Hitherto the 
 Missionaries of the Church of Rome have run on parallel lines 
 with their Protestant brethren, and have shared their Linguistic 
 honours, besides being centuries earlier in the field. But the 
 glory of Bible-Translation rests, with most minute exceptions, 
 with the Preacher of the Gospel, a title to which the Roman 
 Catholic Priest can scarcely lay claim, as an attentive perusal 
 
( 202 ) 
 
 of the weekly issue of the Missions Catholiques for many years 
 has convinced me, that, with the exception of the Worship of the 
 Virgin and St. Joseph, and the- enforcement of a higher Morality, 
 there is but scant teaching, certainly no Gospel preaching, in the 
 Papist Missions. The Fetichism of the savage is varied in its 
 outward form, but retains its inner meaning, and the crucifix and 
 the beads are but substitutes for ruder objects, of magical potency. 
 The Chapter devoted to Bible-Translation in the Ely-Volume is 
 indeed magnificent, and the compiler, standing on a catholic 
 platform, takes cognizance of the great work done -by all Mis- 
 sionaries all over the world, though noticing in detail only the 
 work of the American Board. It is nobly and boldly stated 
 " that the first object of a Protestant Mission is to give the Bible 
 to a people in their own tongue, wherein they were born, and in 
 which the family converses at home." It cannot be too often 
 and too distinctly asserted, that the first, the continuous, and 
 the latest, object of the Missionary of the Church of Rome is to 
 withhold this Bible on their own part, and to destroy it, if it finds 
 its way to their flocks from other quarters. There are a few 
 exceptions, but they prove the rule. 
 
 The work of the Missionaries of the American Board has 
 been of the highest order, but by far the largest portion of Bible- 
 work has been accomplished through the agency of British 
 Missionaries, and under the patronage of the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society of London. The difficulty of the work 
 has been repeatedly stated, and no doubt in the case of culti- 
 vated Languages exaggerated ; the necessity of repeated revisions 
 is obvious : to some Missionaries the work seems to come 
 naturally; to others either the capacity, or the industry, or the 
 leisure, or the opportunity, have been wanting. Talent of the 
 highest order is required, and persistent labour. Perhaps of 
 all evangelizing works it is the most blessed, and remains for 
 ever as the best of Monuments. Luther's words, that he uttered, 
 have been forgotten, but Luther's Translation of the Bible will 
 live for ever. 
 
 In his contact with his people the Missionary necessarily has 
 his attention called to the Ethnological features of the tribe, and 
 to their Religious conceptions. The old idea, that a simple 
 ignorant Missionary could work the conversion of a people by 
 a mere statement of Gospel-Truths, accompanied by a general 
 abuse of. Idolatrous practices, is exploded. True it is, that the 
 Missionary by himself can do little, and that it is God's Grace, 
 that worketh through him; but that Grace works- through 
 Human means of all kinds, and gives life to Human endeavours, 
 Knowledge, and appliances. The fortress of time-honoured 
 customs, and of old-world beliefs, in which the Soul of the 
 Heathen is, as it were, entrenched, must be explored and 
 
( 203 ) 
 
 studied: if any atom of natural and adamantine Truth has 
 survived, it must be respected, and the assault against Ignorance 
 and falsehood must be made by the united forces of Wisdom 
 and Truth. This necessitates either original studies of Ethno- 
 logy and Religious conceptions, or of the treatises on those 
 subjects, prepared by the former labourers in the field, who 
 have passed away. It may be a question, whether the Mis- 
 sionary is entirely a fair chronicler of customs and tenets, with 
 which he is in no way in sympathy. He may be led to credit the 
 whole of the complicated machinery to the direct agency of the 
 Devil, and from this standpoint I sometimes read of the great 
 countries of India and China being the Kingdoms of Satan, 
 against which sweeping condemnation in the name of the gentle 
 and lovable people of India I must protest. It requires a large 
 supply of Pity for, and sympathy with, fallen races, and a wide 
 and impartial survey of the Book-Religions, and forms of Nature- 
 Worship, which have survived, to arrive at a right judgment in 
 this matter; and the statements of Missionaries in my opinion 
 err on the side of Intolerance, from the absence of philosophic 
 impartiality, and a clear conception of the problem. 
 
 In General Literature, whether of a periodical character or 
 solid contributions to Knowledge, the work of the Missionaries 
 of the American Board is stated to be so voluminous, that any- 
 thing like a catalogue is out of the question. And the same may 
 safely be said of the agents of all the great Societies. They have 
 been great and good book-makers, or contributors to Periodicals. 
 Their labours have extended to the Vernaculars of people, 
 among whom they laboured. In many cases they have first 
 reduced the vehicle of thought to literary fitness, and then illus- 
 trated the newly-developed power by a copious, useful, and 
 popular, literature, which indeed is one of the marvels of the age. 
 Other Colonizers may have caused cities to spring up in what 
 was lately a waste, and turned virgin prairies into a garden of 
 cereals, saccharines, and oils ; but to the Missionary alone has 
 it been conceded to go among a savage people, who had no 
 Alphabet, and had never heard of the ink-bottle and the reed- 
 pen, and in a few years lead them across a gulf, which other 
 Nations have only traversed in the slow progress of centuries, 
 fashion for them a literary Language out of their own vocables, 
 teach them to read and write, to join in prayer, praise, and song, 
 to start a printing-press in their midst, and to make use of the 
 people themselves to work it, so that the barbarous tribes of 
 Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania, have taken in, adopted, and 
 practised, within twenty-five years, under the guidance of a 
 Missionary, what it took the Greek and Latin and Teutonic 
 peoples twenty-five centuries to accomplish. When the influence 
 of Christian Missions upon the Human race is fairly considered, 
 
( 204 ) 
 
 these facts must not be lost sight of. They are but fragments, 
 and comparatively unimportant fragments, of the great edifice 
 of Christian Belief and Life, which it is the object of Missions 
 to erect, and yet no other conceivable earthly agency could have 
 effected it. Even in British India, with all the appliances of 
 a great, high-minded, and enlightened, Government, without the 
 help of the Missionaries a vernacular literature would not have 
 come into existence, which was fit to be read by women and 
 children. It has been well said, that in measuring the extent 
 and power of the agencies at work it is not sufficient to count 
 the Missionaries and the Schools ; the prolific outcome of the 
 Mission- presses, scattering broadcast portions of the Scriptures, 
 and a miscellaneous Religious, semi-Religious, and healthy 
 secular, literature, is a factor in the great world-revival. The 
 cheap periodical literature, published monthly and weekly, and 
 sold below cost price, is an amazing lever, and supplements in 
 this busy age the waning power of the Pulpit among the Native 
 Christians, and aids the efforts of the Preacher in the towns and 
 villages among the Heathen. The greatest and most experienced 
 of Missionaries of all countries and Denominations regard the 
 printing-press as worth many Missionaries, and more especially 
 in those countries, where Education is spreading. If the agents 
 of the American Board of Missions have a longer catalogue of 
 works to show, it is that the subdivision of labour has not been 
 carried out so entirely in the United States as in Great Britain. 
 The Religious Tract-Society, and the Christian Knowledge- 
 Society, and the Christian Vernacular Education -Society, in 
 London, relieve the Missionary Societies of these subsidiary 
 labours, profiting by the experience of the Missionaries, and 
 repaying the benefits by grants, and cheap editions. I was 
 much impressed at first sight by the busy work of Vernacular 
 literature in progress in the American Bible-House at Constanti- 
 nople, when I visited it, until I reflected that much of this work 
 was done better and cheaper in London, or at the Mission- 
 stations scattered over the world. 
 
 Under the head of Literature the Periodicals published at 
 headquarters, the Annual reports, and the separate Histories of 
 different Mission-fields published from time to time, cannot be 
 passed over without a notice. If any Historian continues the 
 History of the British people, commenced by the late Mr. Green, 
 the wonderful phenomena of energy, wisdom, and benevolence, 
 evidenced for a long series of years in these pages, cannot be 
 overlooked. What is the conquest of India compared with the 
 quiet and unobtrusive conquest of the whole world, which the 
 Christians of this century calmly contemplate, and have done so 
 much to advance ? Some years ago I was asked to assist in 
 preparing the first of the series of reports of the Moral and 
 
( 205 ) 
 
 Material Progress of British India. I agreed to do so on the 
 condition, that due notice was taken of the wonderful progress 
 of Missionary effort from a secular point of view. My condition 
 was accepted, and care was taken at my request not to omit 
 mention of the Roman Catholic Missions. The Religious world 
 was gratified, and those paragraphs were quoted from many a 
 Pulpit ; but the secular world was astonished. Now throughout 
 the British Empire and the whole world, the Missionary element 
 is recognized as a factor in the body politic, which cannot be 
 overlooked by the Statesman in Parliament, by the Plenipo- 
 tentiary, when he makes Treaties, by the Historian, when he 
 writes History, and by the writers of general literature. 
 
 The next heading, Education, embraces a portion of the 
 essential Duties of a Missionary, and great and successful as 
 the discharge of this Duty has been, both in the Missions of the 
 American Board and of other Societies, no special notice is 
 required, as I am not alluding now to the essential, but the 
 incidental, advantages of Missions. The following heading, 
 " Medical Science," is passed over for the same reason. The 
 Medical Missionary, male or female, is now a recognized and 
 requisite member of every fully organized Mission, and many 
 ordained Missionaries have a certain amount of medical training. 
 It is no longer an incidental advantage of Missions. 
 
 Under the heading General Philanthropy may be classed all 
 that Missionaries have done for the saving of whole races from 
 certain destruction, and their national regeneration as decent 
 and flourishing, though not necessarily Christian, Communities. 
 The very existence of many of the Communities of Oceania 
 is owing to the Missionaries. To this may be added the bold 
 opposition to Slave-trade, Slavery, employment of Slave-labour 
 (which, except in the case of the Madagascar Missions, is a rule 
 absolute), and the kidnapping of men under pretence of service- 
 contracts. Missionaries have not been found wanting to resist 
 their white brethren in their attempts to injure morally or 
 physically the people committed to their charge. Not always 
 judiciously, yet still always in good faith, they have stood 
 up against kings and men in power, against merchants, 
 and against agricultural speculators, against the European 
 land-grabber and gold -seeker on the Warpath, against the 
 unprincipled Chartered Company in its blood-stained course 
 of Slaughter and Murder for the sake of gold-dust, diamonds, 
 and dividends. At the risk of their lives they have saved 
 widows from the burning pile, and victims from the altar 
 of Sacrifice, the poisoned cup of the medicine-man, and the 
 yawning grave, ready to receive them alive. They have taught 
 the gentle arts of peace, introduced new modes of culture, new 
 articles of Commerce, new methods of manufacture ; they have. 
 
( 206 ) 
 
 opened asylums for the leper, and in some cases dauntless men, 
 both Protestant and Roman Catholic, have given themselves 
 up to the risk of the deadly contagion in their love for the 
 bodies and souls of the sufferers ; they have opened hospitals 
 for the opium-smoker, and homes for the famine-orphans ; have 
 worked their way by.the help of their wives and sisters into the 
 secluded retreats of the women's apartments to get at the women ; 
 they have taught both sexes in many parts of the world the 
 decencies of life, showing men how they can be strong without 
 being cruel, and giving women elementary lessons in modesty 
 and purity. Not in vain have been these blessed ' labours : 
 wherever there was oppression, or suffering, or an appeal for 
 help, or a craving for advice, the Missionary has not stopped to 
 ask, whether the cry came from a Heathen or a Christian. He 
 has taken the highest view of his sacred calling, and given the 
 succour without asking who and what was the party succoured. 
 So also when famines have raged, the Missionary has appeared 
 with food to save the starving, with orphanages to receive the 
 abandoned children. He has always been ready to prevent 
 bloodshed by arbitration in case of quarrels, and in some cases 
 has arrested war by timely advice, or brought about peace 
 amidst savage combatants by words of wisdom, and forbearance, 
 and Love. 
 
 The Missionary should not meddle in politics, or questions 
 of Trade, or in the culture of the soil, or in Commerce : where 
 he has done so, it has been to the injury of his proper work. 
 The idea of self-supporting Missions by means of Commbrce, 
 manufacture, and agriculture, is a dream of Utopia. The Mis- 
 sionary was meant for better things than to manage ostrich- 
 farming, gather in cocoa-nuts, or superintend filatures. Nor 
 should he be tempted under any circumstances to try his 
 prentice-hand at ruling men ; for such purposes a stiffer clay 
 is required than the material, of which, he is made ; the matter 
 is too high for him, or rather he is too high for the matter. 
 For in spite of all the lofty ideal of Christian Statesmen, the 
 government of Natives, specially of those in a low state of 
 culture, is a compromise of low motives, and it is of the essence 
 of our poor humanity, that it should be so. The Governor, the 
 judge, and the magistrate, must touch pitch, and in their official 
 capacity take cognizance of tendencies, of customs, of ideas, 
 of religious Worships, and of professions against which their 
 Souls revolt. The Missionary in his death-grapple with the 
 awakened conscience and the darkened Soul of men opening 
 to the Truth, comes indeed into contact with the sad ingredients 
 of Human nature, .but his Gospel admits of no compromise; he 
 rises above conventional Morals and local customs ; to him the 
 Polygamist and the worshipper of Idols, is not a subject of 
 
( 207 ) 
 
 her Majesty with guaranteed civil rights, but a sinner, who must 
 be persuaded to amend his ways. The Missionary is therefore 
 in a false position, when he attempts to hold the reins of Civil 
 Government. And, in my judgment, when he goes out of his 
 proper orbit, and meddles with such tangled questions as a 
 gigantic Commerce betwixt two such great Nations as India 
 and China, he fails in his object, being unable to measure the 
 surrounding forces, and in the end causes evils by his ill-judging, 
 though well-intentioned, endeavours. Let him leave Caesar's 
 business to Caesar, and keep his mind on the affairs of God, 
 who permits the existence of Evil in different countries that He 
 may prove the Faith of His Servants, and work His Sovereign 
 Will, leading on by temptation and suffering. 
 
 Missionaries and Mission-Societies have reason to be grateful 
 to the American Board for this volume on Missions and Science, 
 which I have passed under review ; it tells a noble story. A 
 few years ago I met at Rome a young surgeon from Chicago. 
 He had all the brilliant charm and vivacity of a young man, 
 belonging to a young city and a young Nation. He expressed 
 his opinion, that he could have saved President Garfield's life, 
 had he been called in, and that only the second or third-rate 
 men of his country, who had failed in a home-career, went out 
 as Missionaries. This volume is a sufficient answer to this 
 sneer, not meant maliciously, but representative of the opinion 
 of too many. The American Board has during the last fifty 
 years had the good fortune to find, and the wisdom to value, as 
 their agents, men of consummate ability and unaffected piety, 
 who would have achieved greatness and wealth in secular employ- 
 ment, but who have had the Grace given to them to consecrate 
 their opening, middle, and closing, lives to the service of their 
 Lord, and while striking hard on the anvil of their own proper 
 work, the Evangelization of Souls, have let in side-lights into 
 many obscure subjects, and thus incidentally conferred honour 
 on themselves, and their sacred cause. An all-round study of 
 Mission-work does indeed make us freethinkers, but in the best 
 and highest sense of that often misapplied phrase. We know, 
 that the Word and the Work . of the great Creator must be in 
 harmony, though we cannot always, through the weakness of 
 our intelligence, reconcile them. We approach the study of 
 the Bible, a treasure in the earthen vessels of perishable 
 vocables and sentences, with the same reverence and reserve 
 that we touch the skirts of our mothers. We adore the great 
 Creator in the study of His manifold Work, and, if we demand 
 more air, and more breathing space, than the timid and cramped 
 interpretations of our forefathers allowed, the reverend Mission- 
 aries, whose works are recorded in this volume, teach us how to 
 handle the Bible, and yet gaze exultingly and trustfully into 
 
( 208 ) 
 
 every vista, opened in the labyrinth of Human Science, nothing 
 doubting, that to the faithful the end will- be Light. True 
 Science is the handmaid of true Religion, and will never raise 
 up her hand against her mistress, if each keeps itself within 
 its own proper sphere, and revolves in its own orbit. They 
 are not antagonistic, but co-ordinate powers, illustrating, and 
 illustrated by, each other. Standing as I do midway betwixt 
 Science and Missions, and flitting daily, from the assembly of 
 the Scientists to the committee-room of the Mission, I feel, 
 that I can take a part in both without religious or intellectual 
 compromise, and glory in the strange pleasure of seeing Science 
 subserve so much to the advance of Missions, while Missions 
 pay back the debt by subserving so much to the advance of 
 Science. 
 
 September, 1884, 1895. 
 
 D. Extent of the Duties and Rights of the Evangelist. 
 
 1. The Plain Duty of a Missionary Society, 
 z. The Extent, to which a Missionary has a Right to Pro- 
 tection by the Civil Power. 
 
 1. The Plain Duty of a Missionary Society. 
 
 The work of the Missionary is becoming a Science ; the 
 operations are on such an extensive scale, that Mission-work is 
 a factor in politics. Hundreds of young men are scattered over 
 the face of the globe without possibility of supervision, and the 
 ravages of the climate render it necessary, that there should be 
 a constant flow of very young men ; high-spirited, devoted, un- 
 selfish, above all suspicion of low motives, but very inexperienced, 
 and possessed often of zeal without Knowledge. It is more in- 
 cumbent on the Society, which sends them out, to put its foot 
 down and state distinctly what must not be done. The conduct 
 of Missionary agents are open, like all human actions, to truthful 
 and sincere criticism, and it is better that the critic should be 
 a friendly one, and one, who is well acquainted with the circum- 
 stances and difficulties that surround the Missionary ; and there- 
 fore I speak out, having just completed my Annual review of 
 the Missionary operations of the world of all Nations and 
 Churches. 
 
 (1) The Missionary must not raise his hand against a 
 
 Native, or restrict his natural liberty, 
 (z) The Missionary must not usurp judicial, magisterial, or 
 
 police, powers. 
 
( 209 ) 
 
 These propositions seem so simple and self-evident, that it 
 might appear at first sight waste of time to discuss them; but 
 there is no doubt that Natives, male and female, have been 
 flogged, placed in durance, and even been killed by Missionary- 
 agents, sometimes out of mere impetuosity, sometimes in the 
 exercise of usurped quasi-judicial powers. 
 
 It need scarcely be said, that in settled countries like British 
 India, acts of the first kind would not remain unpunished, and 
 acts of the second kind would be impossible. If any Missionary 
 in British India were to strike a Native, an action would lie in 
 the nearest court of Justice. I myself sent an English dis- 
 charged soldier twelve hundred miles from the Panjab to 
 Calcutta, to be tried on the charge of shooting a Native, who 
 would not sell him a sheep ; he was tried by one of the Queen's 
 judges, found guilty, and hanged. A young officer of the Royal 
 Engineers had tied up his Native servant to a tree, and flogged 
 him in order to extort a confession of a theft of spoons, and the 
 man died. On my report the officer was tried by a Court- 
 martial, sentenced to a term of imprisonment, and dismissed 
 from the Army. I mention these two cases to show, that such 
 license is not permitted to subjects of Her Majesty: the Mis- 
 sionary would have no benefit of clergy. No case has ever 
 arisen. 
 
 But it is in those Regions, which are governed by Native 
 Chiefs without any regular form of Law, and through which the 
 Missionary has to travel with his caravan, that the difficulty 
 arises. He has to deal with a long train of hired porters, who 
 are ready to tarry, to stray, or even decamp with their burden. 
 He has to deal with the Natives, always ready to steal secretly, 
 or plunder openly ; his temper is sorely tried, the weather is 
 hot, the distance to be traversed great ; the interest of the work 
 and the character of the Traveller for efficiency, seem to depend 
 upon his being able to get to the fixed halting-place ; thieves 
 are caught red-handed ; property mysteriously disappears ; then 
 comes what is deemed the necessity for, and the right, to tie up, 
 and flog, real or supposed delinquents. A case has occurred of 
 a man being left tied up, with a view to induce a confession, 
 dying during the night. Then comes a scandal, an outcry, and 
 perhaps a justification in the following terms : that it is im- 
 possible to travel without power of flogging the porters, and 
 thrashing the villagers. The reply is : In that case do not travel. 
 
 But is it so ? The young Englishman out on a shooting 
 expedition may, and probably does, do so, and in his narrative 
 he is loud in his outcry, that his camp subsequently is attacked, 
 reprisals attempted, and one of his party killed. The experi- 
 enced leader of an exploring party does not do so ; he carries 
 out the policy of conciliation with the inhabitants of the country, 
 
 H 
 
( 210 ) 
 
 through which he passes, and as to his own party he settles 
 with them beforehand in what manner delinquents on the march 
 are to be punished. The late Joseph Thomson, one of the most 
 successful and yet the gentlest of leaders, tells us how his men 
 preferred that delinquents should be punished by strokes of the 
 ratan, rather than by fine. Thomson in both his expeditions 
 brought his party safe back in good condition, and Bishop 
 Hannington, who traversed his route through Masai-land, found 
 no tales current against him, but plenty against the Swahili 
 traders, who had followed the same route. 
 
 But the question before us relates to a Missionary, the 
 Preacher and practicer of the Gospel, who has been sent out to 
 convert a Heathen people. It seems to go without saying, that 
 such, men should never raise their hand against the people, 
 except in the extreme case of protecting life or female honour, 
 and of course the ordinary discipline of boys in a School. That 
 a Woman should be flogged, however evil that Woman may 
 have been, fills me to amazement ; that a man should be tied up 
 to a tree, with a view of extracting a confession, and should die 
 in consequence, fills me with horror. I do not in the least 
 indicate the part of the world, Asia, Africa, America, or Oceania, 
 in which these things have happened, or the Missionaries, to 
 whom such acts are imputed. My knowledge of Missions 
 extends to every Society and every Mission-field. Let me 
 assume their possibility only for the sake of argument, and to 
 enable me clearly to grasp the question of how Missions are to 
 be conducted amidst wild races under such circumstances. My 
 notebooks, and carton-boxes, contain evidence of facts. 
 
 Bishop Hannington, who gave up his life in U-Soga, a 
 tender-hearted, loving man, has still left the following entries 
 in his Journals, made from day to day, and not intended for 
 publication ; we cannot doubt their exactness ; these Journals 
 are now publici juris, being printed and sold for sixpence. 
 
 Page 3. — " Up twice and boxed some of their ears (the 
 
 porters)." 
 Page 9. — " Mild measures were in vain, and shouts of no 
 avail ; kicks and blows alone got them together once 
 more into the spot marked out as camp." 
 Page 10. — " The disobedience of my men is fearful : I have 
 had to administer some tremendous blows : people 
 may say what they like : it is a matter of life and 
 death." 
 Page 11. — " I seized my gun, and rushed back in time to 
 see one of the sick men pursued with spear and 
 shield. Without a moment's hesitation, to spare his 
 life, I gave them a charge of No. 2 shot at about 100 
 yards ; and magical' was the effect : they fled right 
 and left." 
 
( 211 ) 
 
 The first case is quoted to indicate the liberty, which 
 Europeans consider themselves entitled to take almost in a 
 friendly way with weaker races, with whom they come in contact. 
 A Malay, after such an insult as having his ears boxed, would 
 have run his dagger into the Bishop. The African has to grin 
 and bear it. The last case illustrates the painful necessity 
 forced upon the Traveller to protect the life of his party from 
 violent attacks. The two intermediate cases can under no 
 circumstances be justified. If the Natives had joined together 
 and returned blow for blow, the Bishop would have lost his life : 
 it is a dangerous game to resort to blows, unless you are 
 supported by a superior force. Not very long afterwards the 
 Bishop himself was killed. 
 
 We have to consider also the miserable consequences of a 
 party led by an European passing through a village, and 
 committing acts of violence. Reprisals are taken from the next 
 innocent European Traveller. Some years ago, a Frenchman 
 named Abb6 De Baize (not a Missionary, but a scientific 
 Traveller) behaved in U-Gogo with great violence on his way 
 to Lake Tanganyika. An English Missionary was killed in 
 revenge a few days afterwards. 
 
 I do not, of course, allude to sudden outbursts of anger under 
 cases of great provocation ; these are to be deplored, wherever 
 they occur, and no one deplores them more than the offender 
 himself, when he recovers his calm. Bishop Hannington's 
 Journal supplies us with an instance of this weakness (page 5): 
 " Sorry to say I lost my temper with men and Jones." Such 
 confessions as these appear in the Journals of many of God's 
 Saints : the heat of the weather, the anxiety of the journey, the 
 excitement, and the really provoking characters of the people, 
 lead to such regrettable outbursts, which are repented of in tears, 
 and are atoned for by acts of considerate kindness. 
 
 The Missionary by his very raison d'etre should carefully refrain 
 from such things : he must be no striker ; he must not strive, 
 but be gentle to all men, and must take joyfully the spoiling of 
 his goods : conciliation must be made use of to its utmost 
 extent ; if is agreed, that an expedition cannot be carried on 
 unless the leader of it commits day by day acts of brute violence, 
 the reply is, that Missionary expeditions had better not be undertaken. 
 If Missions cannot only be worked by Methods, which no 
 supporter of the Mission would dare to state in detail on a 
 Mission-platform, then Missions had better not be undertaken. 
 It cannot be imagined, that our Lord's Disciples, who were sent 
 out two and two, or the Nestorian Missionaries, who penetrated 
 with slender resources as far as China, or the humble Moravian 
 Missionaries, acted in this way. The line of Duty is very clear. 
 
 I seem to hear some Missionary cry out, who has been driven 
 
( 212 ) 
 
 wild by the heat and insects : " Oh ! if you only knew the 
 " difficulties, you would not write like this ; if you were in 
 " similar circumstances, you would flog your men and thrash 
 " the villagers, like everybody else." Now I have heard very 
 young men on their first arrival in India talk in the same way, 
 and yet no experienced Anglo-Indian ever allows himself to 
 strike a servant, or ill-use a villager ; he finds out, that it is not 
 necessary. I never heard of a charge against a Missionary in 
 India of any act of this kind. It is more important to draw 
 attention to the subject in Africa, as the Natives have discovered, 
 that Europeans are not the benevolent Angels, which they once 
 appeared to be ; it has got about, that they are eating up the 
 country; and we may expect a period of difficulty and violence, 
 and much hindrance to the great Duty of the Missionary. 
 
 Nor should the Missionary usurp judicial, magisterial, or 
 police authority; the facts are publici juris, so it may be stated, 
 that in one Mission the Missionary tried, sentenced, and executed 
 an offender, and was very properly dismissed for so doing. But 
 that the whole story is in print, it would seem incredible, that 
 a Missionary should suggest to husbands to flog their wives for 
 infidelity, in the presence of witnesses. The air of Africa seems 
 to have an astounding effect on the intelligence and consciences 
 of Christian Ministers, and English gentleness. In the absence 
 of any constituted Ruler there is always some Chief, or village- 
 Elder, to whom criminal and police jurisdiction belongs, and 
 who would no doubt consult a friendly Missionary, and gradually 
 build up a system of Government. Every British subject is 
 liable to be prosecuted for certain offences in the Courts of 
 Great Britain, although such offences were committed outside 
 of the British Dominions, and no one is authorized to exercise 
 any sort of jurisdiction, unless he has been duly authorized to do 
 so by Her Majesty, and it is exceedingly inexpedient, that any 
 Missionary should be vested with any such Power. His weapons 
 are not carnal. 
 
 There is one blemish, from which British and American 
 Missionaries are entirely free ; that is, making the Mission a 
 stepping-stone to and a means for political aggrandizement. 
 But it is the raison d'etre, and avowed object, of the French 
 Missionary to extend the influence of France, and the French 
 Government thoroughly understands this, and makes use of it. 
 The French Government is confessedly free from any Religious 
 sentiment, and makes short work with the Jesuits, and other 
 Orders, when it appears advisable, but it tries in China to 
 maintain its right, not only to be the protector, of French 
 Missionaries, which would be natural enough, but of all Roman 
 Catholic Missionaries, English, German, Italian, and Spanish ; 
 and, although the Pope offers to take charge of the Missionaries 
 
( 213 ) 
 
 of his own Church, and the Chinese Government greatly prefers 
 this arrangement, the French Government is still striving to 
 maintain this right as the legitimate political iufluence of France. 
 In every report of a French Missionary, allusion is made to 
 France, as if the Religion, which they wish to extend, were the 
 French Religion. Large sums were voted to Cardinal Lavigerie, 
 Archbishop of Carthage, for the political influence exercised 
 by him in Tunis, before and after the annexation. Even 
 Protestant French Missionaries are not free from this snare, 
 for the Legion of Honour has been conferred on an old French 
 Missionary, M. Casalis, " for extending the interests of France 
 in Basutoland," in the heart of the British Colony of the Cape, 
 where the French can have no legitimate interests whatsoever. 
 There are British Missionaries in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. 
 It would be hard to imagine a Companionship of the Bath 
 being conferred upon them for advancing British interests in 
 these countries. It is to be hoped, that the British and 
 American Missionaries will never lend themselves to become 
 political instruments, or meddle in any way with the affairs 
 of earthly administration, as their Kingdom is not of this 
 world. 
 
 A new difficulty has arisen in modern times. Practically 
 the French Government render the establishment of a Mission 
 of any other Nation in a French Colony impossible, by allowing 
 no Schools to be opened unless the French Language is the 
 vehicle of teaching, and the Teacher holds a French certificate. 
 The object of this precaution is their jealous fear, lest other 
 Nations should get any influence in their Colonies, for they 
 attribute falsely to other Nations the practice of their own 
 Missionaries. The firm conviction of the French governing 
 classes is, that Christian Missions are only a kind of machinery 
 for extending national political influence, and the French 
 Roman Catholic Missionaries thoroughly realize these views, 
 and, although they hate the Republican Government, and are 
 cordially hated in return, they are tolerated and protected, 
 because they are of use. From this point of view a British or 
 American Mission is not only of no use, but, if animated with 
 the same principles, a positive danger; consequently the 
 conditions, under which they are admitted are such, that they 
 amount to exclusion. The difficulties in Madagascar were 
 very much stirred up and aggravated by the desire of the French 
 Priests to get rid of the Protestant Missions. In Tahiti the 
 famous English Mission, which converted that island, has 
 sorrowfully been obliged to leave that field. The strong 
 objection to the occupation of the New Hebrides by the French 
 is the certainty, that all the English Protestant Missions would 
 be destroyed. In the Loyalty islands they are being crushed 
 
( 214 ) 
 
 out. On the Gabun in West Africa, the American Missionaries 
 are being driven to the necessity of learning French. Russia 
 and Austria are more consistent, and allow none at all in their 
 conquered Provinces. The German Missionary has hitherto 
 had the free run of the British and Dutch Colonies, and in 
 British India has enjoyed precisely the same advantages as the 
 British Missionary. Since, however, the German Nation has 
 gone in for Colonies, the cry has gone forth of German 
 Missionaries and no other in German Colonies. There was 
 some show of reason perhaps in not allowing the French Jesuit, 
 with his known proclivities, to establish himself in a German 
 Colony, but the British also are to be excluded in full confidence, 
 that the idea of reprisals, and the ejection of the German 
 Missionary from India and the African Colonies, would never 
 be thought of by an Englishman, who loves free Religion as 
 much as free trade. The French 1 people, under the idea, that 
 French is in fact the finest Language in the world, allow the 
 use of none other in their Colonies ; the Natives are taught to 
 'speak French to save the trouble of the French functionaries 
 acquiring a knowledge of the Language of the people. They 
 realize too late the tremendous mistake, which was made in not 
 compelling the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine to adopt the 
 French Language at the time of their conquest. It is singular, 
 that the Germans are falling into the same error, and are 
 sending out German Missionaries and State-Teachers of the 
 German Language to the Kamerun country, whence they have 
 ejected the English Baptist Mission, to try to efface any 
 knowledge of English, which the people may have acquired, 
 and introduce the German Language. It remains to be seen 
 whether this is possible. At any rate it is a narrow view to 
 take of Colonial policy and Missionary Duty. 
 
 The Missionary must recollect that the Service of the Lord is 
 not limited by Nation, Language, or race. Even the American 
 Missionaries sometimes forget this, for we read in the Boston 
 Missionary Herald, that in the little island of Ponape, a mere 
 speck in Mikronesia, and part of the group of the Caroline 
 islands, which belong to Spain, the Sunday-School children of 
 the Native converts kept the "Glorious Fourth of July" with 
 great ceremonial. How people would laugh, if the converts in 
 the British Missions of New Guinea and the Solomon islands 
 were to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, or 
 the Queen's Jubilee. Why not have their rejoicings on Christmas 
 Day and Easter Day, in anticipation of the day, when Ephraim 
 shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not revile Ephraim ? The 
 French Religious Periodicals are full of lamentable details of 
 the destruction of the Roman Catholic converts in Tonquin, and 
 forget, that these same converts supplied fighting men to resist 
 
( 215 ) 
 
 their own national Sovereign in the struggle against foreign 
 invaders. 
 
 I submit these subjects to the consideration of the committees 
 of Missionary Societies. The stream of Missionaries is ever 
 flowing, and new men succeeding to old. It is more important, 
 that the committee, which is permanent in its collective capacity, 
 should be firm, and set its face like a flint against : 
 
 (i) Any personal ill-usage or restraint of a Native by its 
 agents. 
 
 (2) Any usurpation of authority, other than Spiritual, by 
 
 its agents. 
 
 (3) Any tendency to put Missions forward as a machinery 
 
 for Political aggrandizement. 
 
 (4) Any tendency to imagine, that the nationality of the 
 
 Missionary is a factor of the least weight or moment 
 in his Divine Commission to preach the Gospel. 
 
 (5) Any appeal to the Arm of the Flesh to protect Missions, 
 
 or rescue Missionaries, or avenge the death of Mis- 
 sionaries. If the Missionary has not stomach for the 
 fight, let him withdraw from a contest, to which he 
 is not equal. Christian men and women will never 
 be wanting to take up the Cross, whatever may be 
 the dangers and perils. 
 
 (6) Any attempt to introduce among his converts the 
 
 historical differences of the great Nations of Europe 
 and America, and any suggestion that Christianity 
 is limited, and that the right of preaching the Gospel 
 is restricted by the Political circumstances of the 
 country, or the nationality of the Missionary. Evil 
 rulers may try to enforce such restrictions, but they 
 are fighting against God. 
 
 April, 1888-1895. 
 
C 216 ) 
 
 2. On the Extent, to which a Missionary has a Right 
 to Protection by the Civil Power. 
 
 It is no longer a secret, close or open, that the Royal Niger 
 Company has made Treaties with the several Negro Mahometan 
 Powers in the Sudan of Africa, East of the Niger, promising 
 that they will not only do nothing through their own employ6s 
 to attempt the conversion of the Mahometans, but will do all that 
 lies in their power to obstruct others, who come under their influence. 
 This amounts to open War of so-called Christian men with the 
 Gospel. 
 
 Let us think it out. The Company gives a free hand for the 
 conversion of the Pagans. It is very proper and expedient, that 
 the Rulers of a country should do nothing directly or indirectly 
 to influence their subjects in their Religious views. Their 
 Kingdom is of this world, and entire Toleration is the brightest 
 jewel of Empire. Such is the fixed policy of the Government 
 of British India ; and manifold blessings of every kind, material 
 and Spiritual, have attended it during the last half-century. 
 But the Rulers of the Niger Valley, to whom the Imperial 
 Parliament has delegated their foreign powers, propose to do 
 something more. They promise their Treaty-allies to obstruct 
 the Christian Missionary, to deny him passages in their Steamers, 
 succour from their stores, and to erase his name from the list of 
 British subjects, entitled by the custom of Great Britain to 
 succour in case of need, rescue in case of captivity, and re- 
 tribution by the nearest British Authorities in case of murder. 
 
 The true-hearted Missionary asks not these things for himself. 
 His friends raise no voice in the country, calling for vengeance 
 for the slaughter of Hannington. That particular crime has, 
 however, been avenged by a higher Power. Whether the Royal 
 Niger Company likes it or not, whether it will affect their 
 dividends or their Commerce with the Sudan or not, it is well, 
 that these gentlemen should reflect on the policy, which they 
 are inaugurating, and consider what the House of Commons 
 will say, when it comes to hear of it. 
 
 It is true that the East India Company previous to the year 
 1815 adopted this same policy. They did so in timidity, in 
 Ignorance, and in material weakness. They had to face mighty 
 Empires, and armies of soldiers supplied with cannon, trained 
 by Frenchmen : they had to fight for their hold of India, and 
 regarded matters from the point of view of a mercantile Com- 
 pany. India was too' far off for its affairs to be influenced by 
 public opinion at home. Public opinion at home had not been 
 
( 217 ) 
 
 formed : it was the day of small things : and the individual 
 Missionaries, who appeared and were rejected, though Saints 
 of God, like Carey and Judson, had not the prestige of the 
 associated strength of the great middle classes of Great Britain 
 behind them. Moreover, it is admitted, that the East India 
 Company did wrong : we palliate their offence ; we do not excuse 
 it, we cannot justify it. 
 
 Things have changed now. The thoughts of men have become 
 wider with the process of the suns. A great majority of the 
 British people recognize, that the mighty power and vigour 
 vouchsafed to them were not conceded by the Most High for 
 the purpose of exporting liquor (of which sin I gladly acquit 
 the Royal Niger Company), or making dividends of profit ; but 
 to benefit, in every possible way, the subject people, and to give 
 them the free opportunity of accepting Christianity, which has 
 made us what we are. The Niger Valley is not far from Great 
 Britain. Public opinion will have its sway there. The Mission- 
 aries were there long before this Company came into existence, 
 and will outlive it. The Mahometans of the Sudan, whether 
 Fulah or Negro, are pigmies in strength, culture, power, and 
 population, in comparison to the fifty millions of British India. 
 
 The gentlemen of the Niger Company talk with bated breath 
 of the fanatical Mahometan, in his turban, cloak, and trowsers. 
 The phenomenon is new to them, but Anglo-Indians have lived 
 all their lives in the midst of noble, though devout, Mahometans. 
 Some as fair in colour as ourselves, and many much more learned 
 and polished ; some of gigantic stature, and hereditary warriors. 
 Yet the Gospel has its free course amidst the Baluchi and the 
 Afghan, the Patan, and the converted Mahometan Rajput, and 
 the Empire of the Empress of India flourishes, because it is 
 founded upon Righteousness. 
 
 We doubt whether Treaties with such clauses should not be 
 denounced as derogatory to the dignity of Great Britain, as if 
 we were ashamed of the Religion, which has brought us such 
 blessings. The thing is doubly offensive, when we are kindly 
 told, that we are allowed full leave to convert the pagan, but 
 must not address the Negro, who has got himself up with the 
 veneer of Mahometanism, for it is no more. Their knowledge 
 of Arabic and the Koran is scant : all the bad salient features 
 of Mahometanism are asserted, Intolerance, Polygamy, Slavery, 
 unnatural crime, contempt of Human life, and overweening 
 pride ; while the better things to be found in the Koran, and 
 the learning and refinement of the polished Mahometan of 
 India, Persia, and Turkey, are totally absent. 
 
 At any rate, the public notice has been despatched, and 
 January i, 1890, fixed as the date of the new policy. 
 
 We must recollect that, when a British subject is killed or 
 
( 218 ) 
 
 imprisoned, something more than his life and liberty are lost to 
 his country, viz., the prestige of our Nation. The represen- 
 tative of the British Government in China remarked in 1873, 
 that there was a necessity to • protect the Missionary from actual 
 violence, but nothing more. The present Foreign Secretary two 
 years ago told a deputation of Missionaries, that the Great 
 Powers of Europe asserted the right to deport an alien without 
 cause shown from their territories, but they would shrink from 
 the charge of ordering his death, or imprisonment, without the 
 form of a regular trial. Mr. Jones, of the L.M.S., was expelled 
 by the French Government from the Loyalty islands ; and, for 
 the sake of argument, we may concede, that the Mahometan 
 potentates of the Sudan might deport a British Missionary; 
 but, when they hear that there is no risk, they will certainly 
 kill him. 
 
 London, December, 1 889-1 895. 
 
 E. Arm of the Flesh. 
 
 1. Religious Toleration. 
 
 2. The Relation of Missionaries to great European or 
 
 Asiatic Governments. 
 
 3. The Relation of Missionaries to Barbarous Sovereigns, 
 
 or Petty Chiefs in Asia, Africa, and Oceania. 
 
 1. Religious Toleration. 
 
 What is it ? Something which we all claim for ourselves, but 
 which many deny to others. Something which each person 
 interprets in a sense, which fits his own views. Roman 
 Catholics would, if they could, deny it to Protestantism. 
 Protestants of the High Church would deny it to those, who do 
 not conform to their views. Nonconformists would deny it to 
 particular classes of Christian believers. All Christian believers 
 are ready to deny it to Unbelievers. If the penalties are no 
 longer Death on the Stake, Imprisonment, or Spoliation of 
 Goods, the want of Toleration shows itself in denial of 
 privileges, exclusion from offices, and social ostracism. Even 
 good men allow themselves to do and say what is entirely 
 contrary to true Toleration. Let me try and make my views 
 clear as regards Heathen and Mahometan. 
 
 There is no necessity to be lax in Religious convictions, and 
 hang loosely to any Church, in order to be all things to all men : 
 
( 219 ) 
 
 that is not true Toleration, but only Indifferentism, or contemp- 
 tuous disdain. A Christian must be tolerant to the Mahometan, 
 the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Nature-worshipper: he must be 
 tolerant of bad customs, bad habits, bad words, bad deeds, bad 
 sentiments : he must be tolerant in what he says and what he 
 does. It is more consonant to a Christian frame of mind to be 
 so. And it specially becomes a Missionary to be so. The surer 
 a man is of his own convictions, the more tolerant will he be of 
 the conscientious convictions of others. 
 
 Let me consider the " State " first. 
 
 If there is an entire disappearance of bond-fide persecution, and 
 torture, and murder, on the part of Religionists in power, it is 
 mainly because their claws have been clipped, and the spirit of 
 the age has been changed. It would have been impossible for 
 Serv6tus to have been burnt alive in this century : still Austria, 
 and such like Powers, make the position of Protestants very 
 uncomfortable. In Spain there is a good deal of caprice. Even 
 in constitutional countries there is a necessity for licensing and 
 notice to the Police, and disabilities of one kind or another, 
 which is deplorable. The Bible is burnt in the streets by 
 the Priests. 
 
 In Russia circumstances are somewhat different. There is no 
 objection to Bible-Distribution, nor do the Priests object to the 
 Bible. Religious liberty is allowed to the Lutheran subjects, 
 but that liberty does not include [facilities for proselytizing ; 
 nothing of that kind can be allowed in Russia. " Never will 
 " Russia allow the Orthodox Church to be robbed of its 
 " children. Russia's sacred Duty is to keep from the Orthodox 
 " Church all, that can menace her security." The Roman 
 Catholics complain bitterly of disabilities in Poland. Dissenters 
 from the Orthodox Church have to reckon on a good deal of 
 persecution. Jews are grossly ill-treated. Severe punishment 
 falls upon offenders against the Protectionist Laws of the 
 Orthodox Church. Some years ago an agent of the British 
 and Foreign Bible Society, a Protestant Armenian, occupied 
 in translating the Scriptures, was banished with his wife and 
 children from Tiflis to Orenburg, where he was permitted to 
 continue his Duties. In their attempts to convert the non- 
 Christian inhabitants of Central Asia they conduct their 
 operations in the Russian Language, and the literature, which 
 they publish, is in that Language, totally unintelligible to the 
 ignorant men, women, and children. 
 
 The Sultan of Turkey appears to advantage, when contrasted 
 with his Christian neighbour. The Christian inhabitants have 
 for more than a century enjoyed full Toleration under the 
 guarantee of the Great Powers of Europe, and Protestant Mis- 
 sionaries have full license to proselyte them : but up to the time 
 
( 220 ) 
 
 of the Crimean War in theory, if not practice, a Mahometan, if 
 he became a Christian, suffered death. It seems incredible, 
 that the Great Powers of Europe should have submitted so 
 long to such an insult to their Faith. 
 
 The following letter, dated February 12, 1856, of Fuad Pasha 
 to the British Ambassador at Constantinople defines the existing 
 law : " The official communications, made formerly by your 
 " Excellency, both in writing and verbally, upon the subject of 
 " Religious matters, have been taken into minute consideration. 
 " The important and friendly services, which the Porte has at 
 " all times, and more particularly of late, experienced on the 
 " part of her illustrious Allies, the English and other Govern- 
 " ments, are appreciated in the highest degree by His Majesty 
 " the Sultan, and the feeling of gratitude inspired by them will 
 " remain for ever impressed upon the heart of the Ottoman 
 " Nation. In addition to the sincere desire entertained by the 
 " Porte to meet as far as possible the friendly representations of 
 " her Allies by satisfactory measures, she is also well acquainted 
 " with the spirit of the age, and she hastens accordingly, with 
 " the Imperial sanction, to communicate the decision adopted 
 " regarding the above point. In consequence, the assurances 
 " formerly given to the British and French Governments with 
 " reference to the question of Renegades are at present renewed, 
 " and confirmed afresh, while an additional assurance is declared 
 " and made known, that the terms of the decision at that time 
 " adopted will be held absolutely to comprise all Renegades. It is 
 " sincerely hoped, that this decision, which is a new and practical 
 " proof of the Porte's refraining on all occasions from senselessly 
 " thwarting, or opposing, measures of a practical character, will 
 " meet with the satisfaction of your illustrious Allies." 
 
 Lord Stratford de Redcliffe to the Earl of Clarendon. 
 
 Constantinople, February 12, 1856. 
 
 '■' My Lord, — I have received from Fuad Pasha the note, 
 " which be had promised in reply to my representations, and 
 " demands, on the subject of Religious opinions and the 
 " impunity of Renegades. Inclosed herewith is an English 
 " translation of it. Your Lordship will perceive, that the Porte 
 " acknowledges and confirms its former declaration respecting 
 " Renegades, and extends it expressly to all, including Mussal- 
 " mans, though not mentioned by name. It is an official note, 
 " signed by the Secretary of State, and given expressly with the 
 " Sultan's sanction. Taken into consideration with the article 
 " recommended by the three Representatives, adopted by the 
 " Porte, and inserted in the Sultan's firman invested with th& 
 
( 221 ) 
 
 ■" Hatti-Sherif, it may be received, as covering the whole of 
 " your Lordship's requisition. If this impression of mine should 
 " not be confirmed by Her Majesty's Government, the door is 
 " open for a return to the question ; but, if no one is to be 
 " molested on account of the Religion he professes, and no one 
 " to be punished as a Renegade whatever form of faith he denies, 
 " I do not see what room there can possibly be for any practical 
 " persecutions in Future within the limits of the Sultan's Empire. 
 " The Law of the Koran is not abolished, it is true, respecting 
 " Renegades, and the Sultan's Ministers affirm, that such a 
 " stretch of authority would exceed even His Majesty's legal 
 " Power. But however that may be, the practical application 
 " of it is renounced by means of a public document, and Her 
 " Majesty's Government would at any time be justified in com- 
 " plaining of a breach of engagement, if the Porte were to 
 " authorize, or to permit, any exception to its own official 
 " declaration." 
 
 This, as far as regards the Empire of Turkey, puts an end to 
 any idea of a Mahometan convert being legally assailed : of 
 course he is still in danger of popular indignation, and social 
 disfavour. 
 
 The Empire of China at the extreme East of Asia has for 
 many years been in the same position as the Empire of Turkey 
 on the extreme West. China has also advanced on the course 
 of Toleration, as evidenced by the following Proclamation, 
 one of a series issued in the different Provinces : 
 
 Proclamation of Wei, Governor of Cheh-kiang. 
 
 " In the 3rd Moon of the present year (April, 1886), instruc- 
 " tions to the following effect were received from the Tsung-li 
 " Yamen : 
 
 " The protection of Christian Chinese being provided for in 
 " the Treaties, and friendly relations having now been re- 
 " established between China and France, it becomes our duty 
 " to draw attention to the Imperial Decree issued in the 7th 
 " Moon of the 10th year of Kuang Hsu (August, 1884), which 
 " laid down that wherever there was a Chapel, proclamations 
 " should be issued with a view to securing harmony between 
 " the people and the converts. 
 
 " At the time of the receipt of this dispatch, I gave the 
 " necessary directions ; but, passing as they would through many 
 " hands, there has of course been danger of delay or error in 
 " their execution, and a possibility of the proclamation not 
 " having been uniformly promulgated. 
 
 " In respectful furtherance, therefore, of the benevolent 
 " intentions of the- State, I feel it incumbent on me again to 
 
( 222 ) 
 
 " put the matter in plain terms. Know, therefore, all men of 
 " whatsoever sort or condition, that the sole object of establishing 
 " Chapels of the various Nationalities is to exhort men to virtue. 
 " Those who embrace Christianity, are, as before, Chinese subjects, 
 " and both converts and people should peacefully pursue their 
 " calling, and not let mutual jealousies be the cause of strife 
 " between them. If cases come before the Courts, the local 
 " Authority should investigate them impartially, having regard 
 " only to the merits of the case, and not as to whether the 
 " litigant is a convert or not, and should give his decision 
 " quickly. Thus neither party will inflict injury on the other, 
 " each will pursue in peace and quietude his calling, and the 
 " desire of the State to include in its kindly benevolence the 
 " men from afar [foreign Missionaries] equally with its own 
 " people, will not, I trust, be frustrated. 
 
 " From the date of this Proclamation, any lawless vagabonds, 
 " who make trouble, or stir up strife without a cause, shall be 
 " punished with the utmost rigour of the Law. No mercy will 
 " be shown. So beware ! 
 
 " 1 2th Year of Kuang-Hsu, qth Moon, 16/h Day." 
 (October 13th, 1886.) 
 
 It is notorious that this Policy is not the result entirely of 
 enlightenment, or conviction, but of a determination to free 
 the Empire from the overbearing claim of France to be the 
 Protector of all Roman Catholic Christians of whatever 
 nationality. It was proposed at first to place their interests' 
 under the Protection of the Pope : the French Government 
 resisted this. The Emperor of China, by declaring Toleration of 
 the Christian Religion, so long as the converts still remained his 
 subjects with no change in their political status, cut at the root of 
 the difficulty entirely and for all times. So " per fas et nefas" 
 we can record a distinct progress of Chinese Policy in the right 
 direction. 
 
 In the comparatively small and unimportant Kingdom of 
 Japan the same results have been arrived at, but in a more sound, 
 legitimate, and commendable, way. The story of the progress 
 of Religious liberty in Japan is one of the most interesting on 
 record. There was no bloodshed, no dispatch of gunboats, no 
 threats, or bullying. In i860 the Missionaries were viewed by 
 the Government with suspicion : the people, though not hostile, 
 were timid. Christianity was dreaded as a pestilential Creed, 
 the introduction of which would bring manifold evils on the 
 country. Spies watched the Missionaries. In 1869 a conviction 
 began to grow, that Protestantism was less harmful than either 
 Roman Catholicism or the Russo-Greek Church, but the Law 
 
( 223 ) 
 
 against Christianity was enforced by the Authorities. When the 
 new constitution of the Empire was formed, new enactments 
 were posted upon the notice-boards in every town and village, 
 to the effect, that the evil sect, called Christian, is strictly 
 prohibited. 
 
 In 1873, all these notifications were withdrawn from the 
 notice-boards ; but the petiple were warned, that the Law was not 
 changed. The Central Government had clearly adopted a 
 liberal Policy, but the local Officials were slow to follow; but 
 eventually all Official opposition ceased, and Toleration became 
 virtually complete. Buildings for Christian Worship by Natives 
 began to be erected : no obstacles were placed in the way of 
 preaching: theatres and large buildings were made use of: 
 Christian literature was handed about by Colporteurs. 
 
 In 1884, less than twelve years after the removal of the Edicts 
 from the notice-boards, the final step was taken, and the top- 
 stone of the edifice of Religious Toleration laid by the issue 
 of notifications in regard to registration and burial. Public 
 Cemeteries were open to all. In fact, Heathen Japan arrived 
 at a level of Christian liberty, not yet fully attained in some 
 portions of so-called Christian Europe, where the Priests in the 
 name of their Religion still lacerate the feelings of the relatives 
 of the deceased in the bitterest moment of their bereavement. 
 Thus, in Japan, within thirty years of Commodore Perry's first 
 Treaty, and twenty-five years of the opening of the Ports, the 
 last obstacles of Christian liberty were removed, and perfect 
 Religious equality was established, without any actual reference 
 to Christianity by name ; thus disarming all possible opposition. 
 It must be recollected, that the Representatives of Christian 
 States, and Christian Churches, have, throughout in Japan acted 
 with caution and self-restraint ; and thus in a perfectly legitimate 
 manner, by the gradual change of public opinion, under the 
 guidance of enlightened Rulers, by the overruling Grace of God, 
 there has been secured for Japan perfect liberty of conscience in 
 matters of Religion. Many different Missionary Societies are 
 at work, but a gradual consolidation of Churches is in progress : 
 the whole Bible has been translated, and perfect harmony is 
 maintained. 
 
 It need scarcely be stated, that the whole of British India, 
 both the dominions of Her Majesty, and the Protected Inde- 
 pendent States, enjoy Toleration in the highest possible form. 
 In the dispatch of the Secretary of State occurs the never-to-be 
 forgotten passage, that " the Duty of doing unto others what we 
 wish men to do unto us,_ underlies all true Religion." The 
 words of the Victoria Proclamation of November 1, 1858, which 
 I myself had a part in promulgating in Northern India, ran as 
 follows : " Firmly relying on the Truth of Christianity, and 
 
( 224 ) 
 
 " acknowledging with gratitude the solace of Religion, We 
 " disclaim alike the Right and Desire to impose Our convictions 
 " on any of Our Subjects. We declare it to be Our Royal Will 
 " and Pleasure, that none be in any wise favoured, none 
 " molested, or disquieted, by reason of their Religious Faith, or 
 " observances, but that all shall alike enjoy the equal and 
 " impartial Protection of the Law : and We do strictly charge 
 " and enjoin all those, who may be in Authority under Us, that 
 " they abstain from all interference with the Religious Belief, 
 " or Worship, of any of Our Subjects on pain of Our highest 
 " Displeasure. 
 
 "And it is Our further Will, that as far as may be, Our 
 " Subjects, of whatever Race or Creed, be freely and impartially 
 " admitted to Offices in Our Service, the Duties of which they 
 " may be qualified by their Education, ability, and integrity duly 
 " to discharge." 
 
 How grand and knightly seems the image of Toleration thus 
 raised before the eyes of a subject people by their conquerors in 
 the hour of victory ! How jealous we should be of any infringe- 
 ment of this Charter by evil men, by Missionary enthusiasts, or 
 by despotic Governments ! Toleration means Toleration of every 
 form of Belief or Unbelief: it is impossible to draw any inter- 
 mediate line, and to say, that such and such opinions shall be 
 tolerated, and such and such persecuted, and that a negative 
 system. of persecution should be adopted of exclusion from 
 office, or denial of privilege to take the place of the old and 
 exploded forms of positive persecution. All are equally, hope- 
 lessly, radically, bad, and unworthy of a Christian man, for God 
 is a Spirit to be worshipped in Spirit and Truth. 
 
 There are other countries, like Persia, where Toleration is 
 doubtful : other forms of belief are tolerated, but conversion of 
 a Mahometan would be followed by heavy penalties. In Bar- 
 barous countries Toleration is guaranteed by no Law, and is 
 capricious : however, very often complete Toleration is experi- 
 enced. As a rule the only thoroughgoing Religious Persecutors 
 have been Mahometans or Christians. 
 
 The Missionaries who enjoy Toleration, should be tolerant to 
 others. From want of reflection they often forget this rule. 
 They are convinced of the Truth of their Holy Religion, and the 
 falseness of any other view of the matter : but so is the Roman 
 Catholic, the Mahometan, the Hindu, and even the poor Nature- 
 worshipper. In every case the Missionary should reflect upon 
 the principle of doing unto others what he would wish that men 
 should do unto him, and mentally conjure up the vision of how 
 he would like the measure, which he metes out to others, to be 
 meted out to himself. I need scarcely add, that there is extreme 
 political danger in a departure from the principles of Toleration, 
 
( 225 ) 
 
 but I would dwell not on the Danger, but on the Wrong. It is 
 " Malum per se " in the strongest sense. I give some instances, 
 merely as illustrations. 
 
 In Banaras in Upper India is a Mission, and a learned young 
 Brahmin had been, after a great struggle, converted and baptized : 
 his wife's family refused to let her join him. A tumult about 
 some matter happened to arise in that City, and I went down 
 with troops to quell it : availing themselves of the confusion, 
 some members of the Mission went to the house of the wife, 
 and carried her off, with her consent, and fortunately without 
 bloodshed. That same evening I met the Missionary's wife 
 driving in a carriage with a young girl, and she told me who 
 she was, how she had been captured, and that she had given her 
 English food, and thus destroyed her caste. This seemed to me 
 contrary to all laws, Human and Divine : had the parents com- 
 plained, I must have passed a heavy sentence upon the Mis- 
 sionary party, who had invaded a Brahmin's house, kidnapped 
 a woman, and wilfully destroyed her caste. What would they 
 have thought, if a party of Mahometans had invaded the house 
 of a Missionary, carried off his little boy, and circumcised him ? 
 The poor little girl died in childbed a few months afterwards, 
 and the husband never married again. 
 
 How deeply the Christian Church still resents the appropri- 
 ation of the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople to be a 
 Mosque, the Church at Damascus to the same purpose, and the 
 many instances of the desecration of Christian places of Worship 
 to another Religion ! And yet I read of this happening in the 
 centre of China : " The whole body of Managers of the Temple, 
 " together with the whole body of villagers, deliberating in a 
 " public capacity, voluntarily agree to make over the Temple- 
 " buildings to the Church of Christ, for the purpose of fitting 
 " up a Meeting-house, in order to the public preaching of the 
 " sacred doctrine, and for the purpose of establishing a public 
 " School, that the youth of the village may become virtuous, a 
 " benefit to future generations. The whole is to belong to the 
 " Church, and subject to its control, for a possession for ever, and 
 " the land belonging to the Temple is made over to the Chapel- 
 " keeper, Chu Sien k'o, and his descendants, to be cultivated as 
 " his own, and the Church is not at liberty to sell the same. 
 
 " The destruction of the Idols was to be begun to-day, and 
 " after preaching at a neighbouring fair I went over there to 
 " attend the funeral, for they had decided to bury them. The 
 " Chinese have a saying that money can- move the gods, but 
 " here were about three -score gods moved most effectively 
 " without the expenditure of any cash. For when I reached 
 " there about noon, I found the' work finished and both 
 " Temples empty. 
 
( 226 ) 
 
 " A long cavity was found washed out by the water, into 
 " which they were plunged headlong, and thus, dust as they 
 " were, they returned to dust. The Idols often cost enormous 
 " sums, because the clay is of a peculiar kind, the materials 
 " expensive, such as oil, etc., especially the gilding. Moreover, 
 " it is usual to subscribe a certain amount of silver, which is 
 " incorporated in the body of the Image, and becomes, perhaps, 
 " his heart. In demolishing the gods their hearts were not 
 " found right, for in place of the lungs of silver was found 
 "pewter. Thus the delusions of Idol-Worship were fitly typified 
 " in the frauds of the Idol-makers. They that make them are 
 " like unto them. It was suitable that such Divinities should 
 " end their career by sepulture in a gutter ! 
 
 " A large amount of lumber remains, which, once the plat- 
 " forms for the Idols, will now become benches for our congre- 
 " gation. There are drums, candlesticks, incense-holders, etc., 
 " and several good bells, the largest of which is to be hung up." 
 
 In a conquered country like India this line of conduct, would 
 be dangerous : in China it seems to be madness : but was there . 
 no other land to be purchased ? were there no other houses to 
 be occupied ? could no other material be used for the benches 
 of the congregation ? Surely a day of reprisals will arrive, and 
 who can justify such conduct ? 
 
 We all know in England of the sorrow caused in families, 
 when a young boy or girl falls into the clutches of a designing 
 Roman Catholic Priest, or of a Mormon, and in spite of the 
 prayers of the Parents, is carried off to a Convent, or Home; 
 and the conduct of the Priest is severely censured. Yet how 
 often we read of a case equally cruel in British India ! It is 
 not that a man should not give up all for Christ's sake, but the 
 way, in which it is done, the manner in which it is described by 
 some Missionaries, that indicates the entire absence of Christian 
 Toleration : the parents are spoken of unkindly as instruments 
 of Satan ; and it is forgotten, that the sacred ties of family 
 should, under all circumstances, be respected. Christian men 
 should do Christian things in a Christian manner. If the young 
 convert has Faith, we know that, like the young Martyrs and 
 Confessors in the early Centuries, he will be supported in his 
 trial. The Church should now, as then, offer prayers in behalf 
 of such sufferers for Christ's sake ; the young convert should be 
 allowed to return to his home. The Spirit of the Lord can 
 watch over its own children. More zeal than Charity is often 
 manifested, because the Missionary forgets, that the Heathen 
 and Mahometan are men of like passions with ourselves, neither 
 better nor worse, and that they love their offspring as much 
 as we do. It is a terrible time for a Nation, when it is 
 shaking off its old Creed, and adopting a new one ; when its 
 
( 227 ) 
 
 Moral and Religious system is in the throes and agonies of 
 a new birth. Terrible is the struggle, through which bold 
 spirits, and tender hearts, have to pass. It seems so simple 
 to be a Christian, when we are born so ; but, when the leaven 
 begins to work in a non-Christian Soul, and a wall of separation 
 is built up between him and the Past, when the gods of his 
 Parents, and his Friends, are no longer his gods, what domestic 
 misery is caused ! On the ruins of how many homes were the 
 first altars of Christ raised ? Wives left their husbands ; old 
 fathers cursed their sons, because they dared to be wiser than 
 their Parents. Sons waited till the death of their Fathers before 
 they dared to own Christ. Old associations, old friendships, 
 old greetings on the steps of the Temple, old. meetings at the 
 Village-Saturnalia, sweet memories connected with the Past, 
 the Dead, with Groves on Hill-tops, and happy days in the 
 dawn of their career, all are swept away : the outer world loses 
 all its poetic imagery : the very humblest trembles at the thought 
 of being cut off from his kith and kin, at being received with 
 a curse at doors where, since he was a child, he was greeted 
 with blessings, to be pointed out in the streets as a renegade, to 
 be nicknamed as a reprobate, to be severed from all he loves. 
 These are the trials, of which the Missionary seems to make no 
 account : the Heathen and Mahometan are described as children 
 of Satan, and deserve no quarter, no pity, not even gentle words 
 of consolation. 
 
 The tender-hearted Christian feels even for the bitterest 
 enemy to the name of Christ : it is presumed, that Asiatics and 
 Africans, because they are not Christians, have- no Human 
 feelings : let this Story of the Mother and Sisters of Bishop 
 Samuel Crowther be read : " My mother, from whom I was 
 " torn away about five-and-twenty years ago, came with my 
 " brother in quest of me. When she saw me she trembled, 
 " she could not believe her own eyes. We grasped one another, 
 " looking at each other with silence and great astonishment ; 
 " big tears rolled down her emaciated cheeks. A great number 
 " of people soon came together. She trembled as she held me 
 " by the hand, and called me by the familiar names by which 
 " I well remembered I used to be called by my grandmother, 
 " who has since died in Slavery. We could not say much, but 
 " sat still, and cast now and then an affectionate look at one 
 " another, a look which violence and oppression had long 
 " checked, an affection which had nearly been extinguished 
 " by the long space of twenty-five years. My two sisters, who 
 " were captured with us, are both with my mother, who takes 
 " care of them and her grandchildren in a small town not far 
 " from hence, called Abaka. Thus unsought for, after all search 
 " for me had failed, God has brought us together again, and 
 " turned our sorrow into joy." 
 
( 228 ) 
 
 I have already alluded in full to the want of Toleration shown 
 by the Missionary in matters of State-Education, how he would 
 wish to have the Bible taught in Schools maintained by taxation 
 of the Heathen, and Public Instruction made a means of 
 conversion. There is no chance of such a Policy being carried 
 out. A great improvement has taken place in their manner of 
 addressing the Heathen. Insults are no longer heaped upon 
 Heathen Divinities. Loving words, wise and gentle reasonings, 
 friendly discussions, have taken the place of wholesale and 
 foolish abuse. I myself heard in my youth a Missionary tell 
 a crowd of Hindus, " that their gods were dung," and they 
 laughed at him ; but this was not the way to win their heaits. 
 
 An attempt was once made in Upper India to admit 
 Missionaries into the Public Gaols to address the prisoners. I 
 was strongly opposed to this, and it was forbidden. Clearly 
 prisoners in Gaol are not free agents, and a Gaol is not the 
 proper place for the preaching and teaching of the Gospel 
 to the Heathen. What would be thought, if, in a Roman 
 Catholic country, a Protestant prisoner had the horrors of 
 confinement interrupted by having to listen to attempts to 
 convert him from his Faith ? All such devices are contrary to 
 Toleration. 
 
 It is not quite easy to find the exact line to draw. A third 
 of a century ago, when I held high offices in the Panjab, I main- 
 tained my right to attend the Baptism of Native converts at the 
 Mission Chapel at Amritsar, and the Viceroy, Lord Canning, 
 who had called upon me to explain my conduct, admitted my 
 right. My position was, that the Hindu and Mahometan 
 Officials made no scruples in attending the ceremonial of their 
 Religions, and I had the same right. I distinctly, however, 
 admitted, that it would not be judicious in a high Official to 
 attend the Baptism of a converted soldier of the Native Army, 
 as entirely different considerations entered into such a case. 
 While carefully observing my Duty, not to interfere by my 
 Official acts in the Religious affairs of any Sect, I maintained 
 my right to attend on the Religious ceremonies of my own 
 Church, so long as the Public Service was in no way affected, 
 or the principles of Toleration compromised. This is now an 
 admitted precedent for this class of case. 
 
 Sir H. Maine states the principle clearly : "We will not force 
 " any man to be a Christian ; we will not tempt any man to be 
 " a Christian : but if he choose to be a Christian, it would be 
 " shameful, if we did not apply to him, and his, those principles 
 " of equal dealing between man and man, of which we in India 
 " are the sole depositories." 
 
 On the other hand, a Christian should firmly abstain from 
 any personal concession to a false Religion. The well-known 
 
( 229 ) 
 
 Colonel Skinner, in the beginning of the century, built a 
 Church, a Mosque, and a Hindu Temple, as, in fact, he had no 
 Religion at all. In India I never knew. of any Public Officer 
 condescending to such a departure from respect to his own 
 Religion, while at the same time, cold, but unsympathetic, 
 respect is always exhibited to the Religion of the Natives. 
 When the Viceroy, Lord Canning, visited Amritsar, 1 persuaded 
 him not to place the usual bag of Rupees on the floor of the 
 great Temple of the Sikhs, but the Priests went afterwards to 
 the Foreign Office, and the money was given them. 
 
 As time goes on, all these Official compliments to non-Christian 
 places of Worship will be discontinued, or perhaps have been so. 
 They had no Religious, but only a Political, signification. It 
 was certainly wrong, and contrary to a just view of Toleration, 
 to require the Christian soldiers of the British Army to be drawn 
 up, and salute the sacred carpet, on its road from Cairo to 
 Mekka. This is just the one thing that ought to have been 
 sternly resisted. In the French Colony of Algeria I remarked 
 with regret, that at one place a Mosque had been utilized for 
 the public Service, and at another the Government had erected 
 a Mosque at the public expense. Here a double error was com- 
 mitted. I read in the letters of General Gordon at Khartum, 
 published by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, that he had a Mosque cleared, 
 and repaired, and thought that it was a great coup, and he also 
 paid the expenses of the circumcision of a boy ; I trust that it 
 was not a Christian boy. Still in both cases he committed a 
 grave error, which would have cost him his appointment, had he 
 been in India. In Egypt Englishmen seem to forget that they 
 are Christians. In British India this is never forgotten. 
 
 It always pains me to see the Idols, and objects of Worship, 
 of Heathen people, exhibited for purposes of derision before a 
 Christian audience : the poor people, who made them, believed 
 in the existence of a Supernatural Power, greater than them- 
 selves, and tried to conciliate it. They felt after God, if haply 
 they could find Him. They had never the opportunity of knowing 
 better. They were not advanced in Arts or Science, but they 
 gave of their best to their gods, and generation after generation 
 had prayed before those symbols of Divinity, returning thanks 
 for abundant Harvests, or trying to appease anger in times of 
 Famine and Pestilence. There is nothing to laugh at in these 
 attempts of the Soul of Man, however imperfectly, to approach 
 the great Controller of Human events. Some, perhaps, of those, 
 who laugh at the poor savages' Superstition, have arrived at the 
 more dangerous pinnacle of Human Wisdom, and doubt whether 
 a God exists at all. Is it not better to say to the non-Christians 
 the words, which Paul said to the Athenians : " Whom ye 
 ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you," and accept the 
 
( 230 ) 
 
 fact, that the non-Christian world worshipped the same great (to 
 them) Unknown Power, but known to us through Christ ? Paul 
 quotes two Greek Poets, Aratus and Theognis : 
 
 " tov ryap ryeVos ea/JLev." 
 
 " We are the offspring of the same Jehovah, Jove, or Lord." 
 
 I sum up the result of my experience. The Public Officer 
 should assist at no Heathen Procession (unless he is on duty 
 to keep the peace), he should make no offerings at Heathen 
 Temples, allow no garlands, as in old times, to be placed round 
 his neck at Heathen festivals : in no way, directly or indirectly, 
 should he allow himself to be mixed up in the Worship of Idols : 
 he should receive the Priests, if they visit him, as subjects of 
 Her Majesty, and very jolly fellows some of them are. If he 
 visits a Temple, or Mosque, on Duty or pleasure, if requested, 
 he should take off his shoes out of respect to the conscience of 
 the Worshippers, just as a non-Christian in Europe takes off his 
 hat in a Church. If he lives in the midst of the people in daily 
 contact, he will do well to abstain from beef, swine's flesh, and 
 liquor, not for his own conscience, but for the conscience of 
 those, over whom he wishes to exercise an influence for good. 
 He should not be ashamed to be seen in prayer, but should not 
 do so ostentatiously : he should religiously observe the Sabbath, 
 and, setting a watch over his life and his conduct, walk before 
 the Mahometan and the Heathen as a man, who fears and Loves 
 the Lord, and Loves his neighbour also, and this includes the 
 whole Duty of man. A good Hindu and good Mahometan are 
 praised by their neighbours, and still more a good Christian. 
 
 The Missionary sometimes speaks depreciatingly of the 
 Christian, Hindu, and Mahometan Official, because they will 
 not listen to his short-sighted and one-sided requests. It would 
 be a bad day, if a weak Magistrate were to listen to them. An 
 experienced Missionary in the Panj&b of forty years' standing 
 remarked, that he had never once asked anything of a Magistrate. 
 The Mahometan Kadi would as a matter of course befriend his 
 co-religionists in a suit before him, because in his intolerance he 
 looks on the professor of any other Religion as dogs ; but this is 
 just what a British Official is charged not to do, but to maintain 
 a sovereign disregard of the Religious tenets of the litigants. 
 Any other policy engenders deep discontent, and produces among 
 the converts a crop of rare hypocrites and dissemblers. The 
 Duty of the Authorities is to give the Missionaries a fair field 
 and free play, and to enforce equitable Laws, by which crime is 
 defined, and rights are maintained of Freedom of Education, 
 Freedom of Religion, personal liberty of choice, and of change, 
 when a certain age has been obtained : till then the patria 
 
( 231 ) 
 
 potestas must be supported : and, when that change has been 
 made, no loss of property, or deprivation of rights, follow. But 
 the peace of families must not be wantonly disturbed by fanatics, 
 or the sanctity of dwelling-houses invaded by intruders : no 
 boycotting must be allowed, in the name of Religion and Morality, 
 to interfere with the rights of the humblest before God and 
 Man, whether the offender be Mahometan or Christian, 
 
 One other topic remains. When a Missionary is in danger 
 from the tyranny of a Native Ruler, the cry is for the inter- 
 ference of the Arm of the Flesh. If there be one thing, which 
 the Missionary puts forward more than another, it is that he has 
 counted the cost, and carries his life in his hands. He asks no 
 leave of Caesar ; he would resent any interference of Czesar, if he 
 attempted to arrest his progress : great dissatisfaction is always 
 expressed against the Government of British India because it 
 will not allow any Missionaries to cross the boundary into 
 Afghanistan. Under what possible circumstances, then, can 
 those, who thoroughly understand the theory, upon which 
 Missions are based, talk about sending armies to rescue 
 Missionaries. 
 
 The Political Relations with Afghanistan are undergoing a 
 change, and it is within the bounds of possibility, that the work 
 may advance among Mahometans, but the real object of the 
 Missionary was to get at a barbarous Nature-worshipping 
 Highland Tribe, called the Siah-Posh, or " black-clothed," who 
 are credited with being descendants of a portion of the Army 
 of Alexander the Great, and who never accepted Islam. The 
 settlement of the British and Afghanistan boundary has placed 
 this tribe under the Political Rule of the Amir, just as it 
 has placed certain tracts, such as Chitral, under the Political 
 Rule of British India. But here lies the difference : The British 
 do not care what are the Religious views of their subjects, so 
 long as they obey the Law. The Afghans have for generations 
 called this unhappy tribe of Nature - worshippers Kdfir, or 
 unbeliever, and ostensibly they are determined to bring them 
 into subjection, and this last word means obedience to the Law, 
 and acceptance of Islam, and may eventuate in extermination, 
 or forced migration of survivors into British Dominions. 
 
 The proper attitude of a Missionary is that of pitying Love to 
 a dying world, of a medical man called in to a patient suffering 
 under a desperate disease : there is no room for blame or abuse, 
 or threats : it is not the fault of the Heathen, but his mis- 
 fortune : it is of no use entering into discussions on abstract 
 questions, or quoting European Authorities, or talking of the 
 greatness of England : if the Gospel-Message were brought by 
 the Maori of New Zealand, or the Hottentot of South Africa, it 
 would be equally True. The converts should not form a new 
 
( 232 ) 
 
 class of citizens, but remain unchanged in dress, Language, 
 Education, and lawful occupation. The Christian Religion 
 exhibits a Code of the highest Morality. The Servant of God 
 must not use unholy means to attain Holy ends : he must not 
 steal into widows' homes, or, without the full knowledge of the 
 Parents, set about the conversion of children in their tender 
 years ; it is better in most cases to wait, till the child is of full 
 age, and give no occasion to the enemy for charges of fraud, or 
 temptation, or pressure, or underhand methods. It must be 
 thoroughly understood, that the sole object of the Mission- 
 School is to effect conversions, and that the raison d'etre of the 
 Missionary is the same. Christ's net is spread over the world 
 to catch Souls, but it is not the night-line of the Poacher, or 
 the casting-net of armed intruders : it is spread in midday, 
 under the light of the sun, without injury to the rights of 
 others : " In Thy Name, Lord, we will cast our nets.'' 
 
 If I were to charge a Missionary with having a taste for in- 
 tolerant persecution, he would resent it, but I quote the following 
 passage written in 1859 in a Newspaper: " If they would speak 
 out, something of this sort is at the bottom of the minds of 
 not a few earnest and sincere Religious people among us. 
 India is given to us as a trust by God for one, and only one, 
 purpose : to further His glory and to spread His name. We 
 cannot and dp not discharge our Commission, unless we 
 ' compel them to come in.' If we are true believers, we must 
 not only boldly proclaim whose we are, but we must hold no 
 fellowship with worshippers of devils. Such was the burden 
 of the Fast-Day-Sermons, such is the staple of Missionary 
 Meetings. We reproduce it in no spirit of scoffing, but be- 
 cause it is really the transcript of some very natural and even 
 laudable sentiments of the Religious mind. Nor is it any in- 
 novation in Religious History. It is absurd to say, that at the 
 root of all the persecution and fanaticism, which have desolated 
 the earth in the name of the Gospel, there was not this kernel 
 of earnest, hearty zeal. The Spanish propagandism in South 
 America, the Crusades, the persecutions of the Jews, the raids 
 on the Covenanters, these cruel things were not done for 
 cruelty's sake. They began very often, perhaps generally, in 
 a deep sense of the blessedness of the Gospel, and in motives 
 as pure, and as alien from the feelings of a mere persecutor, 
 as those of the Church Missionary petitioners. It was simply, 
 because they had formed no definite plan, that Missions became 
 persecutions. It is by no means clear, that even Mahomet's 
 plan of preaching Islam by fire" and sword was, in like manner, 
 not forced upon him by circumstances. And it is because we 
 are disgusted by the scanty ears of the Indian harvest, that 
 we are now calling for more active measures." 
 
( 233 ) 
 
 Anybody who reads carefully that valuable book, " Turning 
 Points of General Church History," by Dr. Cutts, S.P.C.K., 1890, 
 will find out, that Europe beyond the Alps was converted to 
 Christianity by most intolerable cruelty, such as would be im- 
 possible now in British India. We need not be surprised at 
 the cruelty of the Inquisition at the time of the Reformation, for 
 the Policy adopted then was only on the usual precedent of 
 previous centuries : " Every heretic must be killed." 
 
 The greatest enemy to Christian Missions is he, who attempts 
 to use the Arm of the Flesh, directly, or indirectly, by foreign 
 invasion, or by Treaty, or by Municipal Government, or Social 
 disabilities, to advance the cause: the Mahometans tried it, and 
 have failed ; the Hindu and Buddhist never tried it, and, though 
 politically weak, have the greatest number of Religious adherents. 
 The Church of Rome tried it, and lost all the energetic, and 
 wealthy, and really Religious races of Europe ; the Greek Church 
 never tried it. If the Truth, that is in Jesus, cannot find its 
 way to the hearts of men by fair means, it will never do so by 
 foul means. The strength of the Church of Christ is in its 
 interior: it cannot be held up by carnal external buttresses. 
 When the Missionary leans on the Arm of the Flesh, the Arm 
 of the Lord is shortened : Not by Might, not by Human Wisdom, 
 but by the Spirit of God ! 
 
 July, 1888-1895. 
 
 2. The Relation of Missionaries to great European 
 or Asiatic Governments. 
 
 A period has arrived in the History of Missions to the non- 
 Christian world, when it is as well to reflect calmly, whether it 
 be wise or just, or consistent with the principles of the Religion 
 which it is our object to extend, to do what may be generally 
 called "lean on the Arm of the Flesh," and permit Missionaries 
 and their converts to appeal to Treaties, and solicit the protection 
 of the Powers that be. And it is more particularly necessary for 
 British Missionaries to reflect upon this subject, as it is not the 
 British Religion, which they are preaching, but the Christian, and 
 one that is equally true whether the Message be delivered by 
 a British Missionary, who has behind him the force of a giant, 
 or by the Swedish, Danish, or Swiss Missionary, who have to 
 depend only upon the goodness of their cause, and the protection 
 of their Divine Master. 
 
 I purposely omit any allusion to any particular Societies, or 
 particular instances of appeals to the British Government. 
 
( 234 ) 
 
 Missions to the Natives of Asia and Africa and Oceania are 
 still, as it were, in their infancy, but may be expected to assume 
 proportions in the next generation of a magnitude far beyond 
 the wildest dreams, and it will be an unmixed blessing to them, 
 both in their temporal and Spiritual matters, that God should 
 have put in into the heart of Christian Nations to send out the 
 very salt of their people to settle amidst the Heathen, not for 
 any purpose of Commerce or conquest, but from motives of 
 pure benevolence. Now Missions may be planted, and as 
 a fact, have been planted, in countries, where Political circum- 
 stances represent two very distinct varieties : 
 
 (i) Where the Political Power is entirely in the hands of 
 a Civilized European Government totally independent 
 of foreign control. 
 
 (2) Where there is a Government established upon a basis 
 of Asiatic Civilization, nominally independent, but 
 circumscribed in its action by Treaties, and the 
 powerful logic of Ships and Gunboats of foreign 
 Nations. ' 
 
 It is no longer a matter of surprise to me, that Russia, Austria 
 and France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, object to the appearance 
 of a Missionary in their dominions or their Colonies. The 
 Governments of these countries have only to mark the conduct 
 of the Missionaries in British India, China, and Turkey. The 
 most mistaken assertions are made in the most unscrupulous 
 way. Every travelling grievance-monger quotes a Missionary 
 as his authority. Holding as we do the Empire of British 
 India with a very small European Army, which has to be renewed 
 within a fearfully brief period, and the control of which is an 
 anxious problem, it might have been imagined, that those, who 
 live under the protection of that Army, would have been cautious 
 in their mode of making statements. I can recollect the time 
 when a portion of the British Army, the European soldiers, 
 mutinied upon a purely regimental matter, and the Authorities 
 were in a frightful dilemma : what would become of the Mis- 
 sionaries, their Schools, and their Chapels, and converts, if 
 the British soldiers, in resentment for the hard things said by 
 Missionaries about them, were to mutiny ? There must indeed 
 be a deep feeling of indignation throughout military circles, 
 especially when an American citizen at a great Meeting in 
 Exeter Hall is put forward to second a Resolution condemning 
 the British Army as vicious and disreputable, and to state 
 broadly, that the conduct of the Government of India was worse 
 than the Bulgarian atrocities of the Turks, and that the British 
 deserve to be turned out of India bag and baggage. A British 
 
( 235 ) 
 
 Missionary audience received these remarks with applause, and 
 a paid servant of the British State, Sir Arthur Blackwood, put the 
 Resolution thus supported to the Meeting and was not ashamed. 
 
 The Empire of British India presents a unique instance of 
 the first variety. There is no country in the world, and never 
 has been in the annals of History, where such entire liberty 
 is given to the preacher of Spiritual Truths either by word of 
 mouth or by printed matter. No permission is required or 
 asked for. Protection of person and property, absolute and 
 unrestricted, is conceded. Property in land may be purchased 
 or leased ; no law of mortmain, no legal incapacity of any 
 kind exists ; if the Mahometan, or Buddhist, or Brahmoist, 
 were to set on foot Missions, the magistrate, Gallio-like, would 
 care not for such things. On the other hand, Civil and 
 Religious liberty is absolutely guaranteed to all classes : so 
 long as the peace is preserved, and the rights of other subjects 
 are respected, religionists of all kinds may erect places of 
 worship, may ring bells, and fire guns, lead out long pro- 
 cessions, and go upon distant pilgrimages, without let or 
 hindrance. If, however, the preacher of one set of Spiritual 
 doctrines should attempt to erect a place of Worship or assembly, 
 in offensive proximity to that of another ; if any act of illegal 
 provocation or insult to the feelings of any portion of Her 
 Majesty's subjects were to be committed under the guise of 
 Religion, the Government would promptly interfere to antici- 
 pate the destruction of property or the shedding of blood. 
 To the honour of Christian Missionaries in British India, be 
 it said, no such act has ever been attempted by them ; no 
 improper applications to a Magistrate are made, or if made, 
 would be attended to ; in only one instance do I recollect a case 
 of a Chapel being ordered to be removed by the Government, 
 because it was erected on the edge of a sacred tank. 
 
 In such a Utopia of Missions are the Missionaries satisfied ? 
 Not in the least ! Quo plus habeant eo plus cupiunt. Not even 
 the Government of China or Turkey has been so unsparingly 
 abused by the Missionary as the just and impartial Government 
 of India, which is represented in its Governors, and Councils, 
 and men in authority, by Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jew, 
 Hindu, Mahometan, and Parsi members, not one of whom has 
 ever been known to deviate from the line of strict impartiality in 
 his Official position. The fact is, that the Protestant Missionary 
 in his heart of hearts desires more than a free field to be 
 conceded to him ; he asks for a neutrality in Educational 
 matters benevolent to his way of thinking, but which he would 
 resent, if conceded to the way of thinking of others. If the 
 Jesuits got round the Government, their influence would be 
 denounced. The object of the Government of India is to retain 
 
( 236 ) 
 
 the country in the peaceful enjoyment of civil and Religious 
 liberty ; the Missionary in India should consider the circum- 
 stances of other Heathen countries, and so use his own 
 Christian privilege, as not to interfere with the privilege of 
 others : if we lost India, we should lose the greatest field for 
 Missions that the world ever saw. 
 
 The liberties taken by some Missionaries are extraordinary. 
 An Officer, high in employ, sent me a copy of a letter, which I 
 have before me, actually written by a Missionary to the Prime 
 Minister of the Sovereign- Prince, within whose territory he had 
 with great difficulty obtained leave to open a Hospital, charging 
 him with sending off boat-loads of people to be got rid of 
 feloniously during the night : he admits in the letter, that he 
 had no proof, but could not help thinking, that there was truth 
 in the report. In a lofty style he writes, that he cannot pass 
 over the matter in silence until full inquiry is made, and he (the 
 Missionary) is satisfied that the rumour is false. The Sovereign- 
 Prince ordered an inquiry to be made, and naturally asked for 
 the names of the informants of the Missionary, which he 
 declined to give, and the matter dropped. The question 
 naturally suggests itself, who made the Missionary Ruler or 
 Judge in such a matter ? Can it be a matter of surprise, if a 
 Native Sovereign in India does his best to keep a Missionary 
 out of his territory ? 
 
 A question of rent arose between the tenants and landowners 
 in a Province of India. It would hardly be expected, that a 
 Missionary would take a leading part in a kind of agrarian war. 
 My own opinion was, that his view of the case was the right one, 
 but it was not right for him to have any view at all : in fact, he 
 was acting precisely as the Romish Priests are acting in Ireland 
 now, siding with the tenants against the landowners. He 
 became very popular with one party, but so unpopular with the 
 other, that on a charge being brought he had a sentence of one 
 month in gaol. Now all this must disturb the quite routine of 
 Gospel-preaching, which is the only cause of the existence of 
 the Missionary. So long as the British power is strong and 
 unshaken, India has been open to all comers, and no passports 
 or permissions to sojourn are required. But in time of peril like 
 the Mutinies, passports are required from all foreigners. An 
 amusing case occurred in 1857-8: the American Missionaries, 
 as a matter of form, were called upon to take out passports, and 
 one of them declined, thanking God that he was an Irishman ! 
 This might have surprised anyone not familiar with Missionary 
 life. In a late visit to Damascus I find that the leading 
 Missionary of the Irish Mission was an American, and in Egypt 
 one of the leading Missionaries of the American Mission was a 
 Scotchman. 
 
( 237 ) 
 
 Returning to the main subject, it cannot be too strongly 
 impressed upon Missionaries, that any conduct on their part 
 calculated to weaken, or oppose, or bring disrepute upon, the 
 Government of India, is suicidal to their own prosperity. 
 The old East India Company is blamed because it would not 
 allow Missionaries in India in the beginning of this century. 
 It is clear, that it would not have built up the Empire, had 
 indiscreet Missionaries been at large before the Provinces 
 were well in hand ; and when the power of Great Britain in 
 India becomes weakened, the greatest sufferers will be the 
 Missionaries and the Christian congregations. The Roman 
 Catholic Missionaries have given no trouble in India ; they 
 have been chiefly Italians or Portuguese. The Protestant 
 Missionaries have been exclusively German, American, or 
 British. 
 
 In South Africa a French Protestant Mission settled in 
 Ba-Suto Land. I understood from the late Sir Bartle Frere, 
 that much of the trouble in one of the wars in the Cape Colony 
 arose from the conduct of the French Missionaries. At the 
 Congress of Missionaries at Mildmay in 1878 (Report, p. 86), 
 I read: " Hence, when you Englishmen in 1852 came to fight 
 against the Ba-Suto, we fought against you." 
 
 At the Congress of Missionaries in Exeter Hall in 1888, the 
 Directors of this French Mission justified what they called 
 " Missionary patriotism " ; they took a pride in following a 
 policy of direct hostility to the British Government, and it was 
 difficult to see how this was consistent with the position of a 
 foreign Missionary in British territory. The British and Foreign 
 Bible Society in Christian Love supplied them with a translation 
 of the whole Bible in the Language of the tribe : the President 
 of the French Republic bestowed upon the Chief Director the 
 Legion of Honour for "advancing French interests" (Heaven 
 help the mark!) in British Colonies. The British take these 
 matters coolly as cosmopolites, but the Germans very naturally 
 rigidly exclude French Missionaries from their Colonies. 
 
 How do the French act in their own Colonies ? The French 
 Missionary, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, wherever he 
 goes, puts his nationality offensively forward : the Governor of 
 the French Colony makes the Colony too hot for Missionaries 
 of another Nation. In Algeria and Tunisia the British Mis- 
 sionaries have a precarious existence : the Bible Society, however, 
 is tolerated. In Senegambia there are none but French. From 
 the Gabun Colony South of the Equator, the American Mission, 
 which has done so much good, is being gradually pushed out. 
 In Melanesia the British Missionaries are being expelled from 
 the Loyalty islands, and are threatened in the New Hebrides : 
 one of the chief objections to the French occupation is, that the 
 
( 238 ) 
 
 free action of the Missionaries will be jeopardized. In the 
 Society's islands the French occupation has driven out, or is 
 driving out, the British Mission, which has raised the inhabitants 
 from the position of savages, in which Captain Cook found them. 
 
 Germany has only lately founded Colonies or subject States, 
 and sets about Missions in a way peculiar to herself. One of 
 the most experienced German writers on Missionary topics thus 
 expresses himself: " The opinion of the German African Society 
 " with regard to Missionary Societies, is that they are not un- 
 " selfish attempts to spread the Gospel, but merely handmaids to 
 " Colonial politics : a cow to give milk to the mother country." 
 
 The general conception seems to be as follows : 
 
 (i) Only German Missions in German Colonies. 
 
 (2) The Missionary is to be the Pastor of the German 
 
 Colonist, as well as Evangelist of the Heathen. 
 
 (3) He is to work solely for German interests, and to make 
 
 his converts good German subjects. 
 
 (4) He is to teach the Natives to work, by giving them an 
 
 industrial education, as well as Spiritual : the motto 
 is, "Work and pray, and pray and work"; but the 
 prayers must be in German, and the work for 
 Germans. 
 
 (5) No other Language to be taught but German. In the 
 
 Kameruns the English Language is to be trodden 
 down, and German State-instructors are sent to teach 
 German. 
 
 The first action of the Germans at Ebon in the Marshall 
 islands in Mikronesia was to fine the Native Pastor of the 
 American Mission 2,500 francs for wishing to protect the Natives 
 against the deceit of foreign Missionaries. In the Kameruns, 
 where the British Baptists were got rid of, the German Govern- 
 ment desired the Basle Missionary Society to accept the task, 
 because it was composed of German elements, and consequently 
 sympathetic to the interests, political and economical, of 
 Germany. To this the Society bravely replied, that it always 
 maintained a position above all political considerations, and 
 would never depart from it, all that was asked being liberty of 
 action. 
 
 At present in Eastern Equatorial Africa there are two Pro- 
 testant British Missions within the sphere of German influence; 
 but to mark the cynical view of the German Government towards 
 all Missions, a German Roman Catholic Mission has been 
 specially invited as a kind of equipoise to the existing French 
 Roman Catholic Mission, and a German Protestant Mission as 
 supplementary to the two British Missions. 
 
( 239 ) 
 
 It appears that the Government of the Netherlands, a Pro- 
 testant country, to a certain extent connects the State with 
 Missionary effort in her Asiatic colonies, and looks upon them as 
 political engines. Spain has hitherto prevented any Protestant 
 influence from penetrating into the Philippine islands, and 
 caused some trouble to the American Missionaries in the Caro- 
 line islands in Mikronesia. It is recorded, that the American 
 Board complained to their own Government of the deportation 
 of their Missionary from the island ; that the United States 
 Government sent a man-of-War to the island ; that it was 
 considered a great point gained that " American Missionaries 
 were cared for by their national Authorities"; and that the 
 captain of the man-of-War, in a letter advised " all Americans, 
 whether Christians or not, to get down on their knees and return 
 , thanks for having been born in free America." When it is 
 recollected, that these Missionaries were in the ancient Colonies 
 of Spain, that the right is admitted of every Sovereign-State to 
 deport aliens at their will and pleasure, and that a man-of-War 
 of an alien State was sent to encourage alien Missionaries 
 apparently against the constituted Authority, it may be a source 
 of wonder, how the Gospel of Peace can be preached under 
 such circumstances, and no wonder will be felt, if the admission 
 of alien Missionaries is for the future steadily opposed by second- 
 rate powers like Spain and Portugal. In British India the 
 American Missionary is welcomed according to the policy of 
 the British Government, and in recognition of the personal 
 qualities of the Missionary; yet, if the Missionary disobeyed 
 the legal orders of the constituted Authorities, I doubt whether 
 the appearance of the United States ship " Essex " on the 
 Hooghly would have saved him from punishment. I deeply 
 regret the interference of Ships of War, or gunboats, or the 
 civil Power, in the affairs of Missions, and shall never cease 
 denouncing it, whether those ships are British or American, or 
 French, or German, or Spanish, or Portuguese. 
 
 I pass now to the second variety of circumstances, where there 
 is a Government established upon a basis of Asiatic Civilization, 
 nominally independent, but circumscribed in its action by 
 Treaties, and the hard logic of Ships and Gunboats. China 
 and Turkey supply conspicuous instances, and both countries 
 are magnificent fields for Missions. 
 
 I have before me a little volume, published at Rome, called 
 "Violation du Trait6 de Peking," which sets out the Roman 
 Catholic grievances, of which France is the champion. Another 
 small volume, "Apercu historique sur la Chine," also published 
 by the Propaganda, sets forth the long history of Missions to 
 China, the martyrdoms by beheading and strangling, the im- 
 prisonments and the spoiling of goods, which have rendered 
 
( 240 ) 
 
 the Roman Catholic Mission-work of that land illustrious. Its 
 staff a few years ago consisted of twenty-one Bishops, two 
 hundred and seventy-eight European Missionaries, two hundred 
 and thirty-three Native Priests, scattered in every part of the 
 Chinese dominions, amidst half a million of converts. The 
 Protestant Missionaries number six hundred, but do not form 
 one compact body, and upon the subject now under discussion 
 there exist two distinct parties. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Mission, with a strange inconsistency, 
 is the loudest in its appeals to the eternal principle of Religious 
 liberty guaranteed by Treaties and invoked by Consuls. Allusion 
 is made with complacency on the one hand to a pagoda being 
 converted into a Church, whilst no words are sufficient to 
 denounce upon the other, the injustice of the secularization 
 of a Church. Emperors are described as having been killed 
 by lightning, and cities destroyed by earthquakes, to evince the 
 anger of an outraged God. It seems strange, that Priests, with 
 such a formidable arsenal in reserve, should regard as of 
 such paramount importance the insignificant Treaty of Peking 
 and the French Consulate. 
 
 The French Government has ever put itself forward as the 
 protector of Religion in China, and the French have openly 
 asserted in their own praise, that while other nations, especially 
 the British, warred with China in the interests of Commerce, 
 they warred in the interests of Religion. Lamentable indeed as 
 have been the British Wars, still it would seem almost better 
 to force Commerce into a country at the point of the bayonet 
 than to force Missionaries into it after the same fashion. In the 
 one case we have at least but a simple evil, in the other a com- 
 pound one, and what might'have been a blessing becomes a curse. 
 We may rely upon it, under all circumstances, gunboat-Commerce 
 is a less evil than gunboat-Christianity. It is well known, that 
 it is only in the French copy of the Treaty that exists the well- 
 known Religious clause, which could only be extended to British 
 subjects by the application of the " most favoured nation " 
 clause. Successive British Ministers have refused to adopt the 
 French clause as the measure of our Treaty-Rights in the 
 matter of Missionary-work. One of the chief occupations of the 
 French Legation consists in pressing claims for redress, and 
 in making reclamations on behalf of Missionaries. It is always 
 in trouble, and with any but satisfactory results ; and it is this 
 constant source of trouble and anxiety, and the difficulty of 
 giving effective protection in the interior, that have caused the 
 indisposition of the British Government to press for similar 
 rights. 
 
 It is notorious, that the Chinese Government, anxious to get 
 rid of the semi-Religious, semi-Political claims of France, offered 
 
( 241 ) 
 
 to accept the Pope as the representative of all the Churches of 
 the Roman Church, and the Pope was quite ready to accept the 
 duty ; but France would not agree to it, and, by threats of 
 the repeal of the Concordat in France, compelled the Pope to 
 withdraw from this arrangement : the Chinese Government in 
 consequence issued a proclamation of Universal Toleration of 
 the Christian Religion, thus reducing the possibility of French 
 interference to a minimum. 
 
 The French Government urges the cases of the Roman 
 Catholic Missions only. , I have yet to learn whether Republican 
 France would extend its protection to. French Protestant 
 Missions also. Under the aegis of Great Britain are many 
 different Churches and Missions, and no one Missionary body 
 has a right to go up to the Foreign Office, as a general repre- 
 sentative of Protestant Missions in China. It is as well to hear 
 the views of one Missionary Society on the question : 
 
 "Relations to Governments. 
 
 " Too great caution cannot be exercised by all Missionaries, 
 " residing or journeying inland, to avoid difficulties and 
 " complications with the people, and especially with the 
 " Authorities. All the agents of" the Mission must fully under- 
 " stand, that they go out, depending for help and protection on 
 " the living God, and not relying on the Arm of the Flesh. 
 " While availing themselves of any privileges offered by the 
 " British or Chinese Governments, they must make no claim for 
 " their help or protection. Appeals to Consuls to procure the 
 " punishment of offenders, or to demand the vindication of real 
 " or supposed rights, or indemnification for losses, are to be 
 " avoided. Should trouble or persecution arise inland, a 
 "friendly representation may be made to the local Chinese 
 " Officials, failing redress from whom, those suffering must 
 " be satisfied to leave their case in God's hands. Under no 
 " circumstances must any Missionary on his own responsibility make 
 " any appeal to the British Authorities. As a last resource the 
 " injunction of the Master can be followed, ' If they persecute 
 " you in this city, flee ye into another.' 
 
 "Those engaged in the Lord's work must be prepared to 
 " 'take joyfully the spoiling of their goods,' and to ' rejoice they 
 " are counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.' Let them 
 " be imbued with the same spirit as Ezra (Ez. viii, 21-3). 
 
 " In preaching and selling books, the collection of large 
 " crowds in busy thoroughfares should as far as possible be 
 " avoided; and, where it can be done, any difficulty should be 
 " arranged without reference to the local Authorities. The 
 " carryingjabout and display of unnecessary property is also to 
 
( 242 ) 
 
 " be deprecated ; it may lead to robbery and loss, in which case 
 " no demand for restitution should be made. As little intercourse 
 " with local Authorities as possible should be attempted, and, if 
 " their help on any occasion become necessary, it should be 
 " asked as a favour, and never demanded as a right. On no 
 " account should threatening Language be used, or the threat 
 " of appealing .to the Consul be made. Great respect must be 
 " shown towards all in authority, and must also be manifested 
 " in speaking of them, as is required by the Word of God. 
 
 " Where prolonged stay in a city is likely to cause trouble, it 
 " is better to journey onward ; and, where residence cannot be 
 " peaceably and safely effected, to retire and give up, or defer 
 " the attempt. God will open more doors than we can enter 
 " and occupy. And in conclusion, the weapons of our warfare 
 " must be practically recognized as Spiritual and not carnal." 
 
 How noble, how true to Bible-teaching, how expedient even 
 from a worldly point of view, are such sentiments ! Nor is it 
 an empty boast. In 1879 Lord Shaftesbury quoted with satis- 
 faction the statement, that no Missionary of this Society made 
 any assumption of national superiority, or any undue insistence 
 on Treaty-rights, and he remarked on the contrast, which this 
 offered to the old scandal, that "with the Missionary there was 
 always the inevitable gunboat." A Missionary, who had traversed 
 China on foot and unarmed, remarked, that all application to 
 the British Foreign Office or pressure upon the British Consul, 
 with a view of intimidating the Chinese Authorities, would 
 be a mistake, would do no good, and probably do great harm. 
 It may be accepted as a fact, that the Chinese Authorities are 
 quite impervious to any argument unless they anticipate the will 
 and the means of the Consul to enforce redress, and this means 
 to move up gunboats. It is of no use for Missionaries to pro- 
 test, that they do not wish to lean on the Arm of the Flesh or 
 seek the aid of gunboats. They must understand that there is 
 no medium. If they could persuade the Foreign Office to set 
 the ball rolling, it must mean the application of threats and 
 possibly bloodshed. Any amount of suffering or loss of property 
 were preferable to this sad alternative. 
 
 The sentiments expressed by this Society are shared by other 
 Missionary Societies in China. During the whole course of the 
 history of some Missions, the Missionaries have never requested 
 the aid of their Government ; their only weapon has been 
 kindness and a spirit of conciliation. And this line of conduct 
 is more especially necessary in China, where other questions 
 have been so inextricably mixed up with the policy of the British 
 Government. The Missionary might suffer temporary injury and 
 discouragement, but in the long run he would be the stronger 
 by letting the people and Authorities feel that, as Missionaries, 
 
( 243 ) 
 
 they were not connected with the compulsory measures and the 
 overbearing provisions of Treaties, whose stipulations rankle in 
 the breast of every subject of that ancient Kingdom. 
 
 The subject is of such importance, and I am so desirous, that 
 young Missionaries should understand the problem, that I quote 
 extracts from the Secretaries of some of the leading Missionary 
 Societies : 
 
 " I discourage our Missionaries from holding property in 
 " China outside the Treaty- Ports, and then only the houses they 
 " occupy. When Natives were willing to make over places, and 
 " even family-Temples, to the Mission, I always urged them to 
 " leave such properties in Native hands. In all our Missions 
 " we try to avoid all reference to the British Authorities : they 
 " hamper more than they aid. 
 
 " There are peculiar difficulties in one Province, owing to the 
 " Policy and conduct of the Romanists : their constant reliance 
 " on the Civil Power, and frequent unhappy use of it, have the 
 " tendency to embitter the Heathen population, and also to 
 " encourage injustice and a singular kind of arrogant terrorism 
 " among those who become Christians. 
 
 " I am persuaded that official remonstrances do not help in the 
 " long run. Patience is our strength, when we are in the right. 
 
 " During the whole course of the Mission's History, our 
 " Agents have made their way, and found safety and acceptance 
 " among savage tribes quite independently of any aid from 
 " gunboats or otherwise from Government. The power, 
 " which they exercise is that of kindness, and an evident 
 " desire to deal justly, and to benefit them. Their response 
 " has almost always been one of confidence and friendly 
 " bearing, the healthful product of kindness and not of fear 
 " of a gunboat in the background. Treaty-rights invoke 
 " Treaty-wrongs, to the injury of the people, and the hindrance 
 " in the most fatal manner of Missionary effort." 
 
 It is a common expression at Missionary meetings, that God's 
 guidance is prayed for and sought for. God's mercies are 
 recognized in success, and traces of His controlling Wisdom 
 should be sought for in disappointment and failure. God 
 speaks no longer in dreams and visions or by the voice of 
 heavenly Messengers, but His guidance can be seen by those, 
 who seek Him faithfully, in the persecution and the destruction 
 of Churches, in imprisonment and martyrdom. By these is the 
 sincerity of the converts tested. Both China and Madagascar 
 have passed through this ordeal. If we use the Arm of the 
 Flesh to combat these reverses, we may haply be found fighting 
 against God. Strange to say, the same reports, which tell so 
 sadly of the sufferings of the Missionaries, tell also of the 
 steadfastness of the native Church and of additions to its 
 
(244 ) 
 
 members. We are apt to set too great value on the bricks 
 and mortar of our buildings. What matters it, whether they 
 are consumed by a fire, as at Hakodati, or by incendiaries as at 
 Fu-chow ? We must recognize the chastening hand of the 
 Lord in both events, and be thankful. 
 
 In one district there had been persecution ; several converts 
 were beaten, and one or two killed, others imprisoned and 
 tortured; these last were released at the earnest request of the 
 Consul, who, however, had no lawful grounds of interference. 
 These troubles may prove beneficial in keeping the Churches 
 clear of insincere members, and by giving the converts clearly 
 to see, that foreigners cannot protect them either from their 
 own people or Officials, and may teach them to look more 
 directly to God, and to trust in Him alone. It is profitable to 
 read the accounts of the sufferings and the steadfastness of the 
 early Christian martyrs in the first and second centuries, and 
 during the persecutions of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth 
 and sixteenth. The blood of the martyrs is still the seed of 
 the Church. The British Missionary should read the stories 
 of Columba of Iona, of Aidan of Lindisfarne, of Boniface of 
 Exeter, and try to bear hardships like good soldiers and not 
 to call for gunboats. 
 
 And when we plant the Church in China, we must seek to 
 plant it as a Chinese Church, and not as a semi-Anglican one. 
 Such a Native Church can only be solidly based on national 
 self-respect, affected, it may be, by national weaknesses, and 
 perhaps by national independent treatment of Christian Truths. 
 It will then last long after the gunboats of Great Britain have 
 fallen into decay, and her Commerce has shifted to younger 
 Nations. The governing classes reflect the general feelings of 
 the people: the literati and gentry, who are credited with all 
 the opposition, are recruited from the ranks of the people, 
 and fairly represent the Clergy and landowners in Great Britain, 
 who are as a rule extremely conservative. The objection of 
 the Chinese to Fung-chu is real and not fictitious, and as 
 regards lands and houses these sentiments, however ridiculous 
 they may seem, indicate the actual feelings of the people, and 
 no doubt of the Native Christians also. Missionaries must deal 
 gently with the prejudices which they encounter. To occupy 
 a sacred site and build upon it a Missionary residence or School, 
 under any view of the case, is an act of extreme indiscretion, 
 to which no lapse of years can give a sanction. To convert 
 a pagoda into a Christian place of Worship is one of those acts, 
 which may be resented for centuries. We have instances of the 
 evil consequences of such a policy written in blood in every 
 country. If Mahometan or Brahmoist, or Buddhist, Missionaries 
 were to appear in London, and erect a place of Worship under 
 
( 245 ) 
 
 the shadow of the Abbey, or appropriate a proprietary Chapel 
 of any Denomination to their purposes, would a London mob 
 tolerate it, however much Religious Tolerance be the Law of 
 the land ? 
 
 The conclusion to be arrived at seems to me this : that a 
 Missionary should try to win his way to the hearts of the 
 people, and should under no circumstances invoke the Arm 
 of the Flesh for the protection of property, or accept compen- 
 sation for property lost. He will find it more profitable in the 
 long run to exhibit the patience and charity and unselfishness, 
 which will disarm his antagonists. If his life be endangered, 
 he must save it by timely flight ; if imprisoned, there can be 
 no doubt, that collective intercession will be made for him in 
 such a manner as to secure his liberation ; if he fall, he falls 
 a blessed martyr ; he does no more than numerous examples 
 have gloriously sanctioned, than the Gospel predicts, and than 
 hundreds of his countrymen have been willing to do in every 
 part of the world, even when the prize to be gained was but an 
 earthly one. Persecutions were not unknown in the early days 
 of Christianity, and yet it triumphed in the end. It is idle to 
 expect the crown without the Cross. There are many sufferings 
 still unsuffered, many Crosses not yet taken up, many crowns 
 still to be won. 
 
 I have twice visited the Empire of Turkey with a view of 
 contrasting their system of governing conquered Provinces with 
 the British system in India. I was sitting in the divan with the 
 Pasha of Damascus, when a European Consul was introduced, 
 who hectored and bullied the Pasha while actually on the seat of 
 judgment. I had myself governed large Asiatic districts, and 
 recognized the salient features of the complaint as of not 
 uncommon character. The Turk smoked and bore the abuse 
 stolidly, at least to outer appearance. I felt for him, and felt 
 also that, if any representative of any Power in the world had 
 behaved in such a manner in my office, I should have had him 
 turned out forthwith, and, if he repeated such conduct, should 
 have fined him for contempt of Court, and looked to my own 
 Government to support me. The British Magistrate and Consul 
 know, that the best Missionaries give them the least trouble, if 
 indeed they give any at all. The argument that the Consuls of 
 other Nations have succeeded in compelling an unwilling 
 Government to make concessions, is an unworthy one and not 
 always true. In a discussion in a British committee-room about 
 troubles in China, the Secretary to an American Board of 
 Missions was asked, how it happened that their Missionaries 
 were always backed by their Consul. The reply was an 
 expression of surprise on the part of the American Secretary, 
 and the dry remark that his Missionaries complained that the 
 
( 246 ) 
 
 British Missionaries were always backed by the British Consul, 
 while the American Consul refused to interfere. 
 
 I have no love for the irrepressible Turk, and I have traversed 
 great parts of Turkey and have studied its system, which is bad, 
 thoroughly bad ; yet I cannot excuse Missionaries of gross 
 violation of the first principles of duty of an alien permitted 
 to reside in a foreign country. Neither Russia, Austria, nor 
 France would have tolerated such conduct for an instant. It is 
 an understood principle of international Law, asserted and 
 practised by every Continental Power, that they have a right to 
 eject any foreigner from their country for reasons best known 
 to themselves. Turkey has the same de jure, and some day will 
 be irritated to the necessity of using it. 
 
 I visited a celebrated city in Turkey, and found that the 
 medical Missionary was in great distress, because the Governor 
 had stopped the erection of his new Hospital. I visited it: it 
 was on a lofty hill commanding the town, and had the 
 appearance and reality of a fort, with walls pierced for musketry 
 and embrasures for guns. Any Hospital built on such a site and 
 in such a style in British India, at Bandras or Amritsar, would 
 have been dismantled at once. In the case of trouble it would 
 have been at once occupied by rebels, and nothing but a siege 
 would take it. And yet the Doctor abused the Turk ! 
 
 Clearly a Sovereign State has the control of its own Educa- 
 tional Department. Austria, Russia, France, Germany, and 
 Italy claim for the State the monopoly of Public Instruction. 
 If Missionaries act with conciliation to the local Authorities, 
 they can keep open their Schools, but it is of no use blustering, 
 and claiming under a Treaty a right to open Schools avowedly 
 to convert the Mahometans. I am not quite sure, that even 
 in free England large Mahometan Schools would survive the 
 popular indignation. 
 
 Then, again, as regards the criminal, Law and the police, the 
 Missionaries are not the judges, whether the local Governor is 
 just or unjust, and it is a monstrous abuse of the hospitality of 
 a friendly State for a resident alien to give shelter to a man, for 
 whose arrest a warrant has been issued, to conceal him in the 
 Mission-premises, and smuggle him out of the jurisdiction. Yet 
 such a case is reported with complacency by a Missionary, who 
 thinks that he has done a praiseworthy act. In British India, 
 any Missionary who acted thus would have found himself next 
 day in prison without benefit of clergy. 
 
 My opinion is, that the Missionary should mind his own 
 business, and following the example of Paul keep on good terms 
 with the Powers that rule, whether in India, China, Japan, or 
 Turkey : he should abstain from writing complaints home, but 
 get access to the local Authorities, and get them over to his 
 
( 247 ) 
 
 side by the pleasantness of his bearing and conversation. 
 Missionaries very rarely quarrel with the Authorities in British 
 India, as they are highly valued, and as a rule are reasonable 
 men. The oldest Missionaries never think of complaining : 
 they put up with little inconveniences, and get their way in the 
 long run, when their wishes are reasonable. The difference 
 is well known between the real Gospel-preacher, the simple- 
 hearted Missionary, and the grievance-monger, the spy, who 
 introduces himself into the military cantonments to watch the 
 proceedings of the brave but thoughtless British soldier, the 
 frothy declaimer against the liqour-shop, and the man who is 
 always at war with the Education-Department. The former are 
 loved, honoured, and always welcome. 
 
 My first idea of a Missionary was in 1844., when I met at 
 Ludiana on the Satlaj good John Newton of the American 
 Presbyterian Board. For twenty years I was as an Official in 
 relation with him, and never heard a complaint from his lips ; 
 but I marked well his consistent Christian walk. There are 
 others of his stamp, and I wish that all were like them ; but 
 a great deal depends upon the character of the Missionary, 
 the local Authority, and the general population. There must 
 be light and shade in the life of Missions as in the life of 
 man ; and a spirit of conciliation, a practical illustration of the 
 principles that are preached, a determination not to depart 
 from the law of Love and discipline of patience except under 
 extreme necessity, will work its way at last. If it does not, let 
 us remember, that in all cases it will be better to abandon the 
 Mission at least for a time, rather than to alienate the hearts of 
 the non-Christians, and make Christianity odious in their eyes. 
 
 1888-1895. 
 
 3. The Relation of Missionaries to Barbarous 
 Sovereigns, or Petty Chiefs in Asia, Africa, 
 and Oceania. 
 
 I pass to the consideration of those non-Christian countries, 
 which lie outside the limits of European Authority. The Mis- 
 sionary enters these with his life in his hand. He passes 
 beyond all the immediate, indirect, protection of any European 
 Government. If he fall by the hand of the bandit, or assassin, 
 no demand for reparation can be made. If plundered of his 
 property, he can hope for no redress. If imprisoned, he can 
 only hope for liberty by means of friendly interference, or 
 payment of ransom. Worldly men would look on in greater 
 admiration and astonishment at such self-devotion, if it were 
 
( 248 ) 
 
 not patent to all observers, that the Traveller, the Man of Com- 
 merce, the Man of Science, the mere adventurer, the great 
 hunter of wild beasts, had done the same in all climes, and at 
 all periods of History. But the majority of these last are birds 
 of passage, and pass on, leaving no trace behind them. 
 
 The Missionary, on the other hand, seeks to make the country 
 his home, to occupy land, erect buildings, and found a new 
 society among the indigenous population. Herein lies the 
 great difference betwixt the Missionary and any other subjects 
 of European Governments in non-Christian countries. The 
 object of the Missionary is soon discovered to be, to a certain 
 extent, subversive of existing Institutions ; he is indeed founding 
 a new polity, and propagating a new idea. He offends the 
 ignorant lower classes by denying the sanctity of what they have 
 hitherto deemed sacred. He alarms the ruling classes by his 
 strange communist doctrine, that the lives and possessions of 
 the meanest individual are entitled to protection. He alienates 
 those, who were originally well disposed, by prematurely de- 
 nouncing Polygamy, and domestic Slavery, ancient customs of 
 the Oriental world, which should be allowed to die out. He 
 does not advance into the Country alone, for he is followed, or 
 preceded, by the trader in firearms, and spirituous liquors. As 
 soon as a Native Congregation is established, unless he main- 
 tains over his feelings a strong restraint, he forgets, that the 
 Kingdom, which he has been preaching, is not of this world, 
 and that his converts are still subjects of an independent Native 
 State, and members of a Native community. He forgets, that the 
 Native can no more alter the customs of his race, than he can 
 change his skin, and that in his heart of hearts he can see no 
 evil in Polygamy or Slavery. Complications, which already 
 exist to some extent, will be # further developed, if the Consular 
 system be introduced, with this anomaly, that, if a British Mis- 
 sionary kill a Native, the Queen's warrant will issue against 
 him ; but if a Native kill a Missionary nothing can be done. 
 We must face the difficulty. Either the territory, within which 
 the Mission is located, is under some recognized Sovereign, 
 or it is utterly outside any jurisdiction. Let me consider both 
 contingencies. 
 
 Of the first case we have an instance in the Protestant Mission 
 of one of our great Societies, and the Roman Catholic Mission 
 of the French, located at Rubaga, the capital of the King of 
 U-Ganda, on the Victoria Nyanza. Unquestionably this Sovereign 
 rules over a constituted State, with the will and power to enforce 
 his orders. Both, Missions have, apparently with a want of 
 worldly Wisdom, placed themselves and their property, and their 
 Missionary prospects, in the hands of this Potentate, who un- 
 doubtedly has a contempt for Human life, and is guided by no 
 
( 249 ) 
 
 Law beyond his own will. We have two sets of documents, 
 which furnish unmistakable evidence of the unsatisfactory state 
 of affairs, and of the utter absence of any fixed policy upon the 
 part of the responsible heads of both Missions. Les Missions 
 Catholiques, a weekly paper published at Lyons, and The Record 
 and Intelligencer of the Church Missionary Society, abundantly 
 enable us, in this matter, to form a judgment. The Roman 
 Catholic Missionaries brought out most unsuitable presents to 
 the King, viz , warlike weapons and trappings ; the Protestant 
 Missionaries allowed themselves at one time to be employed in 
 repairing instruments of war. Both parties condescended, in 
 the presence of non-Christians, to discuss the abstruse tenets 
 of their respective systems, thus exposing Christianity upon its 
 weakest flank. 
 
 It need cause no great surprise, if the Priests and conservative 
 classes, of a country long left in Spiritual darkness, should be 
 opposed to the introduction of light coming in an unexplained 
 way from an unknown country, and delivered by untrained and 
 unskilled Messengers, with an imperfect knowledge of the 
 Language. What are we to think of Rifles, Revolvers, and one 
 thousand rounds of Ball-cartridge being part of the outfit of 
 a Christian Missionary to Africa in 1880? Will no experience 
 make us wiser ? Mr. McCarthy, of the Inland Mission, walked 
 through China unarmed, and passed among its people uninjured 
 and uninsulted. It need excite no astonishment, if the Arabs, 
 or rather Arabic-speaking Mahometan Natives of Eastern Africa, 
 resent the intrusion into their domains of Christians preaching 
 against Slavery and Polygamy. The pages of Livingstone, 
 Stanley, Cameron, and Schweinfurth, amply testify, that the 
 Arabs have behaved, on the whole, remarkably well to the 
 Christian Traveller and Missionary. But they would be more 
 than mortals, if they submitted without a struggle to the avowed 
 enemies of their Religion, Commerce, and domestic habits. The 
 Mission to the Victoria Nyanza presents a problem of extreme 
 difficulty, and imperatively deTmands in the Missionary Gifts of 
 the highest order. More, perhaps, than anywhere else, are 
 needed here, a spirit of enLire self-Sacrifice, a fixed policy of 
 doing, or abstaining from doing, a sublime patience, the Wisdom 
 of the serpent joined to the harmlessness of the dove, and a 
 complete control of both tongue and temper, and a single eye 
 to the spread of the Gospel. Many of these Graces have been 
 entirely wanting. Precious lives have been lost, some by the 
 hand of the assassin, some by disease ; the complications of 
 the fate of Emin Pasha, the Expedition of Henry Stanley, the 
 Exploration of Joseph Thomson, the colonial ambition of 
 Germany, have all added to the difficulty of the problem, which 
 has often been aggravated by the want of 'judgment of the 
 
( 250 ) 
 
 agents. Periods of great affliction and persecution, and spoiling 
 of goods, have had to be passed through, and the labour of 
 many years, and the enormous outlay, appear like handfuls 
 of sand cast into the Equatorial Lake. 
 
 The King of U-Ganda is of Galla extraction, ruling over 
 Bantu subjects. His Kingdom is just on the dividing-line of 
 four distinct races, the Hamitic, Negro,' Nuba, and Bantu. He 
 had heard, no doubt, that the Christian King of Abyssinia had 
 turned all the European Missionaries out of his country, that 
 the Empire of the Turks, which once touched, and threatened 
 to swallow up, his dominions) had in some way disappeared 
 beyond his horizon ; but rumours reached him from the North 
 of the movements of Emin Pasha, and of one greater than him, 
 the great "stone-crusher,". Stanley, who years ago visited Rubaga. 
 From the South his Semite, or Semitized, Arab guests tell him 
 of the occupation of the whole country South and East of the 
 Lake by the Germans and British : he is aware that arms and 
 Gunpowder are becoming very plentiful, and that European 
 liquor is beginning to be not unknown. He connects these 
 phenomena, and not illogically, with the Missionaries. He has 
 already killed a Bishop, and he cannot understand, how such 
 an act can .be pardoned : he thinks rather that vengeance 
 would have been taken, if vengeance had been possible. 
 The murder of a white man is an evil in" itself, because, if 
 unnoticed, it encourages a repetition of the offence. The tiger 
 has tasted blood. 
 
 Some sympathy with, and even pity for, an African Sovereign 
 should be felt by those, who have had experience in rule. He 
 feels, that he is being somehow eaten up ; he has to deal with 
 a danger, the extent of which he cannot understand. The 
 farmer of North Africa cannot cope with the flights of locusts 
 and crickets, which eat him up : the African Chief is in the 
 same plight. He demands presents and services of various 
 kinds, but he finds, to his astonishment, that his wives and his 
 pages are taking up new Moral and Religious ideas, positively 
 or negatively disobeying his wishes : his advisers give him 
 insidious advice, while his habits of intemperance make him 
 unfit for serious counsel. If he could only read the European 
 Newspapers, he would find, that the Missionaries, his guests, 
 describe him as a living monster, and say all manner of unkind 
 things about his personal habits, his Morals, and public policy: 
 possibly the Arabs at Zanzibar do send him some extracts of 
 these reports, which in a garbled form are communicated to 
 him, and madden him. 
 
 The Missionaries are of necessity extremely young men, and 
 totally unversed in public affairs ; nor are they men of learning, 
 or power, or high Education : they are constantly changing, and 
 
( 251 ) 
 
 quarrelling with each other: of the two main divisions, the French 
 are ready to say an evil word against the British, and the British 
 warn the King against the French and their doctrines : this is 
 another cause of wonder and confusion, and both parties speak 
 of the policy of the third, the German, with condemnation. 
 The demand for "Hongo" is a source of endless trouble. It is 
 at once a transit-duty, and an Income-Tax, and, if a reasonable 
 amount is properly levied, there can be no manner of complaint, 
 for the transit-duty is in return for the roads being kept open to 
 Travellers, and the Income-Tax is the lawful return to the 
 Supreme Power for Protection of Life and Property. In all 
 Oriental countries, notably British India, exchange of presents, 
 or payment of tolls, is part of the understood machinery of inter- 
 course. But the difficulty arises, when the claim is unreasonable, 
 excessive, and pressed in a hostile manner. The Missionary 
 must submit to it : the only remedy is to take as little property 
 with him as possible, and tempt the cupidity of the Native Chief 
 as little as possible. It is a difficulty which must be faced, and 
 which , may perhaps compel the enterprize to be abandoned. 
 Under no circumstances should arms, or ammunition, 'or liquors, 
 form part of these presents : in fact, the Missionary should not 
 have such things to offer. 
 
 In the Illustrated Catholic Missions, the organ of the Bishop of 
 Salford, February, 1888, p. 153, appears an article headed " The 
 Gospel and the Sword," which marks a new departure in Mission- 
 work. It suggests, that the Missionary should arm his converts, 
 so that they may be able to defend their rights against their 
 Heathen Sovereign and fellow-countrymen. The writer quotes 
 with approbation the policy of the Jesuits in Paraguay, who con- 
 ducted military operations against the Portuguese. Thirty or forty 
 Native Christians, trained and armed with repeating rifles, would 
 be a force, which no Native Potentate or Slaver would dare to 
 molest. In the May number, p. 6, it is admitted, that U-Ginda 
 is the region, in which this new departure is proposed : a 
 Member of the Church Militant, from Colorado in America, 
 offers to subscribe one hundred dollars, and is of opinion, that 
 the great work of converting and civilizing the Heathen will not 
 be accomplished until the suggestion of the " Gospel and the 
 Sword " be carried out in a practical manner. At a meeting of 
 the Manchester "Geographical Society, in my address I called 
 the particular attention of a Roman Catholic dignitary, who was 
 present, to thj's really abominable proposal of Missionary- 
 buccaneering, and entire departure from Gospel-precept: "they 
 that take the sword shall perish by the sword." The policy 
 would lead -to the extermination of the few Christians, and the 
 slaughter of the Missionary, his wife, children, and followers. 
 It is quite possible, that the Missionaries of one Denomination 
 
( 252 ) 
 
 would attack the other, and the Jesuit Priest would shoot the 
 Protestant Missionary. The ill-omened Mission in Paraguay 
 has long since passed away. In the July number the Editor 
 again returns to the subject, justifies it, but would not have the 
 Christian Missionaries become Military Chiefs, and adds a con- 
 dition, which at once places the suggestion outside of practical 
 politics, that " the sanction of the respective Governments of 
 the Missionaries be obtained." After the lesson taught to the 
 British Nation by the fate of Gordon at Khartum, it is not likely, 
 that letters of marque will be issued to British Missionaries in 
 Central Equatorial Africa. Unless the accounts of the fearful 
 massacre of Native Christians in Tonquin by their enraged 
 Sovereign is merely a device to collect subscriptions, the policy 
 of the Roman Catholics in that country is a warning against the 
 policy of the " Gospel and the Sword." 
 
 Wherever, therefore, there is a recognized Sovereign of a State, 
 it is the duty of the Preacher of the Gospel, as of the Merchant 
 and the Traveller, to submit to the laws of that State, or to leave 
 it. Peter's utterances are very clear on this subject (I, ii, 13): 
 " Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's 
 sake, whether it be to the King, or unto Governors." The 
 Missionary forgets, that he is the intruder, and that, if his entry 
 be opposed, or his remaining rendered impossible, it may be 
 a leading of Providence, that he should retire. It is very 
 objectionable, that he should be invested with any Secular 
 power, such as that of Vice-Consul, or Magistrate, or Judge : he 
 should appear solely as Christ's Ambassador, and put away the 
 haughtiness of the Briton, and put on a little more of the 
 meekness and humility of a Christian: it is to be feared, that 
 Christian men do not always do Christian work in a Christian 
 way. Patience and Humility are not ordinary Graces of the 
 young Briton, ordained or secular. 
 
 On the South Coast of Victoria Nyanza, in the Region 
 stretching Westward to Lake Tanganyika, and Southward to the 
 Zambesi, there are no great Kings, but a great many Chiefs, 
 some of whom are well known to readers of Missionary 
 Periodicals. Hongo is of course the first difficulty ; a regular 
 supply of necessaries, the second ; permission to teach, the third. 
 In some portions of this vast Region two new elements of 
 confusion arise : the invasion of professional plunderers of Zulu 
 extraction, from beyond the Zambe'si, but known by many local 
 names, a kind of Adullamites, whose numbers are recruited 
 by the outlaws of each tribe ; and secondly, the organized 
 Caravans, or Settlements, of Arab Slave-dealers. In the midst 
 of such a Region no less than five British Missions are working, 
 as well as the Roman Catholics, and it is well to consider, 
 without favour, or prejudice, and as fearlessly as impartially, the. 
 
( 253 ) 
 
 tremendous difficulties of the positions occupied, and to notice 
 with sincerity and faithfulness, the dangers, the errors, the 
 temptations, of the environment. 
 
 The object of the promoters of these Missions is to locate a 
 Christian Colony in the very heart of a Savage Heathendom, to 
 gather round a small number of European Missionaries, both lay 
 and ordained, a Christian family, which should develop into 
 a Christian Village, and expand into a Christian Community, 
 supporting itself by honest industry, living a Christian life, and 
 destined to hand on the Lamp of Life, further and further over 
 the Dark Continent. This was clearly a policy of aggression 
 against Paganism, Islam, Slavery, and Polygamy; against violent 
 crimes, abominable habits, and bloody customs ; it was a struggle 
 for dear life between the most exalted form of Christian culture 
 and Savagery, between the Gospel on the one hand, and cruelty, 
 Lawlessness, and Idolatry upon the other. The good men 
 engaged in this contest, asked no leave of their own Sovereign, 
 or of foreign Potentates ; they appealed to no Treaty : if one of 
 their number fell, they had to bury him, and lift up their eyes to 
 the Lord, and go on, hoping that their cry might not be in vain 
 for fresh recruits to fill the vacant places. But the difficulty of 
 their position cannot be ignored. It was likely to increase as 
 they grew more settled, and to become more urgent as their 
 numbers multiplied. Rural wealth would accumulate, comforts 
 of all kinds would multiply, and the plunderer would have to be 
 kept at bay. 
 
 This implies Defensive Warfare. When men congregate 
 together, the necessity of some kind of Police, and of some sort 
 of Magisterial Power, to protect the weak from the strong, and 
 the honest man from the thief, will be absolutely necessary. In 
 the case of a new Colony of men of the same race, those public 
 offices would be conferred by election. But where the com- 
 munity consists of an aggregate of runaway slaves, and converted 
 Africans, in the lowest state of culture, it is simply indispensable 
 that those, who brought them together, should assume controlling 
 power. Such has ever been the origin of all Political Society. 
 Missionary Bodies must boldly face the difficulty thus encountered, 
 and treat their Settlements as the decks of a Ship in the open 
 sea. They must authorize in these cases one of their Lay 
 Agents to introduce a system of Police, and a scale of punish- 
 ment, the chief of which last should be expulsion from the 
 Community. Punishment by death should not even be allowed 
 to be discussed, as inconsistent with the position of a Mis- 
 sionary ; but slight fines, moderate chastisement of youthful 
 male offenders with a rattan, brief imprisonment in the stocks 
 in some open space, and expulsion, must be recognized as 
 lawful under the circumstances. If any member of the 
 
( 254 ) 
 
 Community be guilty of a homicide, which in a Civilized country 
 would amount to murder, such a person must be expelled from 
 the Community, but nothing more. In the hard necessity of 
 a Defensive War, to protect life and honour, life may be 
 sacrificed ; but it may safely be laid down, that -without the 
 warrant of his Sovereign, no Briton can under any other circum- 
 stance take away the life even of the blackest Criminal. Neither 
 would it be expedient to invest the Head of such a Mission with 
 Consular Powers. This would cut both ways. The Queen of 
 Great Britain will not entrust such powers.-except under certain 
 conditions, and, as the death of a Consul is an international 
 wrong, such conditions would no doubt hamper the freedom 
 of the Mission, or might lead, for political reasons, to its entire 
 withdrawal at a moment, when Missionary prospects were perhaps 
 the brightest. The Missionaries would be impeded rather than 
 assisted by such powers, for they come under the head of an 
 appeal to the Arm of the Flesh. Any -such appeal will involve 
 a Mission in a sea of difficulties. Great judgment would have 
 to be used in the exercise of the powers above described as 
 lawful. Many an offender must be allowed to escape, as the 
 least of two evils. 
 
 Those, who know the country, state that there is no " No man's 
 land," and that a Chieftain is always forthcoming. He must be ' 
 encouraged, supported, and advised to maintain his authority. 
 But here other difficulties arise: their crimes are not our crimes, 
 their view of right and wrong is not our view, their rules of 
 evidence are not ours, their forms of punishment are not ours. 
 A Native Raja in the Panjab used to hamstring all thieves 
 caught in the act of theft. In some countries adulterers are 
 emasculated. In the narrative of an expedition up the Nile I 
 read, that some British Travellers made over a thief to the local 
 Pasha; but when they discovered what the punishment was to be, 
 they all went with tears to recall their charge, and beg for the 
 criminal's liberty. Thus it is seen, that there is great danger 
 in making over a case to a Native Chief. Reckless of the life 
 of the poor, they have no discrimination in trial or judgment. 
 
 But this presupposes an environment of peaceful savages, but 
 the Slave-dealer, and the Zulu Robber, disturb that peace. The 
 Missionary, if left alone, has the bitter task of seeing a friendly 
 village laid waste, and its inhabitants killed, or carried off, and 
 dares not, and ought not to, interfere.. So long as no one attacks 
 his ship, he has no warrant to attack another ship with a view 
 of protecting a third. If he does, he runs the risk of being 
 defeated, and sharing the ruin, or being a conqueror stained 
 with blood, or encumbered with prisoners in fetters. How can 
 Gospel-preaching be carried on under such conditions? 
 
 A further complication arises, when, independent of, yet in 
 
( 255 ) 
 
 strict alliance with, the Missionaries, good and honourable Euro- 
 pean traders are occupied in a legitimate Commerce, strictly- 
 excluding Arms, Ammunition, and Liquor, and become the 
 objects of attack from the Slave-dealer, or the Brigand, who 
 covet possession of his wares, and whose trade he interferes 
 with. Can the Missionary look calmly on the murder and 
 plunder of his secular friend ? Can he, on the other hand, as 
 a servant of Christ, take part in actual warfare ? 
 
 The situation of affairs on the Lake Nyasa is very complicated, 
 and it is difficult to define what a Missionary should do, or 
 should not. We may place the difficulty with the Portuguese on 
 one side : there is no doubt, that the freedom of navigation of 
 the River Zambezi will be secured. The difficulty is as regards 
 the Arabs, who are described as Slave-dealers, and are in fact 
 quite as much aliens on the Shores of the Lake, as the British 
 Missionaries. But the three Societies, whose interests are 
 affected, do not state distinctly, what they desire, or do not 
 realize what the gratification of those desires means. There 
 are four objects placed before the public, only one of which, 
 in my opinion, concerns them as Missionaries, the first. 
 
 (i) Evangelization of the Heathen. 
 
 The other three may, or may not, be desirable, but they have 
 no necessary connection with Missionary operations. 
 
 (2) Abolition of the Slave-trade. 
 
 (3) Expansion of Lawful Commerce. 
 
 (4) Enlargement of the British Sphere of Influence, Pro- 
 
 tectorate, or Dominions. 
 
 Then there are several schemes suggested for the purpose of 
 attaining these objects : 
 
 (1) The placing under the British Sphere of Influence or 
 
 Protectorate the Basin of the Lake Nyasa. 
 
 (2) The dispatch of an armed force of British Soldiers to 
 
 conquer and occupy the Region, as in the analogous 
 case of Barma in British India. This would make 
 the whole of the British Empire, its Army, and re- 
 sources, responsible for the success of the enterprize. 
 Is it worth it ? Is the game worth the candle ? 
 
 (3) The enlisting of armed men by the Mercantile Com- 
 
 pany, who own the steamers : these would wage open 
 war with the Arabs : they might, or might not, be 
 victorious : in neither case would the British Empire 
 be affected ; but the Men of God would be sadly 
 affected in the eyes of the Natives by their contact 
 with the Men of the Sword. 
 
( 256 ) 
 
 Every one of these schemes belongs to the category of the 
 Arm of the Flesh, and a Christian Missionary should keep' clear 
 of all. Success by such means would be more dangerous to 
 their blessed work than defeat. I repeat what I said at the 
 Conference at Manchester in their presence, that I would sooner 
 see Livingstonia destroyed, and the Missionaries swept out of 
 the Lake Region, than to have the Gospel preached with the aid 
 and support of Rifles, and in a blood-stained Region. The 
 Missionaries seem to take a low view of their high office, when 
 they press upon the Government the fact, that they have sunk so 
 many thousand pounds in the enterprize : this smacks more of 
 Commerce than of Gospel-preaching. At how many thousand 
 pounds can we value one saved Soul ? Lord Salisbury cynically 
 replied to the Deputation, that against the Arabs he could under- 
 take to promise no help whatsoever, but that the Europeans on 
 the Lake might fight themselves, without risking the prestige of the 
 British Empire : this showed a very inadequate perception of 
 the holy position and Duty of a Christian Missionary. There 
 can be no manner of blessing on work conducted under such 
 conditions, no chance of preaching and teaching among a 
 willing population. The Swedes have had to leave Abyssinia : 
 they had no Consuls or ships to bully the Negus with : the 
 British Missionaries must, if needs be, leave the Nyasa. The 
 occupation of these African Lakes, so far in the Interior, was a 
 gallant feat, but not a prudent enterprize. A sound Military or 
 Commercial undertaking would have commenced with a basis 
 on the Coast, and worked inwards with supporting stations. 
 
 Such phrases as the following do not read well in a Religious 
 Periodical : " It would be utterly intolerable, that all our vast 
 " outlay in men and money, in stations and steamers, in 
 " Languages reduced, and a hundred and one kindred labours, 
 " should be strangled body and soul, to suit the convenience of 
 " Portugal." And this is written with regard to a Mission, 
 whose magnificent work is nearly entirely within the territories 
 of the Sultan of Zanzibar, and the German Emperor, with only 
 one outlying Station, and one steamer at the most, and a few 
 Agents on Lake Nyasa. 
 
 I am afraid of not stating the case of the Missionaries with 
 sufficient clearness, so I quote extracts from reports: "The 
 " Church, with which he was connected, had a Mission in the 
 " Nyasa country. The experience of its Missionaries was the 
 " same as that of other Europeans, viz., that the question was, 
 " whether the Arab or the European was to rule in Central 
 " Africa. Were the principles of Christianity or the principles 
 " of Mahometanism, with its system of reckless waste of Human 
 " life, and licensed robbery, to guide that unhappy country ? He 
 " thought all those acquainted with the state of affairs in East 
 
( 257 ) 
 
 " Central Africa would say, that all those who had the power, 
 " and were exercising the power there, were the Arabs. Those, 
 " who had got most benefit, if benefit it could be called, from 
 " the discoveries of the European Travellers, were the Arabs 
 " of Zanzibar, who had acted in a most atrocious way. The 
 " British Government would do exactly what the public opinion 
 " of this country led them to do, and the object of the present 
 " Meeting was that of educating public opinion on the subject. 
 " They did not want a British armed force in Ny&sa-Land, but 
 " they wanted that the enemies of mankind, the Slave-raiders, 
 " might be kept from molesting and killing the people, whom 
 " the Missionaries went to bless. 
 
 " The real question at issue is, and we cannot set this up too 
 " clearly before us, ' Is Arab and Mahometan influence, or is 
 " English, and German, and Christian, influence, to prevail in 
 "this country?' Are we to stand by and see Mahometanism 
 " carried by fire and sword through Central Africa, and every 
 " Christian Mission and Christian influence, established by 
 " peaceful means and at immense cost of men and money, 
 " isolated, paralyzed, and destroyed ? It seems to some, that 
 " England has been sufficiently humbled at Zanzibar. Surely 
 " we are not going to offer the spectacle to Europe of Lake 
 " Nydsa, discovered by English enterprize, on which subjects 
 " of Britain, alone of European Powers, 'have settled for pur- 
 " poses of trade or the higher purposes of Religion, surely we 
 " are not going to abandon Lake Nydsa to the Arabs and the 
 " desolations of the Slave-trade." 
 
 One very distinguished member of a governing body openly 
 recommended British annexation ; another headed a contribution 
 to a leading paper, " How to Fight the Slave-Trade." 
 
 Every Missionary disclaimed any wish for the Arm of the 
 Flesh, and yet I read the following lines, wondering what they 
 mean : " There had been great troubles on the Lake recently. 
 " The Arabs seemed to be getting tired of the restraint, which 
 " the presence of white people placed upon them, and they had 
 " made an attack on the station of the Lakes Company. He 
 " trusted, that the powerful Government of England would not 
 " so far forget its duty as to refuse to come to their aid. He did 
 " not want any force to be used on behalf of the Missionaries. The 
 " Missionaries knew the dangers of the life, which they had 
 " chosen, they held their lives in their hands, and, if any of 
 " them were killed, he should not wish for a moment that there 
 " should be anything like revenge or force used. But at least 
 " they might ask to be free from the interference of European 
 " Powers like the Portuguese, and from the people, who came 
 " from Zanzibar, and who could have pressure put upon them 
 " through that Government. 
 
( 258 ) 
 
 " Had half the insult therein detailed' been offered thirty 
 " years ago to this Nation, or a tithe of the injury done to our 
 " fellow-subjects, a British Fleet with an ultimatum would have 
 " been in Lisbon Harbour in four days. 
 
 " It is settled beyond recalling, that whether it be at Luk6ma, 
 " Bondaw6, or Blantyre, our Missionaries must not look for 
 "'Protection' in the African acceptation of the word; nor 
 " do we think, that there are rhany^amongst them, who would 
 " wish it otherwise. Such as they go thither to experience to 
 " the full the wondrous Providence of day by day, and the clear 
 " vision is not withheld from them. The smoke of a gunboat 
 " under steam would leave a long trail across the landscape in 
 " such scenes, hard to harmonize ! " 
 
 The Secretary of the Scottish Geographical Society, from his 
 point of view naturally thinks, that, if the Trading Company and 
 the Mission are to flourish on the Lake, it is evident that some 
 strong guarantee must be furnished to them of their independent 
 position. I take the liberty of replying that, rising from a 
 survey of the Missions of the world, I cannot find, that the 
 blessed work of preaching the Gospel can be lumped together 
 with bales of calico, and Manchester-goods, or brought home 
 to the heart of the Heathen by Elephant -Rifles and armed 
 Steamers. 
 
 How thankful we ought to be, that such men as Dr. Crosse, 
 and Mr. Johnson, were the Missionaries on the spot on either 
 side of the Lake, belonging to different denominations, but with 
 the same "appreciation of their Duties. Dr. Crosse writes: "I 
 " am very much concerned at what action I should take in this 
 " affair. Up till now I have been entirely free from fighting. 
 " I am inclined to take this position, offering my services as 
 " a Surgeon, but refusing to fight unless the Mission- Station 
 " is attacked. I will take no action in offensive measures." 
 
 Mr. Johnson submitted patiently to personal indignities, and 
 tells his tale in a Christian Spirit, worthy of all admiration. 
 The example of the sufferings of his Lord and Master had not 
 been lost on him. Both these excellent men showed true valour 
 and sound judgment. The Natives hereafter .will tell of their 
 conduct with love and reverence. For His sake and the Gospel 
 they retained their self-control under tremendous provocation. 
 
 It is all very well to say, that Livingstone's great object in 
 occupying the Lake Nyasa was to cut the Slave-Trade into two, 
 and paralyze it : well and good, but the Preacher of the Gospel 
 is not sent out to attack Slave-dealers by force of arms : his 
 Duty is to trust in God and keep the Mission free from all 
 non-Missionary entanglements, whether of Commerce, or War, 
 or opposition to the Slave-Trade. Rebuffs, delays, disappoint- 
 ments, personal assault, loss of property, inconveniences, insults, 
 
( 259 ) 
 
 should be taken patiently for the Lord's sake, and are so taken 
 in many countries by many holy men. If life, liberty, and female 
 honour, are in jeopardy, recourse must be had to the Civil Power, 
 or, failing that, to God's blessing and personal endeavours. It 
 is all very well to talk of a Mission-village being the nucleus 
 of a State : it is really only the leaven of a State founded for 
 secular purposes, and the Missionary should never lose sight 
 of the simple Evangelical character of his enterprize. The 
 remarks of the Prime Minister, in June, 1888, must have dissi- 
 pated the last idea of any interference of the State in the Lake- 
 Regions, which are beyond the Sphere of British Influence : 
 " The only note in my noble friend's speech, that jarred on 
 my ear was, when he seemed to point to action, which means 
 military action, on the part of England to assure the possession 
 to these communities of Lake Nyasa. Has he really formed 
 any idea of the task he is laying out for the Government of 
 this country ? If he proposes to send an expedition, which 
 can subdue all this territory, according to our idea of how 
 expeditions should be organized and what they should cost, 
 I think he would find, that the expedition to Egypt of a few 
 years ago would melt into the faintest insignificance compared 
 with the task, to which he has invited this country. I will not 
 use any language .to encourage the belief, that the Govern- 
 ment will make any attempt by military action to support the 
 Commercial and Religious efforts of the Missionaries there. It is 
 not our Duty to do it. We should be risking tremendous sacri- 
 fices for a very doubtful gain. It is one of those tasks, which 
 must be and will be carried through by the individual English- 
 men, who have undertaken it. All that the Government can do 
 on the sea-coast, all that we can do diplomatically within the 
 sphere of political efforts in this country, we will do. But we 
 are certain, that we should only injure instead of promoting 
 these great civilized and Missionary efforts, it we were to 
 convert them into a cause of War, of War the most exhausting, 
 the most terrible, the least remunerative in any sense ; War 
 with the countless savages, who fill these Territories. Because 
 it is not a Civilized Power, with which we have to fight ; it is 
 a collection of all the scum of Humanity, that is found over 
 that vast Territory, which is governed principally by Arabs of 
 the sort, with whom we have dealt in the Sudan, who combine 
 the grossest cruelty with a species of fanaticism. We must 
 leave the dispersal of this terrible army of wickedness to the 
 gradual advance of Civilization and Christianity, which in 
 these countries, though slow, seems now to be sure." 
 " Sphere of Influence " is a grand new word, coined in the 
 last three .years, something more hazy than a Protectorate, and 
 a Protectorate does not create any responsibilities on the part 
 
(260 ) 
 
 of the Protector, Let me follow out the subject. On Lake 
 Tanganyika there are, as on Victoria Nyanza, two Missions, a 
 French, and a British. Already two Frenchmen have been 
 killed by the tribes ; the Mission is still at work. The British 
 Mission has a Steamer on the Lake. Evil days may be at hand. 
 Tipu Tib may find Stanley- Falls and Nyangwe too hot to 
 hold him and fall back on Tanganyika ; and we may find the 
 features described on the Nyasa Lake repeated, and the British 
 Missionary crying out for British protection, and the French 
 Missionary for French protection. And when we penetrate 
 further into the interior, we find a small party of gallant 
 French Protestants holding their own among the Ba-Rotsi on 
 the Upper Zamb6si, beyond all Human help, and yet not afraid. 
 Beyond them is young Arnot, an Englishman, alone, among 
 the Garaganja, a tribe dimly known from the reports of the 
 traveller Cameron. If once the precedent is set of Missionary 
 Societies, as in this case, pressing on European Governments 
 to extend their sphere of influence for the sake of Missionaries, 
 where will it end ? 
 
 There is another danger. When a country is annexed, as 
 Barma, the British Government introduces its system of manage- 
 ment, and is responsible for the protection of aliens. In a 
 Protectorate the responsibility is less, but the protected Chiefs 
 are ordered to pay compensation. In a " Sphere of Influence" 
 no responsibility is claimed, or admitted. It is merely a device 
 of one great European Nation to keep other European Nations 
 out. In the British Sphere of Influence on the Niger and in 
 Ydribaland horrible crimes are committed, like Cannibalism 
 and Human Sacrifices, Crimes against Human Nature. I have 
 reported the cases, which came to my notice, to the Foreign 
 Office : the reply always is, that it cannot be helped. In the 
 Report of the German East African Missionary Society, I read 
 how the Agents of the German Missionary Society at Neukirchen 
 had settled at Ngao within the Sphere of British Influence, West 
 of Mombasa, to Evangelize the Wa-Pok6mo. They were building 
 their houses and forming a village, when the wild Somili fell 
 upon them. They had to fly for their lives to the Station of the 
 British United Methodists, and everything, which they had, was 
 robbed and burnt : they had lost everything, and were even in 
 want of food. Have they any claim on the British Government ? 
 None : two years ago two Missionaries of the British United 
 Methodists were killed North of Mombasa, within the Sphere 
 of British Influence, and they have no claim ; and no meetings 
 were assembled at Manchester, Glasgow, or London, and no 
 agitation made to Government for revenge or protection. Two 
 British Missions and one French Mission, are located within the 
 Sphere of German Influence in East Africa. If any evil falls 
 
( 261 ) 
 
 upon them, the German Government will disclaim all re- 
 sponsibility. It is as well, that Missionary Societies should 
 understand this. 
 
 It is thoroughly understood, that a British Missionary will not 
 use physical force, except to defend life and female honour ; but 
 it is not quite so clearly understood by those, who have not 
 studied the subject, that, if a particular policy is followed, the 
 Missionary will find himself in a very difficult position : if he 
 lives on intimate terms with traders, gets his supplies from them, 
 associates with them, takes counsel with them, and they fight, 
 "the Natives will certainly not acquit them of complicity, and 
 lookers-on in Great Britain, and France, and Germany, will 
 scarcely do so either. Missions have often been given up 
 temporarily or for ever, and it is no discredit. The British 
 Missions at U-Ganda may be compelled to retire, after having 
 been maintained more than ten years at a cost exceeding one 
 hundred thousand pounds : if there be a lion in the path, what 
 can the servant of the Lord do ? If the door be shut, who can 
 open it ? Abyssinia is a standing example. I am on the Com- 
 mittee of the London Society to the Jews, and of the British 
 and Foreign Bible Society, and am well acquainted with the 
 circumstances of the Swedish Mission, and remember how Krapf 
 and Gobat and Isenberg had to abandon the country, and seek 
 other openings. Such may be the fate of the Nyasa Missions : 
 anything better than bloodshed. I think so strongly, as for 
 fifteen years I lived in Northern India in the midst of Annexa- 
 tions, Protectorates, Rebellions, Mutinies, bloodshed on the 
 field of battle, hanging on the gallows. These dreadful things 
 were forced upon us by Political circumstances. God forbid, 
 that a Missionary should be the cause, and that he should bring 
 a sword instead of the Gospel ! 
 
 My notebook supplies a sad account of the different policy 
 adopted in Oceania. I quote it as a warning. In 1865 Sir W. 
 Wiseman, Commodore, in the Ship " Curacoa," cannonaded 
 villages in the islands of the New Hebrides, because they had 
 taken the liberty of ejecting one Missionary, and been rude 
 to another. It is shocking to think, that on both occasions 
 the Missionary was present on board, and begged the Commo- 
 dore to spare his School-house. We do not read of anxiety 
 expressed for the women and children. The matter was taken 
 up by the Governing Board of the Mission, and a severe 
 censure passed on the Missionary, who was himself killed on 
 the island soon afterwards. In the narrative of the cruise of 
 the "Curacoa," published in 1875, the story is told by an eye- 
 witness. The Mission ought to have been abandoned, rather 
 than bring a Ship of War against the island. 
 
 It is of no use denying, that the arrogance, and self-assertion, 
 
( 262 ) 
 
 of the great Anglo-Saxon race on both sides of the Atlantic 
 exhibit themselves as markedly, and as unamiably, in their Mis- 
 sionaries, as in their Merchants, Soldiers, Travellers, and Officials. 
 How would a Swedish, or Swiss, Mission have fared on Lake 
 Nyisa ? And yet they are the ambassadors of Christ. We have 
 only to try to imagine Paul in his trouble being protected by 
 the United States man-of-war " Essex," or by Consul O'Neil in 
 the " Ilala." How different does his description of the labours 
 of an Evangelist read from those of the modern Missionary,- as 
 reflected in the side-lights thrown upon it in the Debates of the 
 British Parliament, or the Conferences of British Geographical 
 Societies ? What have " British Interests," as such, to do with 
 Christ's Gospel, which existed long before, and which will out- 
 live, the power and greatness of the Anglo- Saxon ? Such a policy 
 as the one, which I have denounced, and which all good Mis- 
 sionaries denounce, must make Missionaries odious to the races, 
 among whom they work : it has made the name of the French 
 Missionary stink in every quarter of the world, to which French 
 ships can get near. I appeal to all the Churches to resist the 
 insidious evil : it destroys the character of the Missionary to 
 hear him state, that his Society has invested so much capital in 
 this Region, as if he had taken shares in" a Joint-Stock Company, 
 and could call upon his Government to get him compensa- 
 tion. I wonder how much capital during the last century the 
 London Missionary Society invested in the Society islands and 
 the Loyalty islands : to the eye of man it seems all lost by 
 French occupation ; yet it has been well spent, as the most 
 profitable of all investments is the purchase of hundreds of re- 
 deemed souls. If the Government were weak, and the pressure 
 of the Missionary Society were strong, the country might be 
 goaded on into Protectorates, Annexations, or Military Expe- 
 ditions, to end as miserably as that of Gordon at Khartum. 
 When the Government turns a cold shoulder on the Missionary, 
 it is so much the better for. his cause. 
 
 July, 1888. 
 
 Seven years have passed away, and a wonderful material 
 advance has been made. The Gospel is now preached on Lake 
 Victoria and Lake Nyasa with the support of Maxim-guns, and 
 Rifles. Up to this time Liquor has been kept out, but lethal 
 weapons have been supplied in great quantities, and gunpowder. 
 Slavery still exists, and the Slave-Trade is not yet put down. 
 British, French, and German Missionaries, both Protestant and 
 Romish, are on the spot : the end is not yet : how will matters 
 stand in 1905 ? 
 
( 263 ) 
 
 F. Polygamy not possible to a Christian. 
 
 i. Paper circulated at Episcopal Conference in 188S 
 2. Polygamy in the Christian Church. 
 
 i. Paper circulated at Episcopal Conference in 1888. 
 
 A letter was read from the Bishop of Zululand in the Upper 
 House of Convocation during the Summer of 1886, requesting 
 guidance on the question of baptizing persons living in Polygamy. 
 It was determined, that communications should be made to those 
 Churches of the Anglican Communion, in which questions 
 relating to Polygamy had been found of pressing importance, 
 and that the ancient Ecclesiastical Law relating to the subject 
 should be ascertained. At the annual meeting of the S.P.G., 
 the Primate again alluded to the subject, and notified, that it 
 would be discussed in the Pan-Anglican Synod, which would, 
 D.V., meet in 1888 at Lambeth. 
 
 It may be deemed not inexpedient to recall what has been 
 written on the subject, and to consider it as God-fearing men, 
 and yet not afraid to look firmly in the face the facts recorded in 
 past history, and the circumstances of the days in which we live. 
 We should show, that we are neither slaves to precedents, nor 
 desirous of needless change, nor contemptuous of Holy Writ, 
 wisely and widely interpreted. 
 
 In the Table of Literature on the subject, ancient memories 
 will be awakened, and the opinions of men now at rest will be 
 cited. There is still room for discussion, when we find that 
 a quarter of a century ago Archbishop Whately, Bishop Colenso, 
 Bishop Cotton, Bishop Milman were on one side, and Bishop 
 Cotterell, Bishop Daniel Wilson, and Mr. Henry Venn were on the 
 other. Different Missionaries have acted, and made utterances, 
 in different manners. Such of the laity, as have spoken, have 
 as a rule, upheld the sanctity of contracts made bond fide, the 
 contract of the union of the sexes, which is the most sacred, if 
 not always the most holy, of contracts, and repudiated the idea 
 of a Polygamist purchasing admission into the Church of Christ 
 at the expense of the comfort, the rights, the respectability, and 
 possibly the Morals, of his wives. We read in the " Report of 
 the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Panjab Church Council " 
 (p. 59), that both Bishops Milman and Robinson, of Calcutta, 
 sanctioned the baptism of Polygamists : we may well hold our 
 breath here: and we read how in South Africa Polygamists 
 were allowed to select one wife and enter the Church, and that 
 
(. 264 ) 
 
 the others were sometimes allowed to live not far from him, 
 sometimes allowed to depart, sometimes married off to others : 
 we may well feel a feeling of shame here, for these poor women 
 had Souls to be saved also. 
 
 What is Polygamy ? Its real meaning, is the status of a man, 
 who has a plurality of wives, and of a woman, who has a 
 plurality of husbands. The legal test of the word "husband" 
 and "wife" is, that the civil Law recognizes the status, and the 
 rights flowing therefrom, and that the children are legitimate. 
 We have both Polygyny and Polyandry in India, thoroughly 
 recognized in the courts of Law. Be it remembered, that we 
 guaranteed to the people of India Toleration of their Religion, 
 and their own Laws, as regards Marriage and inheritance, and no 
 wise Ruler would venture to meddle with them. And here I at 
 once lay down another principle: whatever theologians or short- 
 sighted Missionaries may say, Polygamy is not a crime. The 
 Rulers of India put down with a high hand atrocious crime. 
 When we annexed the Panjab in 1846, I was with Lord 
 Lawrence, and we summoned the landowners, and told them, 
 that they must not burn their widows, or kill their daughters, or 
 bury alive their lepers. We knew very well, that the greater part 
 were Idolaters, and all of them possible Polygynists, and some 
 Polyandrists ; but that was no affair of ours. Polygyny and 
 Polyandry may be highly objectionable, but their position ranges 
 with profligacy, intoxication, gambling, and other habits con- 
 demned by the Moralist, yet extensively practised in Christian 
 countries. 
 
 According to Sir W. Hunter, Polyandry is found in the 
 Himalayan valleys and in Travanc6r, at each end of India ; one 
 woman has several husbands, generally brothers. In the great 
 heroic poem, the " Mahabharata," the heroine, Draupadi, 
 marries five brothers and lives happily. So entirely is Polyandry 
 a feature of the customs of some tribes in Central India, that 
 General Dalton mentions, that, at the request of a father, he 
 directed search to be made for a runaway daughter, who was 
 brought in by the police with her two lovers, with whom she had 
 eloped. In the Panjab, among the Jdt families, too poor to bear 
 the expense of the marriage of all the males, the wife of the 
 eldest son has to accept his brothers as joint husbands. 
 One tribe is mentioned by Mahometan writers in 1008 a.d. 
 as practising Polyandry. In South India the custom has 
 a different and more primitive development, for the sister's 
 son always succeeds to a man's property; and according to 
 Sir W. Hunter, the women of certain tribes live promiscuously 
 without the form of Marriage. The successor to the Throne 
 is restricted to the issue of a certain number of Princesses, who 
 are kept like queen-bees. 
 
( 265 ) 
 
 Polygyny is lawful throughout India, both to Hindu and 
 Mahometan, but the practice is quite the exception, as it is 
 expensive. Moreover, India is a Realm of Law, and has been so 
 for centuries. A Marriage is only lawful with certain persons, 
 and must be ratified in a certain way and at a considerable 
 expense. This causes a great restriction of the privilege, and, 
 as a fact, none but the rich avail themselves of it. Very good 
 feeling is often shown. A rich banker came to see me, and told 
 me of his sorrow, that he had no son to perform the funeral- 
 rites over him. I suggested to. him a second wife, but he would 
 not hear of anything, which would vex his wife. On one occasion 
 I heard in my Office, that my head-man of business had had two 
 babies born at the same time from different mothers ; when 
 alone, I asked him about it, as it appeared to me to be dis- 
 reputable, and he said, that it was not his fault, that his parents 
 had married him in childhood to his two wives; that they were 
 both good women, and he had no power to cast either off. I 
 remember a young Rajput noble marrying the two daughters of 
 a Rajput neighbour, who added a niece as well to the bargain. 
 The Maharaja Dulip Singh, so well known in England, is the 
 issue of a Polygamist father, who left a great many widows. 
 Shir Ali, the unfortunate Ruler of Afghanistan in the last War, 
 was the issue of a Polygamous connection. I remember the 
 Maharaja of Pateala, a Polygamist, in his desire to have a son, 
 ordering a wife to be looked for of his own Caste, who belonged 
 to a family, where the women always had large families, and his 
 plan succeeded. Nothing is more mistaken than to suppose 
 that sensuality, in India at least, has anything to do with the 
 matter. We read how the high-priest Jehoiada gave King Joash 
 two wives, when he was quite a child. As a rule, the bridegroom 
 has never seen the bride before the marriage. The Marriage- 
 vow is preserved faithfully by the woman at least, and by a very- 
 great majority of the men. We quite know, that Monogamy 
 does not put a stop to gross sensuality. My object is to show, 
 that it is raising a false issue to exaggerate the foulness of 
 Polygyny. It exists, respected by the Law ; but, if left alone, 
 will gradually die out under the influence of enlightenment. 
 Education, and general softening of manners. 
 
 Leaving India, let us consider Polygamy in South Africa. 
 Sir Theophilus Shepstone, Hon. Secretary for Native Affairs 
 in Natal, on March 26, 1861, expressed the following opinions 
 at Pietermaritzburg : 
 
 (1) Native Law recognizes every Woman as a wife, whose 
 position as such has been consented to by the two 
 families concerned, and when such consent has been 
 ratified or carried out by a formal Marriage-ceremony. 
 
( 266 ) 
 
 (2) For a Marriage-to be valid, there must be a consider- 
 
 ation on both sides, the two families being the 
 contracting parties, and this must be measured by 
 the rank and condition of these families. 
 
 (3) The suitor must make over cattle to the amount settled, 
 
 and the girl on her Marriage must be accompanied 
 by cattle and ornaments, as may be due to her rank. 
 In some cases she brings nearly as much as her 
 husband has paid. 
 
 (4) The Marriage-ceremonies differ with different tribes ; but 
 
 the essence of it is friendship betwixt the families ; 
 promise to protect and cherish wife, on part of 
 husband ; promise of obedience and good behaviour, 
 on part of wife ; and a further recognition of the 
 new relations with each other, which can always be 
 pleaded in any subsequent dispute. 
 
 (5) The cattle are taken beforehand to the girl's family, 
 
 but the girl can refuse them, and does often refuse 
 them, and send them back ; and the rneaning of 
 this is known. 
 
 (6) Her friends may press and threaten her; but a girl, if 
 
 determined,- is sure of victory. In case of personal 
 violence the British Magistrate would interfere and 
 protect her, and maintain her right of free choice, 
 and punish violence. 
 
 (7) In every stage of the proceedings before and after 
 
 Marriage will be found the exact counterparts and 
 analogies of the higher form of Marriage elsewhere, 
 but in their Native form peculiar to the state of culture. 
 
 (8) The wife is not a Slave, or sold as such. The parent 
 
 of the girl never loses his right to protect his child. 
 The cattle given at the Marriage is a guarantee for 
 her good treatment. 
 
 (9) She has, of course, to work, and help to maintain her 
 
 family. If idle she is punished. But public opinion 
 has the same effect among women here as elsewhere. 
 
 (10) A widow may continue with her children, or leave them 
 
 and marry again. The husband's heirs may claim 
 something, but they cannot control her free action. 
 
 (11) If she runs away from her husband, and her friends 
 
 refuse to give her up, the matter comes before the 
 Magistrate, who settles it as best he can. 
 
 (12) When separation takes place before children are born, 
 
 it often happens, that all property is mutually restored. 
 Such cases often come before the Magistrate, who, if 
 cruelty and oppression of the Woman be proved, 
 would not order the cattle to be given back to the 
 husband. 
 
( 267 ) 
 
 Sir Theophilus admits the evil of Polygamy, but gross 
 exaggeration of that evil will not help the matter. There are 
 many evils also in monogamic Marriages. He states distinctly, 
 that in any case of oppression by father of his daughter, or 
 husband of wife, the Magistrate will interfere. 
 
 He considers that it is wrong to teach a Heathen, as a duty 
 enjoined by Christ's Religion, that he must injure others to benefit 
 himself, that he must commit an unlawful act, involving op- 
 pression and injustice, and a reckless sacrifice of the intert-sts 
 of others, to further his own. These women are wives 
 according to their Law, or custom having force of Law ; and 
 their consciences, and their self-respect, should not be destroyed 
 by inducing them to believe, that they are something less, in 
 fact, dishonoured prostitutes ; their children should not be 
 bastardized, who by the Law are legitimate, and have rights 
 as such. These women are admitted to be faithful wives, 
 because they consider themselves wives. Why subvert this 
 notion and, in fact, encourage licentiousness ? A wife at 
 present has within her reach full means of protection, because 
 she has the legal rights of a wife to plead. If deprived of these, 
 her moral sense and her legal rights disappear. It may be 
 expedient to legislate so as to discourage and extinguish 
 Polygamy eventually, but any other course is neither politic 
 nor just. 
 
 In India the wives are all equal ; but we gather from Sir 
 T. Shepstone, that one Zulu wife ranks above another. But it 
 rarely happens, that the first wife, according to date, enjoys 
 the highest rank ; nor does the issue of the first wife succeed 
 as of right to a chieftainship ; this point is of importance, as 
 will appear below. In South Africa no system of concubinage 
 is recognized, nor in India : this fact must also be borne in 
 mind. In South Africa, as in India among the Hindu, a man 
 cannot marry any female, with whom he is in the remotest 
 degree connected in blood. In South Africa the suitor has seen 
 the girl, who is apparently an adult, and has a veto on the 
 arrangement ; in India the bride is generally a child, and has 
 no voice in the matter. In India, with the Hindu female, 
 divorce or re-marriage as a widow is impossible. With the 
 Mahometan there is no difficulty, as the woman can even 
 divorce her husband, and can, as a widow, re-marry. Change 
 of Religion from the Hindu and Mahometan point of view- 
 dissolves the contract of Marriage ; but a Christian does not 
 obtain his liberty to re-marry in that way. 
 
 But there is a third class of circumstances, which presents 
 itself. In British India the "Law of the person" is enforced 
 by British Courts. In the colonies of Natal and the Cape, Law, 
 to a certain extent, prevails, but of a rougher character ; but on 
 
( 268 ) 
 
 the West Coast of Africa there exists no Law, or custom having 
 the force of Law, and there is no Executive to enforce it, if it 
 did exist. Polygamy is made more odious by the existence of 
 Slavery and the Slave-Trade ; and it is obvious, that sensuality 
 is the motive here, and that in fact Marriage scarcely exists. 
 The connection of the Arab, and the Negro chief, with the 
 women of his harem is simply that of wholesale concubinage. 
 If the phenomena presented are more distressing, they are 
 simpler. The male convert in such cases can be dealt with 
 very summarily, as a reformed profligate ; the poor women have 
 no conjugal duties to render, but have to be rescued, as best may 
 be, from a life of infamy. 
 
 Beyond India and Africa there are other regions, where 
 Polygamy prevails, but it is in these two countries, that the 
 opposing forces of 'Polygamy and Christianity come into 
 collision. 
 
 The environment of the chosen people at Hebron and 
 Shechem, in Egypt, and in Canaan, was so totally different, that 
 it is difficult to imagine anything more unreasonable than to 
 seek for analogies there, wherewith to solve this problem of the 
 nineteenth century in India and Africa. If Polygamy prevailed 
 in the Old Testament times, it was obviously of a totally 
 different character from the secluded Indian zanana, the Zulu 
 kraal, and the Yariba harem. In the first case the woman does 
 nothing, absolutely nothing ; in the last two she works like a 
 day-labourer, and helps to support herself, her children, and 
 her husband, or master, by daily toil. The wives of the Hebrew 
 Polygamist appeared in public, were admitted to the place of 
 Worship, were treated with honour and deference, and in the 
 case of Hannah, a second, and Bathsheba, an eighth wife, their 
 issue was the recipient of the highest honour from the Almighty. 
 There were harlots in those days, and there were concubines ; 
 but these were wives, and the Priests did not think them un- 
 worthy of their notice They had even a higher status than is 
 conceded by Law to the wives of the Indian and African 
 Polygamist ; and in some cases, though not all, in the case of 
 the mother of Solomon certainly, Polygamy was the result of 
 sensuality, and yet went unpunished under a system of govern- 
 ment controlled by a powerful Priesthood, and stimulated and 
 awed by inspired Prophets, who were never wearied in describing 
 the sins and backslidings of the Nation (Ezekiel, iii, 18), but 
 never spake one word against this great domestic weakness. 
 I mention these facts to justify the British Government of India 
 and South Africa in the policy of forbearance, which they have 
 adopted towards Polygamy, as in past years they did to Slavery, 
 until in India the latter died out of itself, and this will be the 
 fa'te of Polygamy also. 
 
( 269 ) 
 
 Great stress should be laid upon a consideration of the state 
 of the world, as described by Classic Authors, at the time of the 
 appearance of our Lord. The Greek culture had dominated 
 Western Asia and North Africa, and was perpetuated by their 
 successors, the Romans. Can we doubt that the Heroes of the 
 "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," Priam, Hector, Menelaus, Ulysses, 
 Agamemnon, were Monogamists, not always faithful husbands, 
 but never with two wives lawfully married at the same time ? 
 The Gods, and Goddesses, the creatures of the Greek concep- 
 tion, were Monogamists. There is nothing in the " Iliad " or 
 " Odyssey " to suggest Polygamy : to the reader of the great 
 Hindu Epics, the" Ramayana" and "Mahabharata," Polygamy is 
 the one feature, which cannot be overlooked. Palestine, Syria, 
 and Egypt had been thoroughly Hellenized before the advent of 
 our Lord (see Maccabees, II, iv, io), and the four bad customs, 
 which had prevailed in the elder world, and which are still found 
 to prevail in Heathen countries in a low culture, had disappeared. 
 How could Paul have written verse 31 of the fifth chapter of 
 the Ephesians, if the having a plurality of lawful consorts had 
 been a possible conception for the Apostle's mind ? He knew 
 very clearly what a harlot was, but an alternative wife did 
 not suggest itself. The same conviction arises from a perusal 
 of Corinthians, I, vii, 2, that Paul, a Greek scholar, a Roman 
 citizen, and a Hebrew Pharisee, knew nothing about Polygamy 
 any more than of Anthropophagy, and Human Sacrifices. 
 
 My own view is that of Michaelis (" Law of Moses," iii, 5), that 
 subsequent to the return from the Babylonish Captivity, Polygamy 
 did not exist. I challenge anyone to produce an instance of the 
 practice, or a passage inferring the practice, in the Apocrypha or 
 any Greek or Roman Author; the only instance on record is that 
 of Herod the Great, mentioned by Josephus. An unlimited power 
 of divorce, and no doubt profligacy, had taken its place. The 
 world had advanced. Successive Polygamy had taken the place 
 of concurrent Polygamy in the Western world. In Greece and 
 Rome Polygamy was unknown. We only read of one wife of 
 Pilate. Esther is the last Hebrew maiden on record, who fell 
 so low as to be one of the many concubines of a sensual tyrant, 
 a Heathen, to whom her Law forbade her to be married. Her 
 contemporary, the Roman Virginia, preferred death to shame. 
 If it be conceded, that Polygamy had ceased to exist many 
 centuries before the time of our Lord and His Apostles, we are 
 spared much useless discussion about inapplicable texts, which 
 could not be meant to cover circumstances, which never existed. 
 In the elder world Cannibalism, Human sacrifices, Witchcraft, 
 and Polygamy had existed, but as far as regards the Nations 
 dwelling within the area of the Roman Empire, they had died 
 out. There is an abundance of abominable crime alluded to by 
 
( 270 ) 
 
 Paul, but it was beyond his experience and imagination, that a 
 man should err in these particulars. It seems impossible, that 
 he should have overlooked them in the first Chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Romans, had they existed. 
 
 I have perused a bundle of letters from Bishops and Missionaries 
 in India, which have arrived at the Church Missionary Society 
 this year in answer to the query : they represent the outcome of 
 solitary minds, which had never discussed the subject in any 
 Indian Conference, and were void of all African and Oceanic 
 experiences : some would baptize a Palygamist offhand ; some 
 vould make him put away his extra wives (though a wife in 
 India is a reality, not a mere concubine) ; some would exclude 
 him from the Lord's Supper, and others from Church-Office. 
 The well-known verses of Timothy, I, iii, 2, 12, are freely quoted, 
 but Timothy, I, v, 9, is never quoted ; and yet, if it be a just 
 inference from the first passages, that a Bishop and a Deacon 
 must be restricted to Monogamy, while their flock might be 
 Polygamists, it follows that it may with equal force be inferred 
 that, if widows admitted into the number were to be wives of one 
 husband, the rest of the sex might at discretion be Polyandrous. 
 We may just as well argue, that Polyandry existed among the 
 Samaritans at the time of our Lord. Clearly the woman of 
 Samaria at Jacob's well had five husbands, and, as Dean Alford 
 remarks, they were certainly lawful husbands : we are not told 
 whether they were contemporary husbands, or successive under 
 the operation of Death or of Divorce; but our Lord adds: "he 
 whom thou now hast is not thy husband," showing that the 
 wretched woman had fallen from so-called legal unchastity to 
 something worse, the position of a harlot, and she admits the 
 fact : " He told me all things that ever I did." Of neither 
 custom is there a scintilla of evidence. There are three other 
 alternative explanations: (1) the Bishop, Deacon, and widow, 
 must not have suffered bereavement and had two partners in 
 succession in lawful Matrimony ; (2) they must not have availed 
 themselves of the lax rules of divorce, and made new alliances, 
 while their former partner was living; (3) tbey must not be, like 
 Roman Priests, celibates. The Morals of the Corinthian Church 
 were evidently very low, and Paul speaks out his mind on the 
 duties of the married state very explicitly: he could not have 
 passed over Polygamy without notice, if it had existed. 
 
 Since these days the uttermost ends of the world have been 
 reached, and we find traces of these four giants in America, 
 Africa, Asia, and Oceania. We find nearly all the crimes de- 
 scribed by the Apostle, and these in addition. Civilization may 
 have trodden down the three former in China, Japan, and India, 
 but the fourth remains. Elsewhere all are rampant. This leads 
 to another reflection. We cannot conceal from ourselves, that 
 
( 271 ) 
 
 all mankind is not on the same level of culture, and privileges, 
 and responsibilities. Europe and European Colonies are far 
 ahead of Asia, Asia is ahead of Africa, and Africa of America, 
 and Oceania. It is idle to apply the same methods of govern- 
 ment, to require the same standard of Morals, to enforce the 
 same discipline, upon tribes just emerging from savagery, in 
 the lowest rounds of culture, left out in the cold for long 
 centuries, never visited by Prophet or Evangelist, never elevated 
 by certain hopes of a Future Heaven, never awed by certain 
 prospects of everlasting damnation. And yet some Missionaries 
 would try to induce per saltum ordinances and standards, 
 which they could scarcely be able to enforce in the British 
 islands, into the African kraal, or the Indian village. Let them 
 set before their flock the highest, the very highest, standard, 
 but be merciful in the application of it for the first or second 
 generations. 
 
 All other sins and offences against the Law of God and Human 
 Nature seem to come to an end with the committal and the 
 punishment, the repentance and the pardon. In Oceania we 
 have excellent Christians, who once were Cannibals. The 
 sorcerer-priest, the official murderer of the Human Sacrifice, has 
 been admitted as a communicant ; the profligate, the drunkard, 
 the adulterer, the Atheist, the blasphemer, the persecutor of 
 martyred Christians, all find, that there is pardon : but the curse 
 of the unhappy Polygamist is, by the nature of the case, a con- 
 tinuing one; he cannot get rid of it until his own death, or that 
 of all but one of his unhappy wives. And yet Polygamy, though 
 it clearly existed, is not condemned in the Decalogue. The 
 few words, " Thou shalt have but one wife," would have settled 
 the matter absolutely and for ever. To our Nineteenth-century 
 ideas the sin of theft, which is condemned in the Decalogue, is 
 as nothing compared to that of Polygamy. As time went on, 
 and the thoughts of men widened with the progress of the suns, 
 no Prophet denounced this canker-worm of domestic purity, 
 causing rivalry among women occupying the same house, hatred 
 among the children of the same father. The misfortunes of the 
 lives of David and Solomon could be so clearly traced to Poly- 
 gamy, that the conscience of the Nation would have accepted 
 the prohibition, as indeed it did after the Captivity. It cannot 
 be said, as regards Israel, as it can truly be said with regard to 
 the people of India, that the position of the ruling Power was 
 so delicate and precarious, that it dared not run the risk of 
 intruding into family-customs, for Ezra and Nehemiah plainly 
 compelled the people to put away their alien wives. A word 
 from Moses and Joshua would have nipped Polygamy in the 
 bud ; and David's conduct would have been as unjustifiable in 
 taking eight wives one thousand years before the Christian era, 
 
( 272 ) 
 
 as Herod's was in taking nine wives at the time of the birth 
 of our Lord. On the contrary, special favour attaches itself 
 to Rachel, Hannah, and Bathsheba, and their issue, Joseph, 
 Samuel, and Solomon, all begotten by polygamist fathers. The 
 Missionary must, therefore, maintain some restraint upon 
 himself in his wholesale abuse of Polygamy, or cease to read 
 the Old Testament to his congregation. I have it on the 
 authority of one distinguished Traveller, that a Woman in West 
 Africa would disdain to marry a man, who had only one wife. 
 1 have it on the authority of a Missionary, that after becoming 
 pregnant the wife withdraws herself absolutely from the society 
 of her husband for three years, that she may suckle her offspring. 
 Everything assumes a weird and awful form in Africa. A well- 
 known Traveller a few years ago tells us of a Chief, who, in 
 addition to his well-stocked harem, claimed a right to every 
 woman in his Kingdom, on whom his fancy fell ; and among 
 the numbers of his harem were his sisters, his stepmothers, his 
 cousins, his aunts, and his own children. The Polygamy of 
 India, which excludes everyone within the limits of consan- 
 guinity and affinity, and limits the number to four at the same 
 time, all of the same Caste as the husband, seems quite a 
 decent and orderly custom, compared to the frightful excesses 
 of the Africans in Regions, which have not yet come under 
 European Law. 
 
 I have no wish to fortify myself by the opinions of others. As 
 stated above, I regard all the cases quoted in the Old Testament 
 as inapplicable to Christianity in the Nineteenth century, and 
 the pages of the New Testament are silent ; but the words, 
 " Male and female created He them," " In the beginning it 
 was not so," seem to govern the whole matter, and to forbid 
 imperatively the admission of Polygamy in any form into the 
 Christian Church. To this may be added the words from our 
 Lord's lips in the inspired Greek version, "They twain shall 
 be one flesh," and in Genesis, "I will make him an helpmeet tor 
 him " ; and one of Adam's ribs was taken, emphatically " one 
 only." The equality of members of the two sexes, that are born, 
 is beyond doubt : the superior fecundity of a monogamous 
 population is a fact capable of proof. Canon Westcott's words, 
 in his "Social Aspects of Christianity," should be reflected 
 upon with regard to those words of our Lord, "the twain 
 shall become one flesh " : " Marriage is the Divine pattern 
 and ground of Human Communities, the original Sacrament 
 of completed manhood." How can this be, if a Polygamist 
 be admitted to the Church ? Marriage is a type of the union 
 of the Redeemer with the Church. How can that be brought 
 home, if seated in the Church is a tolerated Polygamist with his 
 miscellaneous contemporary offspring, differentiated like cattle 
 
( 273 ) 
 
 by the name of their sire and dam ? If once Polygamists are 
 admitted into the Church, even for the lifetime of existing Poly- 
 gamists, a new lease of life will be given to the Institution. 
 The Native Churches are rapidly becoming independent, and it 
 may please some lax Christians to assert a right for a Church 
 to be polygamous. Nor is this fear without foundation, as is 
 evidenced by the letter of a Native Pastor at Abeokuta in Yariba- 
 land, West Africa, 1883 : " The Polygamists had gained ground, 
 " and had trodden down the communicant members of the 
 " Community : I have since begun to effect separation between 
 " the two. The Polygamists dislike this, and complain against 
 " me bitterly, that I virtually separate them from my congrega- 
 " tion, because they are sinners. They would persecute the 
 " communicants, whenever they had an opportunity. They 
 "used to be members of my local Church - committee, so 
 " as to be consulted before anything is done by me in the 
 " Church, and whatever they do not sanction they would not 
 " have me to do. What makes it worse is, that they are 
 " the more enlightened of the congregation. The young 
 " Polygamists have a company, which meets once a month for 
 " feasting, and on this occasion Monogamy is a subject of 
 " scandal and reproach. Some young male communicants had 
 " joined them before I came to this station : up till now I have 
 " not been able to disconnect them, although they do not seem 
 " to join them in heart and mind." 
 
 At the Diocesan Conference at Lagos, 1887, the Rev. J. 
 Buckley Wood, a Missionary of great experience, spoke as 
 follows : " Another difficulty in the way of Church-progress is 
 '' the multiplication of women by some Christians. There are 
 ' some, who are dead to the heinousness of the sin, in which 
 ' they live, whilst there are others, who are far from being at 
 ' ease in their sin, and who would (so they say, and I am 
 ' inclined to believe them) leave it, if they could see how. 
 ' That there are great difficulties, which cannot be mentioned 
 ' particularly, in the way of such, is a fact. These persons 
 ' attend Divine Service regularly ; their every-day life, except 
 ' as to the sin in question, is above the average ; they use their 
 ' influence on the side of right, they are ready to subscribe to 
 ' good objects. Such form a stumbling-block in the Church. 
 ' People, seeing their general conduct, are drawn to think less 
 ' of the one deadly sin, and the result is, that the protest of the 
 ' consciences of the really godly members is apt to be lessened, 
 ' and there is something like a compromise to be made with 
 ' this sin." 
 
 At the Diocesan Conference at Sierra Leone, in 1888, Mr. 
 T. J. Sawyer, a most respectable coloured citizen, openly 
 claimed for the Heathen and Mahometan, the right of having 
 
 18 
 
( 274 ) 
 
 a plurality of wives, and the drift of his argument was such', as 
 to justify the opinion, entertained by a member of the Con- 
 ference, that by implication he asserted the right for the 
 members of Christian Churches, not only if the ties had been 
 formed previous to Baptism, but if contracted after Baptism. 
 
 In 1894 the African Review of June gave the following con- 
 versation with Sir Gilbert Carter, the Governor of the Colony 
 of Lagos: 
 
 " ' A point of view you would also wish to emphasize, Sir 
 "Gilbert, in regard to Polygamy ?' 
 
 " ' Yes, the Christian Churches will not make much headway, 
 " so long as they oppose Polygamy. The very idea of celibacy, in 
 "the way we understand it, is foreign to Africans. This fact 
 " has come to be recognized by a section of the Native Christian 
 " Church in Lagos, which connives at Polygamy. You see, the 
 " Africans have always been Polygamists. If you abolish 
 " Polygamy, what is to become of the women ? You can, too, 
 " only substitute something infinitely more degrading, that 
 " particular form of sexual relationship, which parades itself 
 " publicly in the principal London-thoroughfares, and makes 
 " this great city a bye-word with all Europe. As a matter of 
 " fact, this social evil has raised its head triumphantly in Sierra 
 " Leone since nominal Christianity has made way there. One 
 " is accosted in the streets as one is here, and in Lagos things 
 " are getting just as bad, so I am credibly informed.' 
 
 " I then asked Sir Gilbert Carter, whether the African's view 
 " of the marital relationship, which undoubtedly is of a crudely 
 " material kind, was on the whole more primitive than the view 
 " of the mass of Englishmen, who also take an extremely utili- 
 " tarian view of the relationship. Sir Gilbert said, that there 
 " was this difference, that so far as he could discover, and he 
 " had made, he said, many inquiries, the African was not in- 
 " fluenced by any kind of aesthetic sense, even if he had that 
 " sense, which was doubtful, in selecting his wife. He had 
 " often heard certain women spoken of as beauties, who, upon 
 " seeing them, proved to be more than ordinarily ill-favoured ; 
 " but when the meaning of the word ' beauty,' applied to them, 
 " was inquired into, it was found to have reference to their 
 " culinary or bargaining capacities. Sir Gilbert was also sure 
 " that the idea of romantic love, of that kind of affection be- 
 " tween man and woman, of which poets write, but which is rare 
 " enough even in Western countries, is practically non-existent 
 " among Africans ; but if the Africans have not a high ideal, 
 " they do not fall so low as we do. Englishmen should take 
 " the beam out of their own eyes and look at home, where, in 
 " our fashionable world, half the men seem to spend their time 
 " qualifying for the Divorce- Court, before they condemn Africans 
 
( 275 ) 
 
 'for the mote that is in theirs. 'We blindly shut our eyes,' 
 ' said Sir Gilbert with delightful candour, ' to our own vices, 
 ' and set to work to reclaim the African, with the set purpose, 
 ' as it seems to me, of making him as immoral as we are 
 ' ourselves.' 
 
 " ' I believe, that the women are as strong in their advocacy 
 ' of Polygamy as the men, and that a woman likes to be one of 
 ' many wives, in that it indicates the importance of her husband, 
 ' and she therefore shines by a reflected light,?' 
 
 " ' That is entirely true,' answered Sir Gilbert. ' By the way, 
 ' on one occasion I opened a mosque at Lagos, and I spoke 
 ' then about the Religious question and about Polygamy at 
 ' some length, my remarks finding their way into the English 
 ' papers. But what I said then I repeat now. I do not believe 
 ' in Polygamy for English folk, but I do for African people. 
 ' One little fact may not be generally known in England. A 
 ' Native mother suckles her child for three years, during the 
 ' whole of which time her husband is her protector, but he 
 ' lives apart from her.' 
 
 " 'And that a man should have half-a-dozen wives does not 
 ' rob other men of the chance of having one ? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' Certainly not. There are many more women than men ; 
 ' and, as a matter of fact, few men have more than one wife : 
 ' they can't afford it ; it is entirely an economic question.' " 
 
 We have clearly arrived at the place of the parting of the 
 ways, and must put down our foot now, or be carried away by 
 the stream. 
 
 But in avoiding Scylla, do not let us run into Charybdis. The 
 King of Kongo professed lately to the Missionaries at San 
 Salvador, that he was in great trouble about his wives, and 
 anxious to know what he should do. The Missionaries made 
 the prudent reply, that they could not advise him to put them 
 away, as this could only be productive of greater evils. This is the 
 whole gist of the matter: let us think it out upon the facts 
 recorded, and not on the opinions on those facts. 
 
 Some Missionaries would receive the Polygamist on the 
 condition of his retaining one wife only : but which wife ? the 
 one, who was the first married to him, perhaps old, childless, 
 neglected, and a hopeless Heathen; or the mother of the largest 
 number of his children, or the one, to whom his fancy turns, or 
 the one who is rdady to become a Christian, or the chief wife, 
 where there is a certain gradation of rank among them ? In 
 the event of the chosen wife dying, must he choose another from 
 his reserve-wives, or from an entirely new connection ? We 
 enter here into a succession of hopeless dilemmas, to which no 
 satisfactory solution can be found. Some bolder spirits would 
 suggest, that all the previous marriages were worthless, and the 
 
( 276 ) 
 
 new Christian should, like a snake, come out of his old skin and 
 abandon all, " wife, children, for His sake," and be united by 
 Christian matrimony to a Christian Woman. I should not have 
 ventured to have suggested such a shocking device, if I had not 
 read of it as proposed. But natural affection may be too strong 
 for him, and a Missionary from Be-Chuana-Iand writes, that in 
 ten years he never had a case of a Polygamist being converted, 
 but he had known one instance of a man putting away a second 
 wife, and becoming a Catechumen ; but she came back to him, 
 and he received her, and left the Faith. We read in Helps' 
 " Spanish Conquest of America," that it was settled in a Roman 
 Catholic Synod, that the Polygamist husband might choose the 
 wife, whom he liked best to be his partner in Baptism : the 
 reason given was, that he could not know who was his first wife, 
 but he knew very well the one, whom he wished to have. The 
 Priests did not care for the poor rejected Squaws. 
 
 I give an instance of the offhand way, in which a young 
 Clergyman, who would have been only a curate in England, 
 disposes of the persons, Morals, honour, and rights, of the poor 
 wives of his baptized converts. " An interesting ceremony took 
 " place here last Sunday, the Marriage by joining of hands, in 
 " the presence of the Christians, of three of our brethren. We 
 " strongly insist, that everyone, who is called a brother, shall 
 " bring the Woman, whom he has chosen as his wife, that they 
 " may make a solemn public compact. Of course, we hope to 
 " encourage Christian men only to marry Christian women ; but, 
 " as the case stands, most of the converts have had wives, some 
 " three or four, before their conversion. We then insist, that 
 " one be chosen out, and that the rest be given full liberty, if 
 " they think well, to seek other husbands. We have been deeply 
 " thankful, that the Native Christians have seen the propriety of 
 " this, and have not put difficulties in our way." 
 
 A lay Missionary at a Station in North' America arrogated 
 the power of divorce and redistribution of wives among his 
 converts, thus causing a confusion in one of the fundamental 
 bases of Society, and indicating the necessity of the Heads 
 of the Church speaking very distinctly on such subjects. It is 
 hardly necessary to say, that he has been got rid of. 
 
 But we must lift up this subject to a higher level. The 
 Missionary sometimes argues, that the African Woman is a mere 
 beast of burden and a Slave, and at another time an object of 
 sensual lust. She can scarcely be both at the same time. It is 
 sometimes urged, that she is not a wife at all, but only a con- 
 cubine. The Be-Chuana Missionary above quoted goes so 
 far as to say, that the women, who were put away, would not 
 consider themselves injured, and that it was quite a common 
 thing for a Woman to have been united to five or six men in 
 
( 277 ) 
 
 succession. Such a state of things could not happen in India, 
 and, if the last statement be true, the reply is, that the man with 
 such connections is not a Polygamist anymore than any profligate 
 European deserves that name. But such is not the case ever 
 in India, and only exceptionally in Africa. We must treat these 
 women as wives, and mothers of legitimate children, and as 
 faithful wives. It scarcely seems consistent with the tenets of 
 our Holy Religion to try and save the Soul of a man at the 
 expense of the feelings, and Morals, and comforts, and rights, 
 of his rejected, or perhaps worn-out, wives. They in honour 
 gave all, that hard fortune had endowed them with, their person 
 and their youth, to this man, called him husband, bore to him 
 children, who inherit his tribal position, his name, and such 
 portions of his goods as fall to them. It is a prodigious breach 
 of Faith to make a clean sweep, or partial sweep, of all his 
 responsibilities : if they are old and childless, it is a bad be- 
 ginning of a higher life, that they should be cast out for no 
 offence of their own, deprived of all solace and protection ; if 
 they are young, it is terrible to read such words as these from 
 the pen of a living Bishop, " She will easily get another husband 
 from her father's home." It would have been- better to dis- 
 continue the use of the words "husband and wife" altogether, 
 and talk of the Africans in the same terms, as a cattle-breeder, 
 or shepherd, talks of the brute beasts in his charge. We all 
 know what an illicit connection is, and what a natural child is 
 in Europe and in India : if by a process of inquiry it is found, 
 that any, or all, of these women were the divorced wives of other 
 men, or were unfaithful wives, or within the lawful limitations 
 of kindred and affinity, or actually married to some other man, 
 let their names be struck off the list of his wives ; perhaps some 
 of them may run away, or disappear, or die, or it may be proved 
 that they were the wives of his brother, or the servants of the 
 house, and thus by a judicial process it may come out that the 
 man is a Monogamist, or a bachelor, after all. But, if we are to 
 trust Sir Theophilus Shepstone, and the common report of the 
 country, these women are wives in South Africa, and they most 
 assuredly are so in India. Whether Hindu or Mahometan, or 
 Pagan, let the Missionaries recollect, that they contracted to each 
 other in good Faith, and that no wrong ought to be done to 
 the wives, for all have a claim on their husband, not only for 
 maintenance and protection, but that which Paul describes (as 
 rendered in the Revised Version) as " her due." If condemned 
 to live apart, they may wax wanton, and be tempted ; and it is 
 their husband then, who causes them to commit adultery, by 
 casting them off. 
 
 Forbidding, then, on the one hand the admission of the 
 Polygamist into the Church by Baptism, and resisting to the 
 
( 278 ) 
 
 utmost on the other hand any attempt to get rid of the burden 
 of Polygamy at the expense of his wives and children, what 
 course do I recommend for the present necessity ? I take the 
 following narrative from Central Africa, the organ of the 
 Universities Mission, March, 1886, p. 42: "On the last 
 " Sunday of 1885 Matdla, a powerful Chief, was solemnly 
 " admitted by Bishop Smithies to the rank of Catechumen. He 
 " knelt down in the full congregation, and received a cross, as 
 " token of his admission. One stumbling-block he has in his 
 " way before he can be admitted to Baptism.', he had in former 
 " years become a Polygamist, and it can only be hoped, that 
 " God will open a way for him Without injury to those, who have 
 " borne him children, to come out of the state, which the Law of 
 " the Church in all ages seems to have determined to be a barrier 
 " to admission to the Christian Covenant." 
 
 This seems to be the happy via media, if extended to the 
 wives, whose wombs have been barren. The man must accept, 
 as his cross, the status, which his own conduct has induced. He 
 is not excluded from Christian teaching, or Christian Worship ; 
 but* it is distinctly understood by the Church, that such as he 
 cannot be admitted to either of the Sacraments. His children 
 come at once under tuition and Baptism ; and for his wives the 
 door is also open, to such as prove, that she being a virgin or 
 widow of a deceased husband honestly and in good faith became 
 the wife of one man, and truly not in any way excluded from 
 Christian privileges, living after the manner of Rachel and 
 Hannah. 
 
 Such is the opinion which I have arrived at : 
 
 (1) Polygamist men are not to be admitted to Baptism, 
 
 but their wives may be. 
 
 (2) Polyandrists, men and women, are totally excluded ; 
 
 here both men and women are sinning, for the 
 Woman in cohabiting with her husband's brother 
 during his lifetime commits incest. 
 
 (3) No man should be encouraged to put away his lawful 
 
 wives ; he should be reminded, that his union with 
 them is for the term of their natural lives. 
 
 (4) Polygamists may be admitted as Catechumens. 
 
 I now add some opinions of others : 
 
 In the fifth Report of the Annual Meeting of Native Church 
 Council of the Panjab a letter was read from the Rev. T. P. 
 Hughes, C.M.S. Missionary at Peshawar, in which this passage 
 occurs : " In the case of Polygamous Marriages, the blessings 
 " of the Church could hardly be expected ; but both the late 
 " (Metropolitan) Bishop Milman, and the Bishop of the Lahore 
 
( 279 ) 
 
 " Diocese (Bishop French), have sanctioned the Baptism of 
 " Polygamists." 
 
 In 1834 the Conference of Missionaries of various denomina- 
 tions in Calcutta, including those of the Baptist, the London, 
 the Church Missionary Society, the Church of Scotland, and 
 the American Presbyterian Board, after having had the whole 
 subject frequently under discussion, and after much and serious 
 deliberation, unanimously agreed on the following propositions, 
 though there had been previously much diversity of sentiment 
 among them on various points : 
 
 (1) "It is in accordance with the spirit of the Bible and the 
 " practice of the Protestant Church to consider the State as 
 " the proper fountain of legislation in all civil questions affecting 
 " Marriage and Divorce. 
 
 (2) " The Bible, being the true standard of Morals, ought to 
 " be consulted in everything, which it contains on the subjects 
 " of Marriage and Divorce, and nothing determined evidently 
 " contrary to its general principles. 
 
 (3) " If a convert before becoming a Christian has married 
 " more wives than one, in accordance with the. practice of 
 " Jewish and primitive Christian Churches, he shall be permitted 
 " to keep all; but such a person is not eligible to any Office in 
 " the Church. In no other cases is Polygamy to be tolerated 
 " amongst Christians. 
 
 " There were twenty or more, who adopted the propositions 
 " without any exemption." — Calcutta Christian Observer, vol. iv, 
 p. 22. 
 
 The Calcutta Missionaries a few years afterwards reviewed 
 these propositions, and established them in a form more 
 specifically applicable to India. With regard to Polygamy, the 
 deliverance, which they gave, was even more decided than in 
 the original propositions : " The meeting was unanimously of 
 " opinion, that, alt-hough Polygamy is one of the greatest evils, 
 " and is never to be tolerated in a Christian Community, when 
 " it can be regulated by the Law of the Gospel, yet in the case 
 " of Polygamy antecedently to conversion, the husband is bound 
 " to retain and provide for all his wives, as such, unless they 
 " choose to take advantage of their own Law. This last clause 
 " refers to the renunciation of Hinduism and Mahometanism 
 " by either of the married parties being regarded by both 
 "Hindu and Mahometan as entailing divorce." — Calcutta 
 " Christian Observer, vol. xi, p. 401. 
 
 A writer in the Calcutta Christian Observer, vol. iv, pp. 91, 
 371, 400, commenting upon the resolutions of the Missionaries, 
 remarks : " The Missionaries are of opinion, that the very 
 " allowances which God, through Moses, made for the Jews in 
 " their infant state as a people, is by parity of reason to be 
 
( 280 ) 
 
 " made now for Polygamists, who from Heathens become 
 " Christians." I have already alluded above to the fact, that 
 Nations are at different levels of progress, and this argument 
 may fairly be urged in favour of the Africans, the South Sea 
 Islanders, and North American Indians, but scarcely in favour 
 of the Hindu, who are not in a barbarous state, but the heirs of 
 an old and advanced Civilization, and still less in favour of the 
 Mahometan, many of whose ancestors were Christians, and 
 therefore Monogamist, and- who appeal as their authority not 
 to time-honoured custom, but the comparatively modern Law of 
 Mahomet. I protest against the assertion, that Polygamy was 
 ever sanctioned in any primitive Christian Church. Let us 
 have the proofs. 
 
 It may be true, that owing to the contact of weak Christians 
 with the Persian, Teuton, Arabian, and African, Idolaters in the 
 early centuries after Christ, terrible errors of dogma and practice 
 crept into the Church, and the custom of Polygamy may have 
 made some way ; but it was sternly resisted by the Authorities of 
 the Church, and by the Grace of God has survived in none ; 
 for, however much the Oriental Churches may have fallen, still 
 at this day, in the midst of Mahometan Polygamists, though on 
 the same level of culture, they are Monogamists. But it is sufficient 
 for my argument, that in the Church, as left by Paul, it did not 
 exist as a fact, and its possibility was not contemplated. 
 
 Bishop Milman's opinion referred to was as follows : " The 
 " very exceptional case of married life among Natives of India 
 " justified him in allowing a man, lawfully married to more than 
 " one wife, to be baptized and retain his wives, and give them 
 " their conjugal due. He must not marry another, or, if one 
 " die, take another in her place ; he must not hold any eccle- 
 " siastical Office."—" Mission Life," 1880, p. 227. 
 
 Bishop Douglas, of Bombay, decided against the Baptism of 
 a Hindu with two wives, unless he put one away. The present 
 Bishop of Bombay rather leans to the Baptism of such a man 
 without that requirement. Similar leanings are ascribed to the 
 Bishop of Colombo. 
 
 It was stated, that Bishop Caldwell would baptize a Polygamist 
 in articulo mortis (" Mission Life," 1880, p. 185). The Bishop 
 of Melanesia (Selwyn the younger) seemed to think, that the 
 putting away of the supernumerary wives should be the rule, 
 but he had difficulty in facing it. The late Primate of New 
 Zealand (Selwyn the elder) was of the same opinion. We read 
 in his "Life" the following: "Are you thinking of becoming 
 a Christian ? " said the Bishop to a Native Chief. " Yes," said 
 the Chief. I saw the Bishop hold up two fingers, and then 
 bend one down. The Chief nodded assent. The Bishop 
 meant, that the Chief must get rid of one of his wives. I do 
 
( 281 ) 
 
 not find, that he indicated, which wife should be unjustly 
 deprived of her home, and the society of her husband. 
 
 There is a dark side, as illustrated by the following anecdote, 
 given in the island Voyage of the Melanesian Mission in 1885 : 
 " In the island of Florida, of the Solomon Group, a man was 
 " held back from Baptism, as having two wives : one died, 
 " and he was baptized, and his surviving wife placed under 
 " instruction : it seemed sad, that the poor dead wife by living 
 " had kept back her husband, and her fellow-wife, from Baptism, 
 " and had died unbaptized. Bishop Pattison felt the difficulty, 
 " but the argument against baptizing a Polygamist was too 
 " weighty ; but there seemed no reason for keeping back the 
 " poor wives from Baptism, as they were not Polygamists." 
 
 The Missionaries of the Basle Society in Switzerland would 
 receive Polygamists in case of extreme necessity, as, when a man 
 had children by both his wives, and all parties agreed in the 
 impossibility of separation ; yet there is not one Polygamist in 
 any of their Missionary congregations in the West Coast of 
 Africa. The Missionaries of this Society recognize a Heathen 
 Marriage as a binding one, and declare, that a Christian cannot 
 put away his wife, though a Heathen. 
 
 The Wesleyan Missionaries positively refuse all Polygamists, 
 recognizing only a Christian Marriage, that is to say, one per- 
 formed in a Christian Church. If a Heathen become a Christian 
 he may keep (or rather marry) his Heathen wife, or he may send 
 her away, if she re-marries a Heathen. They direct their 
 converts to dismiss all their wives, and marry a Christian : in 
 fact, under their rule, if a man .wishes to get rid of his wives, he 
 has only to become a Christian. 
 
 The Moravian Missionaries had to deal with Negro Slaves in 
 America. Their original rules were : (1) They would not oblige 
 a man who, previous to his conversion, had taken more than 
 one wife, to put the others away without their consent ; (2) they 
 would not appoint such a one to be helper in the congregation ; 
 (3) they would allow no Christian to take more than one wife, 
 and he is bound to her for life. In 1880 they modified these 
 rules, and their present rule is, that in general an applicant for 
 Baptism is to dismiss all his wives but one, but that, when this 
 may lead to greater sin, an exception may be made under the 
 authority of the District Mission Conference. 
 
 I wrote to my friend Dr. Schrader, of the Rhenish Missionary 
 Society, at Barmen, in Germany, to ask for a statement of their 
 present practice ; and in his reply, July, 1886, he says : " We do 
 " not think it right, nor indicated by any clear Word of God, 
 " that anyone, who has taken two or more legal wives, as a 
 "Heathen, should be compelled to dismiss them all, except 
 " one, before he can be admitted to Baptism. It seems to me 
 
( 282 ) 
 
 " to be a bad beginning of his Christian life to break legal 
 " promises, which he has given formerly. Of course every 
 " Polygamist must be told, that this state of affairs is not in 
 " accordance with the Gospel, and, as soon as there is an 
 " opportunity to get rid of it in a legal way, he ought to do it ; 
 " but I do not know, if it be advisable to postpone Baptism until 
 " that can be done. 
 
 " The great difficulty, which has been felt several times, is 
 " this, that very often in Churches, where Polygamists have been 
 " admitted, persons, who for special reasons wish to take a 
 " second wife, cannot easily understand, why something, that is 
 " allbwed to others, should be denied to them. But to avoid this, all 
 " persons entering the Church should be clearly made to under- 
 " stand, that they will never be allowed to take a second wife, 
 " as long as the first is still living ; and the Polygamist can hold 
 " no Church-Office. We have had amongst our Missionaries a 
 " few, who have protested against such a liberal praxis, as it is 
 " called ; but after much renewed discussion (for instance, in 
 " our Borneo-Mission lately) we have always come back upon 
 " this one opinion, which has been in use in the Rhenish 
 " Mission for a long time." 
 
 This Society labours in the Indian Colonies of Holland and 
 Borneo, as well as in South Africa. 
 
 With regard to Africa, let me quote the opinion of Mr. 
 Buckley Wood, an experienced Missionary of the C.M.S. in 
 Yariba-land in Western Africa: " No one, who knows Africa 
 " and Polygamy in Africa, can ever doubt, that the C.M.S. is 
 " perfectly right in not for an hour allowing such an abominable 
 " custom to exist. The Diocesan Conference, convened by 
 " the Bishop, in Lagos, in April, 1888, and to which several lay 
 " delegates from our Abeokuta Church were invited, was regarded 
 " by our people with much interest. After the return of the 
 " delegates from Lagos, a meeting was called, and was largely 
 " attended, to which they gave an account of what had taken 
 " place at the Conference. The sounder portion of our people 
 " were greatly pleased on learning, that the feeling at the Con- 
 " ference had been so decidedly in favour of going forward on 
 " the old lines, and of giving no recognized place in the Church 
 " to Polygamy in any form. This feeling was not shared by 
 " all. Some of those, who have become entangled in the sin of 
 " keeping a plurality of women, would have welcomed some 
 " relaxation of the rules, that have hitherto been followed." 
 
 Thus we have the direct contrary practice in force in different 
 portions of the Mission-field. 
 
 I have already stated that the status of " wife " should be 
 defined, and in each case ascertained ; and that the concubine, 
 the wife of another man, the divorced wife, the Slave-girl, the 
 
( 283 ) 
 
 person within the limits of blood or affinity, cannot be deemed 
 wives, and that the man is in such cases a profligate, but not 
 a Polygamist. It seems so simple ; but I read in a Missionary 
 Periodical, June, 1886, the following: "A convert proved the 
 " sincerity of his Faith by making quite a Sacrifice. An uncle 
 " died leaving two wives ; these, according to Native custom, 
 " fell "by Law of inheritance to the nephew. He was betrothed 
 " to another girl, whom he has since married. He was told, 
 " that if he continued to commit Polygamy, he could not be 
 " admitted to the Church : to put away his two wives, his aunts 
 " by marriage, was a great Sacrifice ; but this convert was not 
 " long in deciding, and the two wives were put away." 
 
 Can anything reflect more on the common -sense of a 
 Missionary than this ? Can he not see that, under no Law, 
 Human or Divine, could it have been right for a man to take as 
 his wife the widow of the brother of his father or his mother ? 
 It is rank incest. Every Hindu and Mahometan would protest 
 against such a thing. The wife of an uncle is to a man as his 
 own mother. They were not wives, and the man was not a 
 Polygamist, but guilty of incest. 
 
 There will be no difficulty in asking each candidate for Baptism 
 to give the history of his family, and the circumstances, under 
 which he began to cohabit with each female : there will be the 
 Slave-girl, the chance concubine, the divorced wife of some one 
 else, the runaway wife of some one else, the female relations, 
 whom he has inherited, the captive (like poor Hecuba, and 
 Andromache 1 ), and perhaps the real wife, or possibly the real 
 wives : it is too true, that many real wives in Africa did not 
 always enter Marriage in a state of virginity, and this is a fact 
 to be weighed: we are opening out a question, not of Human, 
 but of Divine, Law, and the virgin-spouse may in the sight of 
 God be the only lawful wife, and in the sight of man the one, 
 which deserves the most consideration. 
 
 We must remember that to live with two women after the way 
 of the flesh is a sin : it is too late in the History of the Christian 
 Church to argue about this. How can the Preacher from the 
 Pulpit inveigh against this and cognate sins, if under his eyes 
 sits a Baptized Polygamist with a wife on each side of him, and 
 a third on the opposite seat, with babies in their arms of nearly 
 the same age ? As mentioned above, such events cause a laugh 
 even among the Hindu, but something like a blush of shame, or 
 a tear, among Christians. If we return to Old Testament-practice, 
 how can we reject the prayer of the barren wife, good soul ! 
 who wishes to see offspring begotten by her husband from her 
 maidservant, that, like Rachel, she may also have children on 
 her knee by her : how can we resist the practice of the Law of 
 Leviriate marriage ? 
 
( 284 ) 
 
 This is no allusion to an obsolete practice. I have, as a judge 
 in the Panjab, decided scores of cases turning upon this right, 
 claimed by the male, resisted by the female, for the sake of the 
 property of the deceased, not the person of his widow. If we 
 allow Polygyny, how can we resist Polyandry ? ■ They hang 
 upon the same thread. Read the following lines : 
 
 " One other event is linked with this season, the attendance at 
 " Holy Communion of one, who had for many months absented 
 " herself, viz., Rachel, a Christian from Giriama. She had run 
 " away from her country about June, 1886, rather than marry 
 " her brother-in-law, who was a Heathen, on the death of her 
 " husband. She has since come regularly, and, I doubt not, 
 " found help and strength thereby." — Mombasa, 1888. 
 
 " There are many things here to hinder the progress of our 
 " work, but amongst them all- there is not one, that gives rise to 
 " half the difficulties, that in one way or another originate from 
 " Polygamy. There are many of those who, though they have 
 " renounced Heathenism, cannot be baptized because of their 
 " addictedness to Polygamy, and other sensual habits. I might 
 " have perhaps reported larger results, had we to contend against 
 " simple Idolatry; because there are many, whose confidence in 
 " Idolatry has been shaken, but who yet stick to it, because they 
 " cannot rise up to the high and Holy living which Christianity 
 " demands. Ondo Idolatry is consorted on one hand to Poly- 
 " gamy and Polyandry, and on the other hand to the revolting 
 " custom of Human Sacrifices." — Rev. C. Phillips, Native Pastor 
 of Ondo, W. Africa. 
 
 I have decided cases in India turning upon this latter custom, 
 and found the women with a plurality of husbands quite as 
 jealous as to the suspicious conduct of one of her husbands, 
 as the man with a plurality of wives is as to the conduct of 
 his wives. 
 
 Finally, we must think not of the sufferings, or the deprivations, 
 of a single individual, but of the Holiness of the Church of 
 Christ. No one can read the paper read by Mr. Sawyer, a pure 
 Negro, at the Diocesan Conference at Sierra Leone, this very 
 year, 1888, without being satisfied, that the African Church would 
 willingly tolerate Polygamy, if they were free from European 
 influences. His paper is most timely, as it discloses the 
 thoughts of a respectable African Christian gentleman, that 
 Monogamy cannot be enforced anywhere without the aid of 
 Human Law ; that the precepts of Morality, the common Law of 
 Europe since the time of Homer, the words of our Lord, 
 " Male and Female created He them," go for nothing; and 
 finally, that the hope of raising a woman to a place of honour 
 by the side of her husband, as the sole partner of his joys and 
 sorrows, the sole mother of his children, is vain. 
 
( 285 ) 
 
 These lines are written by one, who knows Polygamy, having 
 lived many years amidst a Polygamous people, and become 
 familiar with the domestic history of Nations, where that practice 
 has prevailed. In an analysis of the magnificent Sanskrit Epic 
 Poem, "The Ramayana," 1 wrote as follows thirty-five years ago : 
 
 " All was joy and exultation, when a dire calamity fell on the 
 " head of the King, and the people, and the faultless hero. It 
 " was the curse of that hated Polygamy, that licensed concu- 
 " binage, that chartered libertinism, which is still tolerated in 
 " our Indian Empire, that brought on the catastrophe. When 
 " shall we cease to talk of the ladies of the Zandna, the 
 " wives of the Raja, in allusion to the poor victims of family- 
 " custom, who are still immured in palaces ? When shal'l we learn 
 " to call things by their right names, and at least not countenance 
 " the abuse ? It was the curse, which has toppled dynasties, and 
 " ruined families, from the day that Abraham banished Ishmael 
 " to clear the prospects of Isaac, from the day that the feasting 
 " of Adonijah at En-rogel, beneath Mount Moriah, was inter- 
 " rupted by the cries of 'God save King Solomon !' from the 
 " valley of Gihon under the heights of Mount Zion. The old 
 " King had three consorts : to the eldest was born Rama, the 
 " hero of the story ; to the second, a young and beautiful 
 " woman, was born Bharata, his unwilling and yet fatal rival." 
 — " Linguistic and Oriental Essays," 1880, p. 75. 
 
 A great responsibility falls upon the Episcopal Synod assembled 
 at Lambeth this year, 1888. If the Bishops yield to a pretended 
 present necessity, it will be like the letting out of a stream, which 
 cannot be controlled. The late revelations at Sierra Leone, 
 to which the Bishop of Sierra Leone can in person testify, 
 show clearly, that it is not the Baptism of an occasional 
 Polygamist, which is sought for, but the Toleration of Polygamy 
 in the Christian Church. No line can be drawn. The converts 
 are not necessarily old men, whose family-arrangements are 
 complete, but young men with a possible plurality of young 
 wives, and for twenty years the scandal would be manifested of 
 children being brought to the baptismal Font, born by different 
 women to the same father. What will be the feeling of other 
 young men in the congregation, who have been unhappy in 
 their Marriages, but a desire to share the privileges of their 
 contemporary ? Moreover, if the cohabitation of a man with 
 two women is wrong, hopelessly wrong, fundamentally wrong, 
 and contrary to Christian Morals, how can the accident of such 
 a practice having commenced before such a date satisfy the 
 Christian Moralist ? Consideration for the poor innocent woman 
 forbids the cruel policy of putting her away and driving her 
 into sin : consideration for the Church of Christ forbids the 
 admission of a man encumbered with such ties to be admitted 
 
( 286 ) 
 
 to Baptism on account of the bad example, which would be set 
 to others? As to the man's own Salvation, we can leave it 
 without anxiety to the unfailing and unlimited mercies of our 
 Saviour and his Saviour. The whole hope of the purity of 
 Oriental Churches depends upon the elevation of women to 
 their proper dignity, purity, and respect from the other sex. It 
 matters not, whether a woman is of noble origin, and respectable 
 parentage, or sprung of infamous parents, and a slave : to the 
 Christian man she is surrounded with the halo of 'being a 
 "woman." In no Christian country is corporal punishment' 
 inflicted by Law upon a woman, however much she may deserve 
 it. The sight of a woman being struck, or ill-used, justifies any 
 man to interfere in her behalf against her parent, against her 
 husband. The relations, which she fills towards men of 
 daughter, sister, wife, and mother, are so delicate, that they 
 should be guarded from any possible contamination, confusion, 
 weakening, or pollution. To render it possible that any woman, 
 herself a Christian, should share the bed of a Christian man 
 with others of her own sex, would be a disgrace to any Church, 
 and a sure herald of the decadence of that Church. 
 
 At the time of the introduction of a new Religion into a race, 
 or tribe, the mode, in which the mystery of the union of the 
 two sexes is dealt with, is the highest test of the Religious 
 evolution. Marriage is at once the gratification of a legitimate 
 and Holy wish, the machinery of a Holy life, and the divinely 
 ordained method of perpetuating a Holy people. Whatever 
 may be the practice of worldlings, the Church must regard it 
 with the profoundest anxiety, as the laxer the marriage-tie, the 
 lower the form of Religion developed. 
 
 The Churchman, 1886—1895. 
 
 Literature on the Subject of Polygamy in connection with Christian . 
 
 Churches. 
 
 i. Dr. Colenso, Bishop of Natal, Remarks on proper treat- 
 ment of Cases of Polygamy. Pamphlet. Pietermaritz- 
 burg, 1855. 
 
 z. Reply to the same Remarks by an American Missionary 
 (Louis Grout, of the American Board of Foreign 
 Missions). Pamphlet. Pietermaritzburg, 1855. 
 
 3. Dr. Colenso's Reply to an American Missionary. Pamphlet. 
 
 Pietermaritzburg, 1856. 
 
 4. An Answer to Bishop Colenso's Letter on the Polygamy 
 
 Question, by an American Missionary (H. A. Wilder). 
 Pietermaritzburg, 1856. 
 
( 287 ) 
 
 5. Apology for the Toleration of Polygamy in Converts from 
 
 Heathenism, by a Protestant Dissenter. 1856. 
 
 6. Bishop Colenso's Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 
 on the Polygamy Question. Pietermaritzburg, March 1, 
 1861. 
 
 7. Review of Bishop Colenso's Remarks. Durban, 1855. 
 
 8. Letter of Canon Callaway. Pamphlet. Durban, 1862. 
 
 9. Pamphlet by the Rev. W. H. Fowle, 1856. 
 
 10. Polygamy among Candidates for Baptism, by Bishop 
 
 Cotterill, of Grahamstown, 1 861. 
 
 11. Minute by Bishop Cotterill at Conference of Bishops in 
 
 Capetown, 1861. Colonial Church Chronicle, p. 309. 
 1861. 
 
 12. Two Sermons by H. Callaway. Pietermaritzburg, 1866. 
 
 13. Government Regulations. Pietermaritzburg, 1869. 
 
 14. Minute by Rev. Henry Venn, Secretary to Church Missionary 
 
 Society. Pamphlet. London, Jan. 1857. 
 
 15. Report of Lahore Missionary Conference, 1862-3. Pub- 
 
 lished at Lodiana, North India, 1863. An assembly of 
 Clergy, Missionaries, and State Officials. 
 
 16. Minute of Views of Bishop Daniel Wilson, of Calcutta, 
 
 drawn from his "Life," vol. i, p. 363. Appendix to 
 above. 
 
 17. Conference of Missionaries held by Bishop of Bombay. 
 
 Mission Life, p. 185, 1880. 
 
 18. Letter of Dr. Smythies, Bishop of Equatorial Africa, 
 
 pp. 79, 80. Central Africa, June 1, 1886. 
 
 19. Polygamy in the Himalaya. Dr. Stulpnagel. Indian 
 
 Evangelical Review, Oct. 1877. 
 
 20. Polygamy in Relation to Christian Baptism, by Professor 
 
 Cheyne, Oxford. Mission Life, 1880, p. 145. 
 
 21. Missionary in Be-Chudna-land. Mission Life. 
 
 22. Life of Bishop Selwyn, of New Zealand. 
 
 23. Brown's History of Missions, vol. iii, pp. 365, 558. 
 
 24. Calcutta Christian Observer, vol. iv, pp. 91, 371, 400. 
 
 25. Letters to the Primate, by Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Zululand, 
 
 on the Subject of Polygamy, 1886. 
 
 26. Paper on Polygamy, by Bishop of Grahamstown, 1883. 
 
 27. Paper read at Wakefield Church Congress, 1886, by the 
 
 Bishop of Exeter. 
 
 28. Polygamy in connection with Christian Missions, by Professor 
 
 Stokes. The Churchman, 1886. 
 
 29. Paper read by I. H. Willoughby, Esq., at the Diocesan 
 
 Conference, Lagos, 1887. 
 
 30. Paper read by T. J. Sawyer, Esq., at Diocesan Conference, 
 
 Sierra Leone, 1888. 
 
 31. Indian Evattgelical Review, April, 1886, Rev. J. J. Lucas. 
 
( 288 ) 
 
 32. The Proper Mode of dealing with Cases of Polygamy in 
 
 Candidates for Baptism, by Dean Green, of Maritzburg, 
 South Africa. English Church Union, 1888. 
 
 33. Reports of Deputation of Church Missionary Society to 
 
 Sierra Leone and Ydriba-land, 1888. 
 
 34. Bishop of Melanesia's Letter to the Lambeth-Conference, 
 
 1888. 
 
 35. Missionary Conference- Report of the Anglican Communion, 
 
 1894. 
 
 2. Polygamy in the Christian Church. 
 
 Paper read at the Missionary Conference of the Anglican Communion, 
 
 May, 1894. 
 
 The only aspect of this subject in a Missionary Conference is, 
 " Whether a Polygamist can be permitted to be baptized ? " I 
 reply without hesitation : " Under no possible circumstances, 
 " but all his bond-fide wives, married accordipg to the Laws of 
 " their tribe, and not within the prohibited degrees of relation- 
 " ship, such as Aunt, Niece, or Sister, and their offspring, may 
 " be admitted." I proceed to show why. 
 
 Among the Hebrews, the Seventh Commandment notwith- 
 standing, Polygamy was allowed not only to powerful Sovereigns 
 but to humble Levites, such as the father of Samuel. In the 
 matter of Bathsheba, Nathan the Prophet says distinctly to 
 David : " The Lord God gave thee thy Master's wives to thy 
 bosom " : but after the return from the Captivity the bad custom 
 had died out. No single instance is recorded of a Polygamist 
 Hebrew in the post- Exilic Books, or the New Testament. In 
 the annals of the Greeks and Romans the custom was unknown. 
 In Homer we read of Priam and Hecuba, Hector and Andromache^ 
 and in the long catena of Greek and Latin literature no case 
 occurs. 
 
 We are told in Genesis that in Paradise " male and female 
 created He them." " God gave man a helpmate," but only one, 
 and took only one rib from, the side of man. Our Lord em- 
 phatically supports this view. Paul, in the first chapter of his 
 Epistle to the Romans, makes no allusion to the prevalence 
 of such a sinful and degrading custom. 
 
 There are two kinds of Polygamy : Polygyny and Polyandry. 
 No one has been bold enough to suggest the Baptism of a 
 Polyandrist female, and yet the civil status is a legal one. I 
 have had to recognize it, in fact, in my Indian Court, as regards 
 the legitimacy of the children. 
 
( 289 ) 
 
 If the reasons given above are not sufficient, there is a third, 
 which is the dignity of the female sex. In Europe that has 
 always been respected. In Asia and Africa Woman has been 
 treated as a Slave and a chattel. The Church must recognize 
 the equality of the two sexes in Moral dignity and Religious 
 privileges. Where Woman has been degraded, she must now be 
 elevated, and no compromise tolerated, which would make her 
 social position more intolerable than it was before. 
 
 What is the compromise proposed ? Bishop Selwyn, the 
 elder, being asked by a Chief in Oceania to baptize him, 
 lifted up two fingers of his hand, and then slowly lowered one, 
 indicating that the Chief must put away one of his wives. This 
 feeling might have been good fifty years ago, but it is impossible 
 now, at least in a realm of Law. 
 
 In British India Marriage is fenced round with Religious 
 ceremonies, and legal rights, and a man cannot fling away his 
 extra wives. In addition to this it would be a Moral offence to 
 do so. His wives have entered his family as virgins, generally 
 as children of immature age, and he is the only husband of each 
 one of them ; and with the Hindu the tie is indissoluble, and 
 re-marriage impossible. The married woman is protected by her 
 friends, and British Law. By casting them off, and his children 
 lawfully begotten, and the heirs of his property, he might 
 possibly drive the poor woman into adultery by cohabiting in a 
 quasi-Marriage with another man. He would have to support 
 them in their enforced widowhood : the Law and custom would 
 still recognize them as his deserted wives. It is idle to argue 
 that a Marriage solemnized by non-Christian rites is less a 
 Moral contract than the union of Christians, and may be set 
 aside at pleasure. Consider the marriage of the Patriarchs, and 
 the other holy men of Jewish history. 
 
 In Africa the union of the sexes is not fenced round with the 
 same safeguards. Still, in most cases the bond-fide wives come 
 to their husbands in parity, or at least not in notorious impurity, 
 and a contract takes place. Even in cases, where they may have 
 lived in sin before Matrimony, it does not lie in the mouth of 
 the African man to urge that plea, having himself led a 
 notoriously unclean life. 
 
 It would be a bad beginning of a new and higher life of a 
 neo-Christian, who happened to be partial at that moment to 
 one of the mothers of his children, to cast off the others, and 
 send them back to their parents to be provided with new 
 husbands. If given to another, they would be guilty of adultery. 
 Besides, it is an insult to the female sex to transfer them to 
 another man, as if they were brute beasts. What will become 
 of the poor children ? The very idea is iniquitous ; and, more- 
 over, the Missionary in any Region occupied by a European or 
 
 19 
 
( 290 ) 
 
 Mahometan Power, would be unable to enforce his regulations, 
 and under any circumstances he could never prevent his newly- 
 baptized Christian from secretly visiting his abandoned wives, 
 to whom he was drawn by affection. 
 
 My opinion, after long familiarity with the subject in Indian 
 Courts, and a close study of the subject in Africa, is, that a man 
 who has placed himself in such a dilemma, must suffer the 
 consequences of his own fault. He cannot be permitted to set 
 himself right at the expense of his innocent wives : he must 
 remain a catechumen until all but one of his wives have died. 
 Bishop Caldwell proposed to baptize him " in articulo mortis." 
 I cannot endorse that view of the rite of Baptism. 
 
 In the introduction of new Religious conceptions into a neo- 
 Christian tribe, the great test of the quality of the Morality of 
 the new association is the mode, in which the relation of the 
 sexes to each other is handled. Our duty is to safeguard the 
 purity of the Church. In the Evangelical letter of the Lambeth 
 Conference of 1888 we read : " Our first care is to maintain and 
 protect the conception of Marriage : any success purchased by 
 the lowering of this tie would be dearly purchased." And the 
 Marriage-tie is only evidenced in a country, which is not a realm 
 of Law, by cohabitation with consent of the woman's relations. 
 
 When a Missionary makes a condition precedent to Baptism, 
 that the candidate should put away all but one of his wives, he 
 is usurping a power, which does not belong to his office, and 
 which is not sanctioned by the Bible, or the Church, and he is 
 doing a great wrong to poor innocent women, mothers of the 
 children of the candidate, who can claim support from him. 
 The women cannot be restored to their virgin purity : they 
 cannot be free from the tie, which unites them to their only 
 husband. It is unjust to tell them, that they were concubines, 
 to be dismissed at pleasure. Would anyone dare to attach that 
 expression to the mother of Joseph, or of Samuel ? If in despair 
 they enter into illicit connections, the responsibility rests with 
 the Missionary, who drove them to that course by denying to 
 them the society and benevolence of their lawful husband. It 
 makes matters worse to argue, that the sacrifice of wives is made 
 to enable a notoriously libidinous man to be baptized. 
 
 A startling incident occurred two or three years ago at the 
 Sierra Leone Diocesan Congress. Mr. Sawyer, a most respectable, 
 educated, Christian Negro, claimed the right of Polygamy for 
 Christian communicants. I have a file of papers from Lagos on 
 my table discussing in serious terms the question. They admit, 
 that Monogamy is good for the cold climate of Europe, but not 
 for the hot climate of Africa. They argue, that Polygamy is 
 practised by four-fifths of the Human race, and that it is 
 arrogant for the remaining one-fifth to assert, that the custom 
 
( 291 ) 
 
 is immoral : at any rate, according to them it is not immoral in 
 Africa. British Law can make it illegal, but the Divine Law 
 is the only sanction of Morality, and it was allowed to the 
 Hebrews in spite of the Seventh Commandment, and was not in 
 so many words forbidden by the Lord. 
 
 It is clear, that we have arrived at the parting of the ways. 
 If we wish to propagate a pure Christianity, we must not baptize 
 Polygamists, for, if they attend Divine Service, and are seated 
 alongside of their numerous wives, and present at the font the 
 children born from different mothers at the same time, it will 
 not be surprising, if the same privilege be claimed by others who 
 were born Christians. They will state, that what is Morally right 
 for converted Heathen is equally right for born Christians, if 
 all kneel at the Lord's Table side by side. And unless the 
 Missionary makes the Polygamist present to the congregation, 
 with some form of service, all his wives, who will be sure that 
 they are not concubines only, and changed from time to time ? 
 
 G. Caste. 
 
 i. In the World. 
 
 2. In the Christian Church. 
 
 i. Caste in the World. 
 Address delivered at the National Indian Association, 1879. 
 
 I consider myself fortunate in having the opportunity to bring 
 this subject forward in an assembly presided over by Sir Arthur 
 Hobhouse, for the following cogent reasons. Those who, like 
 myself, have spent their lives in India, have the reputation of 
 being prejudiced in favour of the people ; those, who stay 
 at home, sometimes from incorrect reports conceive a feeling 
 against them. You, Sir, who had the privilege of taking mature 
 English experience to India, and of bringing back Indian 
 experience to England, are able to hold the scales fairly betwixt 
 those, who know the people too well, and those who do not 
 know them personally at all. 
 
 The subject of Caste is one of considerable importance. 
 There exists -unquestionably a social institution in British India, 
 which is found nowhere else in such compact rigidity : it lays 
 
( 292 ) 
 
 claim to considerable antiquity, and is a social phenomenon, 
 which cannot be overlooked : it is proposed to examine the 
 features of this institution. 
 
 It is of no practical advantage to discuss the origin of Caste. 
 Of one thing there is no doubt, that it is not alluded to in the 
 Rig- Veda, as a social feature of the early Arian population. 
 The Post-Vedic Laws of Manu lay great stress upon Caste, but 
 it is not clear, when these Laws were compiled, by whose 
 authority, and in what part of India. The idea has been 
 hazarded, that they were compiled at a comparatively late date, 
 with a view of upholding Caste against the levelling tenets of 
 the Buddhists. At any rate, they have no more binding force 
 upon the people of India generally than the Book of Leviticus 
 has upon Europe. We, shall see further on, that eighty-six per 
 cent, of the population of British India does not belong to 
 either of the Priest, Warrior, or Merchant Castes of the Books 
 of Manu, but are members of the Sudra Caste, or of a mixed 
 Caste, or absolutely without any Caste properly so called. The 
 subdivision of a nation into Priest, Warrior, and Merchant 
 classes, with a fourth for the common herd, is not unusual in 
 Oriental nations. It is notorious, that the difficulty, where it 
 exists at all, is found among the lower Castes, the great majority 
 of whom cannot be included under any pretence in the lowest 
 of the Castes of Manu ; and this ought to be convincing, that 
 the question is not one practically of Religion, but of deep- 
 rooted social custom and tribal etiquette, among a people, who 
 really have no Religious belief in the sense, in which that word 
 is known by Christian and Mahometan. The Sanskrit term for 
 Caste is "Varna," or "colour," clearly alluding to ethnical 
 features. The ordinary term is "Jati," or " birth," an elastic 
 expression, like the "good family" of England. The people 
 themselves call it " Bhaibundi," or " brotherhood," as the 
 essence of the matter lies in the fact, that it is a close link, 
 uniting sections of the Community by unwritten Laws of their 
 own devising. 
 
 Caste has certainly a good side, and its sudden destruction or 
 collapse would entail considerable evils by the complete dis- 
 organization of society, which would ensue. I would ask the 
 question, whether those Provinces of South-Eastern Asia, where 
 Caste does not prevail, such as Afghanistan, Barma, Ceylon, the 
 Settlement of the Straits of Malacca, and Hong-Kong, are 
 more easily governed ; whether the people are more Moral, or 
 advancing more steadily in the paths of Civilization and Educa- 
 tion, than the people of British India, who are absurdly described 
 as enslaved by Caste ? One of the most time-honoured maxims 
 in the Science of Government is that famous phrase " Divide 
 et impera," and in Caste we have ready-made fissures in the 
 
( 293 ) 
 
 community, which render the institution of secret societies, so 
 common and so dangerous among the Chinese and Malays, 
 almost impossible in India. 
 
 The striking features of Caste may be described as (i) Matri- 
 monial ; (2) Religious, or rather quasi-Religious; (3) social. 
 We must consider each separately. 
 
 The rules of Caste are of course theoretically bad in preventing 
 the free intermarriage of tribe with tribe, just as it was bad 
 in Rebecca not wishing her son Jacob to marry one of the 
 daughters of Heth ; as it was exceedingly bad in Nehemiah 
 compelling the Hebrews, after the return from the Captivity, to 
 put away their wives of the country ; as it would be bad in a quiet 
 English family shuddering at the idea of one of their younger 
 members forming an alliance with a Negress, a Gipsy, a Chinese, 
 or a Malay. Many speak of the vast country of India, as if it 
 were occupied by people of one race, one Religion, one rank 
 in life, instead of being the habitat of infinite varieties of the 
 Human race. Moreover, ever since the world began, and as long 
 as it lasts,- there will be a restriction, based upon unwritten and 
 most capricious Law, upon promiscuous alliances in Marriage ; 
 and the fault of the native in India is, that it has been made so 
 rigid. The better class of Mahometans, are, however, in this 
 respect quite as strict, and among native converts to Christianity 
 of undoubted excellence we find, that this difficulty cannot be 
 got over, and that a man of good family will seek for a wife 
 among people of his own Caste, and no equitable person could 
 find fault with him for doing so. 
 
 Caste is thoroughly bad, and worthy of all condemnation, 
 if it encourages the notion, that all mankind are not equal in 
 the face of God and their fellow-creatures, just as it was bad 
 in the Greeks looking upon all the world as barbarians ; as it 
 was bad in the Hebrew asserting a superiority over the rest of 
 mankind ; as it is bad in the Anglo-Saxon asserting a superiority 
 over the uncivilized weaker races, and the aboriginal tribes, with 
 whom he comes into contact. But the question may fairly be 
 stated, does Caste do so ? Individual fatuous Brahmins may in 
 their shrine, or their seclusion, say so or think so ; but I am 
 dealing with the Millions, and I lay down broadly, that members 
 of the thousand respectable Castes, which make up the popula- 
 tion of India, do not assert, that their particular Caste is 
 something better than, or superior to, the Caste of another, but 
 that it is different from that of another, and they would object 
 to eat or intermarry with the members of a Caste notoriously 
 superior, just as much as with a Caste notoriously inferior, or 
 even with particular subdivisions of their own Caste, separated 
 from them by some imperceptible shade of difference. 
 
 Caste may lastly be called bad in placing restriction upon 
 
( 294 ) 
 
 promiscuous commensality, and thus limiting the form of 
 hospitality and good-fellowship, which is common in Europe, 
 just as it was bad in the Egyptians considering it an abomina- 
 tion to eat with the Hebrews, and in the Hebrews a thousand 
 years later objecting to eat with the Gentiles. We might quote 
 numerous other cases of tribes and classes refusing to eat 
 together from notions of ceremonial purity, both in ancient and 
 modern times. The habits of Oriental life must be considered : 
 insensibly certain kinds of food are objected to by one class, 
 and indulged in by others. Some classes are exceedingly nice 
 and clean ; others are very much the contrary. The hand is 
 the only instrument used in feeding: the state, in which that 
 hand is kept, is therefore a consideration. Besides, we know 
 as a fact, in Europe, that one of the main tests of the division 
 of the social strata is, that of taking food together, or separately. 
 It would be repulsive in the extreme to be compelled to eat and 
 drink with those, whose vocations are nauseous, and habits 
 uncleanly, or whose tastes in the choice, and mode of prepara- 
 tion, of food, differed materially. Even as the social ladder is 
 mounted, and there is an assimilation in culture and personal 
 niceties, yet still by an unwritten Law, the table of persons is 
 kept separate, who are intimate in other relations of life. We 
 find, therefore, the groundwork of a common Law of Humanity 
 even in the exaggerated Law of Caste with regard to the modes 
 of eating. It is an error, however, to suppose that any restric- 
 tion is thereby placed upon hospitality. I have, myself, accepted 
 the hospitality of the highest Castes of Hindu, and dined by 
 the side of the host, who excused himself courteously of 
 partaking of the food for reasons, which I quite understood ; 
 and I have, on the other hand, entertained scores, both Hindu 
 and Mahometan, by entrusting to others the details of the 
 banquet : and this is the practice of good-fellowship all over 
 India. The Mahometan in Turkey shares the food of the 
 Christian, but it does not follow, that he is on that account 
 more intimate with Europeans than his fellow-religionist in 
 India is with the Hindu, and Christian, whose food he would 
 not touch. 
 
 I have dwelt upon these features of Caste to show, that it is 
 one of the Old- World customs, which has unluckily survived in 
 India, in a hard and crystallized form, to the present day, while 
 other Nations under the influence of Progress have toned it 
 down, or abandoned it altogether. Among such customs may 
 be reckoned domestic Slavery of the gentle and patriarchal 
 type, child-Marriage, Polygamy, restriction on re-Marriage of 
 widows, belief in magic and divination, cremation of the dead, 
 painting or seaming of the features and limbs, swathing of the 
 feet, circumcision, and even blood-feuds and duelling. It is 
 
( 295 ) 
 
 difficult for Europeans in the Nineteenth century to understand, 
 how any one of such customs can be defended in theory, far 
 less practised by intelligent and educated men ; and yet no wise 
 Ruler of an Oriental people would venture, except in an indirect 
 and cautious way, to interfere with such customs, which must 
 rather be left to the slow but certain discipline of Intellectual, 
 Moral, and Religious Progress. As regards abominable customs, 
 offending against Laws Human and Divine, such as Human 
 Sacrifices, burying alive of lepers, female infanticide, traffic in 
 Slaves, horrible mutilation of the Human body, and threats of 
 immolation, the Government of India has not been wanting in 
 measures of stern repression. 
 
 When I said above, that Caste is not noticed as existing in 
 Vedic periods, I did not forget the famous stanza in the Rig- 
 Veda, of which such liberal use is made by the antagonists of 
 the custom. It runs thus : 
 
 The Brahmin is his mouth ; the Kshatriya was made his arms ; 
 What the Vaisya was, that was his hips ; from his feet sprang the 
 Sudra. 
 
 Now it is worthy of remark, that this stanza is not written in 
 Vedic or Archaic Sanskrit, but in the modern form of that 
 Language. What should we think of lines of Ciceronian Latin 
 found in the Laws of the Ten Tables ? Again, the word " sudra " 
 is of unknown origin, and not grammatically connected with any 
 Vedic word. But even if the lines be genuine, they imply nothing 
 beyond what is expressed in other countries in poetic diction ; 
 in other words, that the Priest is the mouthpiece, the Warrior 
 the arm of defence, the Merchant the sinew, and the Working 
 Man the groundwork of the body politic. 
 
 In this argument, however, I set aside the Hindu Scriptures, 
 as having no direct relation to the issue, and turn to the reports 
 of the official Census of British India, 1 871, as we have to deal 
 with Caste, not as it was three thousand years ago, but as it is 
 now, after seven hundred years of Mahometan, and one hundred 
 of Christian, domination. 
 
 The striking results are that there are : Brahmin, ten Millions ; 
 Kshatriya, five Millions ; other Castes, one hundred and five 
 Millions ; without recorded Caste, ten Millions ; Mahometan, 
 fifty Millions ; non-Arian, eighteen Millions : making a total of 
 one hundred and ninety-eight Millions. 
 
 Now, taking the Province under the Lieutenant-Governor of 
 Bangal as a fair sample for analysis, we find out of a total of 
 sixty-four Millions, sixty-nine specified Castes, although the 
 number of separate tribes and Castes is calculated at little less 
 than one thousand ; and if the minor subdivisions,- such as 
 
( 296 ) 
 
 gotra, sept, and clan, are taken into consideration, the number 
 will swell to many thousands. There are four superior and 
 three intermediate Castes, and then come the following : trading, 
 pastoral, preparers of cooked food, agriculture, general servants, 
 artizans, weavers, labourers, sellers of fish and vegetables, boat- 
 men and fishermen, dancers, musicians, and beggars. In the 
 North-West Provinces there are two hundred and ninety-one 
 specified Castes ; in Oudh, seventy-seven ; in the Panjab, nine- 
 teen ; in the Central Provinces, forty-eight ; in Bombay, one 
 hundred and forty ; in Madras, seventeen. Clearly the takers of 
 the Census have not followed out the same principle of enumer- 
 ation, and upon the data thus supplied it is not possible to 
 arrive at an accurate detail o'f the Castes of British India ; but it 
 is evident, that their number far exceeds what was contemplated 
 by the ancient men, who codified the Laws of Manu. 
 
 It must not be supposed for a moment, that the members of 
 any Caste are restricted to any one particular trade, profession, 
 or calling. This is one of the greatest of the inaccuracies, into 
 which'writers on this subject have fallen ; and the assertion, that 
 the institution of Caste confines a man and his family for ever to 
 the grade, in which he is born, and prevents his rising to a higher 
 class of society, whatever may be his character and merits, will 
 not stand the test of inquiry. The History of the Maratha and 
 Sikh Nations tells the story of the upheaving of the lower Castes ; 
 and what is there in the present social state of British India to 
 prevent a duly qualified man rising to the highest walks of life 
 without reference to his origin of Caste ? Successful adventurers 
 are known to improve their Castes, as they get richer. Fictitious 
 Castes are a device as common as fictitious pedigrees. The ten 
 Millions of Brahmins have no doubt been recruited from several 
 inferior Castes and from the issue of mixed marriages, for their 
 ranks contain specimens of the most opposite physical types. 
 If anyone supposes, that Brahmins, as a general rule, are engaged 
 in priestly duties, or that any proportion of them lay claim to any 
 arrogant superiority over their fellows, he is greatly mistaken. 
 A gentleman is always a gentleman, and the long hereditary 
 culture of the Brahmins has told upon their appearance and 
 manners. Their ranks supply many of the ablest public servants' 
 of the State, though by no means a majority of the Official 
 ranks, and they are themselves subdivided into so many numerous 
 tribes, that a Kingdom composed solely of the ten Million 
 Brahmins, would still be indelibly streaked by Caste, for there 
 are as many subdivisions of Brahmins as there are great Castes, 
 and as completely separated in the matters of matrimony, com- 
 mensality, and social intercourse. The Gour Brahmins would 
 shudder at the possibility of any communion, beyond that of 
 general acquaintance, with the Kashmiri Brahmins, who represent 
 
( 297 ) 
 
 the ablest class in Upper India, but are eaters of flesh (ex- 
 cepting beef) and drinkers of spirits, which are abomination 
 to the Gour Brahmins. The Saraswat Brahmins, who abound 
 in the Panjab, eat and drink with the Khatri Caste, and are 
 employed in servile duties. Nor have the Brahmins even the 
 monopoly of priestly duties or of sanctity ; at many shrines 
 other Castes officiate. With the great Sikh Nation the Khatri 
 Caste has quite superseded the Brahmin. In the Anglo-Indian 
 Army there is an abundance of Brahmin soldiers under the 
 orders of low-Caste men and of Mahometans. Brahmins are 
 always sought after as cooks, a useful but not honourable or 
 sacred position. 
 
 The Kshatriya Caste, if existing at all, is represented by the 
 Rajput and Khatri. In considering the Rajputs, , the new 
 anomaly presents itself, that thousands of these have become 
 Mahometans, but still claim to be Rajputs, keep up their own 
 family customs and Law of inheritance, attend the weddings of 
 their own Hindu Tribal brethren, have their particular bard and 
 family Priest. No intermarriage and actual commensality is 
 possible ; but still it is a wonderful instance of the elasticity of 
 the Caste system, when the breakers of Caste have power and 
 numbers on their side. The Raja of one of the Mountain 
 Rajput States in the Himalaya is a Mahometan Rajput, ruling 
 over his Hindu brethren. Rajputs take every kind of service 
 requiring fidelity or strength ; but the arm has to wield the pen 
 as well as the sword, and at a period probably subsequent to 
 the Laws of Manu the art of writing was imported from the 
 West into India, and a powerful group of Castes, uncontem- 
 plated in the original division of mankind, came into existence, 
 viz., the " men of the pen," or the Writer-Castes, who are not 
 likely to be overlooked or crushed in any part of the world. 
 They are known by different names in many parts of India, such 
 as the Khatri, the Kayat, the Parbhu, but it must not be supposed, 
 that these classes monopolize the right of using the pen. It 
 would be impossible to follow in detail the other hundreds of 
 Castes, but imperfect as confessedly our knowledge is as to the 
 ramification of Castes, we can see clearly, that Religion is the 
 smallest factor in the system. For the sake of exhausting the 
 subject, it may be stated that Caste has arisen from the operation 
 of three causes : (i) Religious or quasi-Religious, (2) professional, 
 (3) ethnical. We can hardly suppose, that any person would 
 argue, that the origin of any of the Castes, bearing obvious 
 trade and professional names, was Religious, as such are clearly 
 hereditary guilds. Still less could it be urged, that the Castes 
 of dancing-girls, jugglers, musicians, beggars, thieves, and other 
 baser occupations, had the sanction of Religion ; and yet the great 
 mass of the population is divided into such kinds of Caste, and 
 
( 298 ) 
 
 so entirely do the people mix up the questions of Caste and 
 profession, that a watchman is generally spoken of by the Caste, 
 to which he belongs, as the men of that Caste are all watchmen, 
 and the great backbone of the population of the Panjab is 
 described indiscriminately as " Jat," which is their Caste, or 
 Zemindar, which is their calling, as agriculturists. 
 
 Those, who have not studied the mode, in which the motley 
 population of India has been built up, hardly appreciate at its 
 full value the effect of the ethnical fissures in the lower strata. 
 The Chamars of the North- West Provinces amount to three 
 millions and a half, scattered in every part of the Province, 
 employed in hereditary servile duties, or in trades of an offensive 
 character, allowing themselves the license of eating carrion or 
 the flesh of unclean animals, worshipping other Gods than those 
 of the Hindu, who avoid even their touch. In every village, 
 moreover, there is a Helot class, engaged in servile duties as 
 watchmen, sweepers, scavengers, removers of the dead, contact 
 with whom is shunned, as that of the Cag'ots in the South of 
 France, where the same feeling has survived the European 
 culture of many centuries. It is clear, that the Shanars of South 
 India are ethnically distinct from the rest of the population. 
 There is no question, that all such races or tribes are of non- 
 Arian origin, which have not accepted the thin veneer of Hindu 
 culture, and are therefore hated and shunned as out of the pale 
 of Hindu society, and at the same time not strong enough, like 
 the Mahometan and Christian, to establish a rival and inde- 
 pendent social organization of their own. It is an absurdity to 
 quote the famous Vedic " Foot and Mouth " stanza, or the Laws 
 of Manu, with regard to such classes, as those Laws bear no 
 relation to any, who are not Arian in origin, or who have not 
 introduced themselves into the Arian system. The Shanars 
 worship Spirits, have peculiar customs ; and it is no matter of 
 surprise, that the real Hindu of Arian origin, and those of the 
 n on- Arian, who have advanced to a certain extent up the ladder 
 of Arian culture, look upon them with abhorrence, and that the 
 antipathetic feeling of a superior race operates here as strongly 
 as it does on the part of the Anglo-Saxon in America against 
 the Negro. Men must be more than men, if in one generation 
 such antipathies could be softened down. The lower the.Caste, 
 to which the semi-Hindu has climbed, the greater the jealousy 
 felt towards those outside the line. Among the very low classes 
 in India this feeling must show itself by such outward signs as 
 shunning contact, intermarriage; and commensality, as their life 
 is spent in the streets and market-place, without the sanctity and 
 privacy of a home, by which the richer classes keep out the 
 unclean and the common herd. 
 
 Under a native Hindu rule it is more than probable, that the 
 
( 299 ) 
 
 yoke of Caste pressed very heavily on the lower classes, but the 
 sting is very much taken out under Mahometan and Christian 
 rule. Moreover, I call attention to the following remarkable 
 facts, as indicating that a Caste-feeling is, as it were, part of the 
 common law of the Indian people. All the Hindu sectarians, 
 who have disturbed the peace of the Brahmanical system in a 
 long succession for several centuries, have, like the Protestant 
 Missionaries, selected the Brahmins as the object of their 
 abuse, and attempted the destruction of Caste under the alleged 
 vaunt of the equality of mankind. Slowly and surely Caste has 
 forced itself back again. Buddhism, which was based upon the 
 abolition of Caste, was fairly driven out of India. The more 
 plastic Jain accepted Caste and a transitional position. In Ceylon 
 the Buddhists even exhibit 'traces of Caste. The Sikhs of the 
 Panjab, after a long tilt against Caste, have relaxed their rules 
 and relapsed into Caste. A band of celebrated ascetics, or vagrant 
 beggars, may shake off Caste, but no body of Religionists has 
 ever settled down in India to decent family life without throwing 
 round a fence of Caste more or less rigid. The non-Arian races 
 of the Hills, as they settle down to be agriculturists and adopt 
 a semi-Hinduism, of their own free will assert their claim to a 
 Caste ; and, wonder of wonders ! the Mahometan, who in Turkey, 
 Arabia, Egypt, and Afghanistan, marries anyone, on whom his 
 fancy falls, and eats and drinks with the European, in India is 
 particular as to commensality, and, if he be a member of a 
 respectable tribe, is very restricted in the choice of a wife. The 
 Census-report shows, that Caste is almost as prevalent among 
 them as among the Hindu, for the descendants of the conquering 
 races, who immigrated from Western Asia, the Arab, the Persian, 
 the Mogul, the Turk, and the Pathan, generally marry each 
 among his own kith and kin. The Mahometan Rajput and other 
 of the good Hindu Castes, who became Mahometan in the time 
 of the Empire, keep close to their tribal rules, which differ from 
 Caste only in name. The lower Mahometans, converts from the 
 non-Arian races, are in practice less rigid ; but even among 
 them increase of wealth is sometimes accompanied by a fictitious 
 improvement of Caste-designation. The successful corn-factor 
 has been known in a time of dearth to have sprung from the 
 ranks of the Shaikh, or New Mahometan, to that of Sayyid, or 
 descendant of the Prophet, and the self-asserting pride of a 
 Sayyid is only equalled by that of a Brahmin. 
 
 I proceed now to show, how the strong and impartial Govern- 
 ment of British India has acted with a view of disarming and 
 controlling the bad and exaggerated features of Caste. In the 
 State-Schools and Hospitals the difference of Caste is totally 
 ignored. All, who enter there, are known as students and 
 patients. In the railway-trains the community is reduced to 
 
( 300 ) 
 
 the common denomination of passengers. We have heard' of 
 Anglo-Saxon Colonies, where black and white will not mix on 
 such occasions. In the Courts of Justice, civil and criminal, 
 all subjects of the Queen 'are absolutely equal in theory and 
 practice. A Brahmin murderer would be hanged at Banaras 
 without benefit of clergy, and the rights of the lowest Chamar 
 would be vindicated. In the State-Prisons all are associated 
 together; but a prisoner of good Caste is selected as cook, as 
 it would be obviously unjust to enhance the penalty fixed by Law 
 for a particular offence by adding a feature, which would affect 
 some prejudicially, but not all. It is insisted, that the wells of 
 a village are available to all, and an attempt to exclude Native 
 Christian converts was distinctly put a stop to. Any attempt to 
 exclude men of lower Caste from the use of the streets, or to 
 ' prevent males and females from wearing such dress as they 
 chose, would not be tolerated for an instant. The service of 
 State, civil and military, is open to all,' and men of the highest 
 Caste are constantly subordinated to men of lower, according to 
 their position in the Service. On the other hand, any positive 
 injury caused by one person to another, entailing injury to Caste, 
 is the ground of an action for Tort : thus a valuable property is 
 recognized as existing. Moreover, the Native Laws of Marriage 
 and Inheritance are accepted by the Civil Courts, and con- 
 sequently the issue of a Marriage, contracted contrary to the 
 rules of Caste, is declared illegitimate. 
 
 How has society dealt with Caste ? I can only give an opinion 
 based upon experience acquired in a solitary life among the 
 people of Upper India, where Caste is at its highest pressure, for 
 weeks and months together, without any European companion. 
 I never found Caste an obstacle to social intercourse, nor did 
 the subject ever press itself forward, and yet the population of 
 the villages and towns visited each day differed considerably. 
 Few villages were absolutely without Mahometans, none without 
 men of the lowest Caste, and in the thronging of an Indian 
 crowd there must be indiscriminate contact. In my establish- 
 ment there were Brahmins, with whom I transacted ordinary 
 business, Rajputs, who carried my messages, Khatri and Kayat, 
 who engrossed my orders. Mahometan and Hindu sat upon 
 the floor working side by side ; and, if the half-Caste Christian 
 sat at a table to write English letters, it was only because the 
 method of English correspondence requires this distinction. 
 My own tent was daily thronged by men of all Castes and position 
 in life, and my visits to the male apartments of the notables was 
 considered an honour; and yet of all outcastes the European is 
 the worst, as he asserts his right to eat both beef and pork. Thus, 
 professors of different Religions mingle in social life without any 
 unpleasant friction : each man respects his neighbour ; he has 
 
( 301 ) 
 
 no wish, indeed, to intermarry with the family of his neighbour, 
 or share the cup and platter of his neighbour, but he does not 
 consider himself in the least superior or inferior. 
 
 In one sense, and one sense only, Caste may be said to be 
 Religious. All that remains to the non-Mahometan population 
 of India, the Religious idea and instinct, has centuries ago 
 shrunk into the notion of Caste ; just as in Europe in the Middle 
 Ages all that to many men remained of Religion was a keen 
 sense of personal honour. Now both Caste and honour restrain 
 a man's actions from what is contrary to the rules of the 
 brotherhood, is dishonourable, and often from crime in a way, 
 in which nothing else will restrain them ; and in that sense Caste 
 and honour may be said to be Religious sanctions, but in no 
 other ; and no wise Legislator would venture to do aught to 
 weaken such sanctions, the existence of which marks a certain 
 progress in Civilization. 
 
 I cannot see that Caste is an evil of the kind and degree, 
 which it is imagined to be. In an exaggerated and self-asserting 
 form it would certainly be an evil under a Hindu system of 
 Government of the stiff and intolerant form of modern Religious 
 Creeds ; but Tolerance has ever been of the essence of the 
 Hindu system, and in British India the claws of Caste have been 
 cut by a strong and impartial Government, and the social 
 pressure of a population, composed of various elements, which 
 would not submit to oppression. I submit, that in Europe 
 classes lie in strata horizontally, and that in India the separation 
 is by vertical fissures. I have known men of good Caste and 
 social position as gentlemen, who were not ashamed to have in 
 their families near relations in the grade of menial or cook. 
 Now such a state of affairs would be impossible in Europe, 
 and marks the enormous divergence of social customs. 
 
 Viewing the matter, therefore, from the point of view of a 
 Statesman, a Moralist, an advocate for civil and Religious liberty, 
 Education, and Progress, I can see nothing in the National 
 custom of Caste, that requires any interference from the Legis- 
 lature. I recognize the existence in different Nations of an 
 infinite variety of family customs, habits, and tendencies ; and, 
 where they are prejudicial to the better interests of the Human 
 race, the work of amelioration may be left to time, Education, 
 intercourse with other Nations, and general intellectual progress. 
 
 '879-1895- 
 
( 302 ) 
 
 2. Caste in the Christian Chuech. 
 
 There exists an ancient custom in British India among the 
 whole of the Arian and a portion of the Dravidian population, 
 known by the name of Caste in English, Jati in the Vernacular, 
 and Varna in the sacred Languages. This Custom does not 
 extend to British Barma, or to the Buddhist portion of Ceylon 
 to an appreciable extent, nor is it rigorously adopted by the 
 non-Arian Races of India, the Dravidian, Kolarian, and Tibeto- 
 Barman Races, which have remained uninfluenced by the 
 Brahmanical Religion. On the other hand, those Hindu, who 
 have adopted the Mahometan Faith, and the vast number of 
 non-Arians, who have attached themselves to the lower strata 
 of the great Brahmanical Polity, and, strange to say, the 
 descendants of the Afghan, Turk, Persian, and Arab immi- 
 grants, who during the last eight hundred years have floated 
 into India on each Mahometan wave of invasion, have sensibly, 
 and unmistakably, adopted the custom, as a mark of respecta- 
 bility, and though they talk only of Tribes, and not of Castes, 
 yet, are under the same yoke, as regards Matrimony and 
 Commensality. 
 
 In a Paper which I read in 1879 before the National Indian 
 Association, I discussed the nature of this custom, and the 
 infinite variety of its primary and secondary divisions. I showed 
 how the claws of a custom, which might possibly be intolerant, 
 had been cut by the long domination of the Mahometan, and 
 the uncompromising system of the British Administration, based 
 on absolute equality of man with man in the Courts of Criminal 
 and Civil Justice, the Public Service, the Railways, the Schools, 
 and Hospitals. I pointed out how mistaken was the idea, that 
 a man was in any way compelled to follow the profession of his 
 Father, or was in any way debarred from his rights as a free 
 agent. My conclusion was, that there was nothing in this 
 ancient custom, as limited by British practice rather than Law, 
 that prevented any of Her Majesty's subjects discharging his 
 Duty to the State; that the custom was so far guaranteed by the 
 State, that an action lay in the Civil Courts for Tort on the 
 ground of wilful breach of Caste ; and that the issue of children 
 born of Hindu unions, entered into contrary to the rules of 
 Caste, were illegitimate, and did not inherit. The custom, there- 
 fore, did not deserve the wholesale abuse showered down upon 
 it by certain persons. I reprinted in 1881 my Paper in my 
 " Pictures of Indian Life," and I believe, that my sentiments 
 on this subject are shared by all Statesmen, who are acquainted 
 
( 303 ) 
 
 with, and interested in, the People of India. On this subject 
 therefore I, and many other ardent supporters of Missions, are 
 at direct issue with a great body of Missionaries. I believe 
 them to be thoroughly mistaken. 
 
 In the course of discussion, which ensued after my Paper had 
 been read, a gentleman of great experience in India, formerly 
 an Editor of one of the best English Newspapers, remarked, 
 that I had not touched upon the relation of Caste to the 
 Christian Church. My reply was, that the National Indian 
 Association was not the proper arena for such a discussion. I 
 had already brought it prominently forward in a Missionary 
 Society, with which I am more particularly connected, and now 
 I proceed to ventilate the subject. 
 
 I honour the Christian Missionaries, who devote their talents, 
 and their lives, to the benefit of Asiatic, African, and Oceanic, 
 races. But it must needs be, that they go out early in life, and 
 the necessity of the Language ties them to one field. Their 
 views thus become narrowed to their own environment. The 
 Missionary from China writes and speaks, as if the world could 
 be converted, but for the sale of opium and the hostile action 
 of the Chinese educated classes. The Missionary from India' 
 is overpowered by the opposition caused by Caste and Secular 
 Education. The Missionary in Africa tells sad stories of Human 
 Sacrifice, witchcraft, Cannibalism, and Polygamy. And so on in 
 the other fields. The Missionary in China or Barma does not 
 feel any sensible advantage from the absence of Caste. The 
 Missionary in Africa looks rather longingly for Secular Educa- 
 tion, and repression of monstrous crimes. The experienced and 
 enlightened Missionary in each field is generally silent on such 
 topics, for he feels, that it is the same depravity of the Human 
 heart, which opposes him in a different development in different 
 parts of the world. 
 
 In that portion of the so-called in Missionary Periodicals 
 Kingdom of Satan, which is known to Geographers as British 
 India, I have spent a quarter of a century, and loved the people 
 very dearly, because I became aware of their excellences by 
 familiar contact. No doubt the scum of the Bazar of a great 
 town is no more a fair representation of a great Nation, than the 
 roughs of London are of the British people. The strong and 
 impartial British Government has paved the way for the Mis- 
 sionary by putting down, with a high hand, all abominable 
 customs, which are contrary to laws Human and Divine, such as 
 Human Sacrifices, burning of widows, burying of lepers alive, 
 female infanticide, traffic in slaves, mutilation of the body, and 
 so forth. An enlightened Government of the Nineteenth century 
 does not interfere with Morals, and leaves drunkenness, profli- 
 gacy, and the use of bad language, to be counteracted by the 
 
( 304 ) 
 
 Moral and Religious influences of the people, and by their 
 spiritual guides, restricting itself to the punishment of offences, 
 scheduled in the Criminal Code. But besides these things in 
 Oriental Countries, there exists a group of customs, objectionable 
 per se, yet not such as to warrant the interference of an enlightened 
 Ruler. These are domestic Slavery of the gentle and patriarchal 
 type, child-Marriage, Polygamy, cremation of the dead, painting 
 or searing of the face and limbs, circumcision, and Caste. 
 These are Old-World customs. We hear of them in the infancy of 
 other Nations, who have outgrown them ; but, unluckily, customs 
 in India survive in a hard and crystallized form, and the people 
 are very conservative. I can quite imagine an enthusiastic . 
 young Missionary being shocked at any, or all, of these customs, 
 and wondering, why they are' not at once suppressed. But 
 those, who have had experience in ruling Oriental Nations, 
 know, that the attempt to do so would fail, might cause the loss 
 of Empire, would certainly entail loss of life in rebellion, and 
 do more harm than good. The work of amelioration must be 
 left to time, Education, intercourse with other Nations, and 
 general intellectual progress. 
 
 So speaks the Statesman. But the Evangelist seeks to gather 
 into his nascent Church Souls to be saved, and he appeals to a 
 higher than Human Law. He admits, that offences against Morals 
 occur quite as much among Christians as among Heathen, and 
 must be left to the discipline of the Church, and the influence 
 of the Pastor, for they are recurring evils, from which none are 
 safe until death. But he at once puts his foot down upon some 
 of the Old-World customs, above described, and insists that 
 Polygamy, cremation of the dead, circumcision, Caste-marks on 
 the face, must cease, as a condition precedent to Baptism. He 
 declares the right of the widow to re-marry, and, if any remnant 
 of domestic Slavery remained, he would denounce it, and do his 
 best to get rid of it. But if he be wise (and Missionaries do 
 not always possess the Wisdom of this world), he will analyze the 
 ancient custom of Caste, and make the abandonment of certain 
 portions an essential, reserve certain portions for pastoral ad- 
 monition, and leave other portions alone, for the simple reason, 
 that to oppose them is to war against the common feeling of 
 Human Nature. " Naturam expelles furci, tamen usque 
 recurret." 
 
 In analyzing the Census of British India, I find that the great 
 Indian Nation is made up of most conflicting elements as regards 
 race, Religion, Language, and culture. Under the pressure of 
 a strong foreign Government, a certain amount of fusion has' 
 taken place, and this process is slowly advancing year by year. 
 But the Nation has never yet learnt to forget, that it is only 
 &n amalgam of very discordant materials, which discordancy is 
 
( 305 ) 
 
 intensified by segregation from the rest of the world, Religious 
 dogma, fashioned in the interest of a dominant class, and the * 
 universal practice of what is known in Europe as Trade-Unions, 
 and ancestral occupations and possessions. Insensibly rigid 
 rules have surrounded Marriage and Commensality ; this leads 
 on to the feeling, that one stratum, or rather vertical slice of 
 society, is different from another, and the whole culminates in 
 pride, overbearing conduct, and, if opportunity offered, social 
 ostracizing. . But if an educated man of an ordinary Caste is 
 asked, he will at once admit, that his Caste is not superior to, 
 but only different from, that of his neighbour. 
 
 For a moment let us turn aside from India, and, looking round 
 us, let us consider the phenomena of Caste, as developed from 
 ethnical and social causes, in the United States, a land of strict 
 equality of man with man, as regards the Negro ; as regards the 
 Bantu tribes in the Cape Colony ; and in England. 
 
 Sir George Campbell made a tour in the United States in 
 1878, and carefully considered the relation of the antagonist 
 races to each other. His conclusions are that: "The separation 
 " of the two Castes is becoming more pronounced than ever; 
 " that since the admission of the Negro to Political equality, 
 " the movement has been rather against social equality than 
 " otherwise ; that there are entirely separate Negro Churches ; 
 " that the difficulty about public conveyances had been got over, 
 " and all travel together, which is a great step in advance; that, 
 " as is the case of the Hindu, no Intermarriage or Commensality 
 " is possible ; that there is universal separation in the public 
 " Schools, at the wish of the Negro, though good feeling and 
 " good temper are exhibited in daily relations ; that half-Castes, 
 " even when quite fair in complexion, go to the Negro Schools ; 
 " that the Caste-system must be accepted as a fact ; that the 
 " most pronounced philo-Negro in the States would recoil from 
 " the idea of interrmariage, which is positively prohibited by Law 
 " in most of the States ; that Christianity might effect much to 
 " bring the races together, but not for the present." 
 
 I quote his concluding words : " To one accustomed to see 
 " great Communities in India, where varieties of Caste do not 
 " interfere with union in a common social system ; where, on 
 " the contrary, Caste but represents a variety of occupations 
 " and functions in the same system, the existence of two Castes 
 " in America does not seem to present an insuperable obstacle 
 " to well-being. In India all the Castes live very well together, 
 " and support one another, by each contributing their functions 
 " to the village-existence, ft is hard, then, that in the United 
 "States two Castes cannot co- exist, supposing that means of 
 " amalgamating them are not found." 
 
 In South Africa we have an unexceptional witness in 
 
( 306 ) 
 
 Mr. Anthony Trollope. At the great Lovedale Missionary 
 Institution of the Free Church of Scotland the boys and 
 girls', black and white, are described as intermixed. But the 
 European boys would not come to the School, if compelled to 
 eat with the Kafirs. Any idea of intermarriage with the two 
 races would not be thought of. 
 
 Lastly, in Great Britain, where all are of the Anglo-Saxon or 
 kindred races, and no differences exist of Customs, or Colour, 
 can we truthfully say, that there are not restrictions upon Inter- 
 marriage and Commensality, which have the essence, though 
 not the name, of Caste ? The Law, indeed, does not hold the 
 penalty of illegitimacy over unequal marriages ; but would the 
 most devoted servant of God, lay or clerical, in a better class 
 of life, relish the Marriage of his son or daughter to the pious 
 pew-opener? Or would he admit to his table the upright, 
 though unsavoury, scavenger ? Has any of our European 
 Missionaries as yet admitted a Native of India to the honour 
 of being his son-in-law? Is it not the fact, that the white 
 Missionary forms a Caste with superior position and superior 
 emoluments to the Native and half-Caste ? And I deny that it 
 it is right, that it should be so. The Briton landed in India 
 considers himself, however low in the strata of English society, 
 to be superior to the highest Indian. But to the eye of the 
 Ethnologist the position of the superior Native Caste is as much 
 removed above the lower (and they feel it as much to be so), 
 as the Briton, rightly or wrongly, thinks himself above the 
 Indian referred to. Even in Africa we find traces of Caste 
 among some, if not among all tribes. In fact, self-respect and 
 dawning Civilization first evidence themselves in tribes becoming 
 particular about Marriage and Commensality. I do not for one 
 moment deny, that the custom is developed in India in a more 
 rigid and unpleasant form than elsewhere. But what I do 
 maintain is, that it is but a tree grown up to an extravagant 
 height and bulk from the same germ, which is found more or 
 less in every Community of men. 
 
 In the Mission Field I read the remarks of Sir Frederick 
 Goldsmid : " It is easy to say to a Native of India, that Caste is 
 " not acknowledged in Europe, but the Natives would see, that 
 " the very fact, that it is not acknowledged makes the shapeless 
 " sentiment so difficult to deal with, that it becomes a barrier of 
 "actual separation. We have Castes in Europe, and Castes 
 " totally opposed to the spirit of Christianity, as regards colour, 
 " birth, Education, wealth, and fashion." 
 
 To myself, with all my recollections of valued friends left 
 behind me in India, whose features and voices live in my 
 memory, and some of whose portraits still decorate my walls, it 
 is matter of no small surprise to hear these good easy people, 
 
( 307 ) 
 
 amiable and ignorant, tolerant and affectionate, described in. 
 a Missionary Periodical, March, 1879, as practising "A custom 
 " fraught with destruction to their Souls, utterly divorced from 
 " Morality, a custom, which eats out Human sympathy, anni- 
 " hilates fellow-feeling, renders the heart cruel and callous, and 
 " dams up the stream of affection." 
 
 T can scarcely believe, that my Brahmin and Khatri friends, 
 who still send me letters, though they can never hope for any 
 advantage at my hands, and tell me about their children and 
 our mutual friends, Christian, Mahometan, and Hindu, without 
 distinction of race or Religion, are "slaves of a system which 
 " tends, more than anything else the Devil has invented, to 
 " destroy the feelings of general benevolence, and make three- 
 " fourths of mankind the hopeless slaves of the other ; that it 
 " was an invention of the author of evil, the father of lies, 
 " by which he enthralls Millions of Souls ; that it is Satan's 
 " masterpiece, Satan's chief institution, the monster evil of 
 " India, obstructive to all efforts for the improvement of the 
 " temporal condition of the people, as well as a Soul-destroying 
 " influence." 
 
 It is sad to read such a foolish tirade as this, for the spirit 
 of it is foreign to the precepts of Christ. It may be called tall 
 talk, and indeed foolish talk ; or it may only be a flowery, 
 oratorical way of implying, that the writer disapproved of Caste. 
 And, no doubt, with a tabula rasa, Caste, as well as many other 
 time-honoured customs, might be dispensed with. But we 
 have to deal with a Nation as we find it, and it is idle to say, 
 that the Indians with Caste are not as prosperous, as advanced 
 in culture, Arts, and Sciences, ' as benevolent, Law-abiding, 
 temperate, Moral, and, in their own way, as Religious, as the 
 Chinese, with whom Caste has never prevailed. Nor do we find 
 in Ceylon, Barma, China, and Japan, though the people are 
 entirely free from this snare of Satan, that the Gospel makes 
 greater progress on account of its absence. In truth, people, 
 who are free from Caste, or Opium-eating, or Cannibalism, are 
 still far from God, and the educated classes of China, the 
 Brahmins of India, and the Medicine-men of Africa, are but 
 the Pharisees of the Scriptures, or the good old Conservatives 
 of modern time, who stand on their old ways, and, right or 
 wrong, will not listen to new doctrines. A Learned and devoted 
 Bishop has wisely remarked, that the " Christian Church has no 
 " commission to bring all Nations to any other uniformity than 
 " that of the Faith. She must leave National habits and 
 " customs (not amounting to deliberate sins, or crimes by Law) 
 " alone. The Spirit of Jesus will, in its own good time, by the 
 " influence of Preaching, Teaching, and Example, work out the 
 " special type of culture, Civilization, and social habit, which is 
 
( 308 ) 
 
 " good, or at least possible, under the Political and physical 
 " circumstances of the country." 
 
 The evils of Caste have been intensified to the Christian 
 Missionary by the policy adopted of working from the lower 
 strata of Society up to the higher. Unquestionably the Souls of 
 the meanest have the same value as those of the highest, and 
 the Gospel was specially meant for the poor. Paul, however, 
 clearly addressed the better classes. Augustine went to the 
 King ; and the Church of England was not based upon the 
 scavengers, and lowest herdsmen, of the Nation. The Pagani 
 were the last to become Christians. However, we must grapple 
 with the phenomenon as it exists, viz., a Church, consisting 
 mainly of non-Arians, members of the lowest ranks of Society, 
 of inferior Castes, so low that the Sudra Caste, which in general 
 estimation is the lowest rung of the ladder, becomes, by the 
 discovery of lower outcaste depths, one of dignity. It must be 
 remembered, that in India, as elsewhere, the lower the Caste, the 
 more particular and precise are the rules to protect it. These 
 converts have had no sacrifice of social status to make, when 
 they accepted their new Faith. But the fact of their numbers, 
 and the defilement of their old and present occupations, still 
 ■sticking to their skirts, presents a frightful stumbling-block to 
 the -man of Education, of position, and of social estimation, who 
 is moved by the Holy Spirit to become a Christian. Let any 
 reader of these pages faithfully apply such circumstances to him- 
 self, and to his family circle, and judge. 
 
 The Church of Christ is, however, a new Society, one with 
 the highest Morality, the grandest aspirations, and the most 
 Precious Promises. Men, upon entering such a Society, and 
 becoming inheritors of such Promises, must be prepared to 
 make Sacrifices. The unclean must be no longer unclean ; the 
 Opium-smoker must no longer debase himself; the Cannibal 
 must no longer indulge his abominable appetite ; the bloody 
 man must no longer take away life ; the proud man must admit, 
 ex animo, that all before God are equal ; that the Worship of God 
 is common to all without distinction of person ; that Christ 
 died for all; that the Ministers of God and Teachers of His 
 Truth are to be listened to and respected without reference to 
 their origin. These are essential conditions precedent, and may 
 thus be formularized : 
 
 (i) Frank admission of the equality of all men before God. 
 
 (z) No separation of Churches, or of Seats in Churches, 
 except for the sexes. 
 
 (3) Partaking of the same Bread and Wine from the same 
 Cup and Platter, at the same time without distinc- 
 tion. 
 
( 309 ) 
 
 (4) Social intercourse with ordained Ministers and Office- 
 
 holders of the Church, in the Homes, the School, 
 and Church. 
 
 (5) Abandonment of Polygamy, Circumcision, Caste-marks, 
 
 notions of ceremonial defilement, and belief in witch- 
 craft, soothsaying, or Spirits. 
 
 (6) No separation of high and low Castes in burial- 
 
 grounds. 
 
 It is unnecessary to allude to savage and inhuman Customs, 
 as the Laws of British India have stamped them out. For 
 office-holders of the Church, both Lay and Ordained, a fuller 
 and more thorough compliance with the spirit of the above 
 must be insisted upon, as the condition of office. 
 
 But outside such conditions are two important factors of 
 Human Society, Commensality and Intermarriage. The 
 founders of the Indian Church have no authority to lay upon 
 that Church a greater burden than is imposed upon the British 
 Church. Let us consider these subjects calmly, but firmly. The 
 Laws of British India have guaranteed the customs, having 
 the force of Law, with regard to Marriage and Inheritance. 
 The convert, however, must at once surrender his legal right 
 to Polygamy. No right of divorce can survive his change of 
 Religion ; these practices are absolutely forbidden by the words 
 of our Lord : " Male and Female created He them." But the 
 Missionary must pause, ere he ventures upon the gross tyranny 
 of insisting upon his converts associating and eating together, 
 except by spontaneous action, and avoid the still more violent 
 infringement of natural Equity in enforced Intermarriages. 
 Such conduct might involve the Missionary in a Criminal 
 Prosecution, or an action for Civil damages. 
 
 There are notorious instances of excellent Christians of good 
 social position and Caste, who, when they had occasion to be 
 married, went long distances at considerable expense to find 
 a Christian wife of their own Caste and station in life, instead 
 of helping themselves, as many Missionaries would suggest, 
 from the senior class of the Mission Girls' School, consisting 
 of low-Caste, though excellent, and educated, young women. 
 
 Some of the Protestant Missionaries are as unreasonable in 
 denouncing Caste in the Christian Church as the Roman 
 Catholics are in denouncing Freemasonry. I cannot say that 
 I think highly of either institution. But the roots of both lie 
 deep in the soil, and both have a side of goodness. It is vain 
 to run counter to the deep currents of Human opinion, and 
 institutions such as these will last as long as the world lasts. 
 It scarcely lies in the mouths of those Societies, who plead for 
 the independence of the Native Churches, both at present and 
 
( 310 ) 
 
 in future, to interfere with their Social customs, and attempt to 
 bind the Indian congregations with ropes of tow, which will be 
 snapped at once. The Native Christians already show signs of 
 desiring for themselves a Church modified to some extent in its 
 forms and ceremonies so as to suit Oriental notions. And 
 a- modified form of Caste, limited to Rules of Intermarriage 
 and Commensality, will, we may depend upon it, ever be found 
 a feature in any such Native Indian Church. 
 
 The merits and the good points of the character of the 
 Indian people are without number. They are very docile ; 
 though not entirely free from the curse of drink, yet not 
 habitual drunkards, and quite amenable to reason in such 
 matters ; Polygamy, where it does exist (and it is exceptional), 
 is very different from the Polygamy of Africa ; and if intoxi- 
 cating drugs are indulged in, the cases are rare ; assassination, 
 secret Societies, and blood-feuds are unknown. It is doubly 
 unwise of the Missionary in these conditions to tilt against 
 a brick wall, and to step aside from his obvious Duty of 
 Preaching the Gospel. As to Missionary Boarding-Schools, or 
 any other similar institutions of a benevolent character, such 
 conditions can be imposed as seem proper to the benefactors, 
 and it would be ludicrous to allow the least atom of Caste to be 
 maintained in such institutions. The State does not tolerate 
 it in the Ferries, the Railway-carriage, the School, or the 
 Hospital. 
 
 Let us recollect, that the Kingdom of God is not meat, or 
 drink, or Marriage ; that things much worse than Caste exist 
 in the British Church after centuries of Christianity; that the 
 practical man considers what is possible and equitable, not what 
 is abstractedly desirable, as if he had to deal with an Utopia; 
 and, finally, that a word can be said in favour of Caste ; for the 
 feeling of Caste in Great Britain makes a gentleman polite, a 
 tradesman honest, a soldier brave, and a woman circumspect in 
 her conduct. 
 
 I now proceed to quote upon this important question some 
 opinions of men whose judgments are worth recording. Sir H. 
 Maine, in his " Village Communities," writes : " Caste is merely 
 " a name for trade and occupation, and the sole tangible effect 
 " of the Brahmanical theory is, that it creates a Religious 
 " sanction for what is really a primitive and natural distribution 
 " of classes." 
 
 Bishop Daniel Wilson, after recapitulating, very much as 
 given in my six Rules, the matters of Church-Order, which he 
 must insist upon, in supercession of Caste-prejudices, closes 
 thus : "I do not interfere with your national customs, or with 
 matters of dress and food ; but old heathenish customs must 
 be relinquished." 
 
( 311 ) 
 
 Bishop Gell, of Madras (1868), writes on the importance of 
 " exchanging the distinctions of Caste for those of rank, 
 " Education, and the like. This object must be attained, not 
 " by coercive measures, but by persuasion, and the power of the 
 " Truth of Christ, working upon the prejudiced heart ; and by the 
 " use of every opportunity for making advances without irritating." 
 
 In the Official organ of the Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel (December, 1877), we find the following passage with 
 regard to a high-Caste convert : " I took pains to advise him 
 " not to break his Caste, but to eat, drink, dress as heretofore, 
 " and live among his people, only abstaining from everything 
 " idolatrous." Upon inquiry I received a reply from the late 
 Mr. Bullock, the Secretary, that in his private opinion the 
 Missionary had taken the right course, and that the Missionaries 
 of the S.P.G. generally would do as he did. 
 
 A most striking testimony on the subject is that of the Rev. 
 Dr. H. Bower, of Madras, in the Indian Evangelical Rtview for 
 1876. He had read a paper, in February of that year, before 
 the Madras Diocesan Church Conference. It was a vigorous, 
 downright exposure of the dark side of Caste ; but suddenly the 
 note is changed ; like the Prophet, he began to curse and ended 
 in blessing : " I wrote an essay on Caste twenty years ago ; I 
 " was young, inexperienced, and enthusiastic : since then, as 
 " I grow old, and see more of men and of the world, I am 
 " disposed to be more charitable, and lenient to all, who have 
 " scruples on this intricate subject. In order to form a just 
 " estimate of the trials of a high-Caste convert we must put 
 " ourselves in his place, and view things from his standpoint. 
 " All Castes, high and low, who embrace Christianity, have 
 " peculiar difficulties to encounter. Caste, as class-prejudices, 
 " seems to be inherent in fallen Human nature. They are felt 
 " in Europe, in America, and all the world over, as well as in 
 " India. Their power pervades all minds : it in some measure 
 " influences the State, the Church, Benevolent Societies, 
 " Religious Communities, and even pious individuals. It showed 
 " itself in the prejudices of Peter. Providence has made a 
 " difference between one man and another with regard to birth, 
 " wealth, learning, and position. These distinctions cannot be 
 " ignored, however much they may be regulated, or mitigated, 
 " or improved. Are we justified in demanding of converts more 
 " than Repentance and Faith, which was all that the Apostles 
 " demanded ? Capricious dictation and rigorous Law will do 
 " no good. Charity and Liberty are more important than 
 " Uniformity. We must allow converts to retain their simple 
 " and innocent usages and customs, while we strike at the root 
 " of immoral and idolatrous practices ; we must be careful not 
 " to disgust them with trivial matters." 
 
( 312 ) 
 
 A Native Clergyman at the same Conference remarked as 
 follows in favour of the lenient treatment advocated by Dr. Bower: 
 "A Caste-Christian may not answer the beau ideal of Christian 
 " perfection, but, so long as he is a Christian, he comes under 
 " Christian influences, and gradually accepting in its Christian 
 " sense the brotherhood of Man, he may less and less attach any 
 " importance to Caste. In dealing too rigorously with Caste, the 
 " Missionary demands on the part of the convert the exhibition 
 " of the highest virtue, and most self-denying Christian graces, 
 " and makes no allowance for prejudices deeply rooted by 
 " immemorial custom." , 
 
 Another Missionary thought that "Caste should be recognized 
 " as an evil, and all Moral means used to uproot it, while re- 
 " fraining .from severe measures." 
 
 Another remarked that: "If Native opinion were moulded, 
 " Caste would die out like Slavery from the Early Church." 
 
 In the Missions Catholiques of 1880 I read: " Le seul point 
 " essentiel des Castes c'est le manage : les gens d'une Caste ne 
 " contractent pas d'alliance avec ce!ux d'une autre. Les Castes 
 " 6tant des distinctions purement sociales, le pretre Catholique 
 " ne gSne en rien la liberty naturelle de ses ouailles." 
 
 The Lutheran Church has openly declared for the maintenance 
 of Caste, so there is always that refuge open to the neo-Christian. 
 
 The following practical testimonvis given bya Madras Minister: 
 " The longer I work among the people, the more am I convinced, 
 " that, until we get a staff of workmen from the high-Castes, 
 " our work in that direction will be unsuccessful. A high-Caste 
 " Catechist may work with perfect impunity among the low- 
 " Castes ; but a low-Caste man can never cross the threshold 
 " of a high-Caste man. I know the common cant, that the 
 " Gospel can level all Caste-obstacles, social and Religious, and 
 " that no Caste-distinctions should be countenanced. This 
 " springs from mistaken zeal and downright Ign'orance. Many 
 " Missionaries are not so prudent as they ought to be, while 
 " they themselves are, perhaps, as high-Caste socially as the 
 " high-Caste Indian himself. I know of no Missionary, who 
 " would be willing to sit' down in a low-Caste house, and take 
 " his meals with the inmates, or let them sit down with him at 
 " his own table. This is a social distinction. There is no Moral 
 " or Religious principle involved in it, nor does the low-Caste 
 " consider such implied." 
 
 As a commentary to this, I may remark, that in the first 
 report of the Native Panjab Council in the North of India it 
 is mentioned, that the Missionary Agents had to simulate to be 
 high-Caste, though they were not so, with a view of getting an 
 access and a hearing. How often in England is it stated, that 
 it is important for an ordained Clergyman to be a gentleman ? 
 
( 313 ) 
 
 Now this is Caste of the rankest kind, since in the eyes of the 
 Lord nothing is common or unclean ; and the word " gentleman " 
 is not found in the Bible. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Hickey, a retired Missionary, remarks with 
 truth, that "Caste is more ethnological than superstitious; the 
 " lowest day-labourer will not take the food cooked by one of 
 " another Caste, much less would he marry with such. The 
 " design is to keep the clanships distinct. Education will 
 " have greater influence in this matter than rigorous Church- 
 " discipline." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Adamson remarks that "In dealing with our 
 " weaker brethren in the Faith, some little respect should be 
 " shown for national ideas. He considers that the scheme of 
 " the annual dinner, or Love-feast, is next door to compelling 
 " converts to adopt a European style of dress." And so 
 indeed it is. 
 
 The whole question turns upon Christian liberty in doing, or 
 abstaining from doing, what is not contrary to the Law of the 
 Bible, and the Law of the land. The Missionary, who compels 
 his Christians to partake of a Love-feast, or who forcibly 
 arranges Marriages contrary to the wishes of their families, 
 is doing an action contrary to the Law of Love, to natural equity, 
 and which will affect him most, when these Communities grow 
 strong enough to set aside both the letter and the spirit of 
 whatever Laws may be framed for their government. Much is 
 said in these days about the paramount importance of the 
 independence of the Native Church. With the Native Council 
 of that Church will eventually rest the decision of such matters 
 as these. In past years Pastors and Church Office-holders may 
 have been dismissed for not obeying orders about Caste : this 
 can no longer be done except by the Native Council. For the 
 first generation, at least, we may fully expect that a separation, 
 analogous to that of Jew and Gentile, will exist. After this, and 
 gradually, under the influence of example, advice, and above 
 all God's Grace, such will, no doubt, in the end disappear. 
 In the meantime, why should the Missionary put a stumbling- 
 block in the way of the infant Church, and place upon his 
 converts a burden with regard to Commensality and Inter- 
 marriage, which he himself would not touch with his little 
 finger ? Would he give his daughter in marriage to a Native 
 Pastor, or sit down to dinner with a Sweeper ? 
 
 ' Let me give one particular instance. Now during the year 
 1895 we lost a remarkable Brahman-convert in India, Nilkanth 
 Sastri Goreh, known as the Rev. Father Nehemiah Goreh. 
 He was a man of the highest family, and his lineage could be 
 traced back in the official lists for many generations through 
 Brahmins on both sides. Among our Bishops have been men 
 
( 314 ) 
 
 of the highest excellence and repute (to quote instances), the 
 sons of shopkeepers in Kensington or Brighton, or of domestic 
 servants : not a whit the less good Bishops on that account : 
 but if this dark-skinned descendant of a long line of noble 
 ancestors had turned his attention to the young daughter of 
 one of these white Bishops, and presumed to ask her hand, it 
 would have been deemed an insult, and the very idea scouted, 
 though the sister of one of the Bishops is wife of the village 
 baker in a Lincolnshire village, which I know. Is not this 
 Caste-prejudice on the part of the white immigrants into India? 
 
 The present policy of some Missions practically closes the 
 door of the Church against the better classes, and opens it 
 only to the very refuse of society. Colonel Sleeman, a skilled 
 observer, remarked that what chiefly prevented the spread of 
 Christianity was the dread of exclusion from Caste, and the 
 convert's utter hopelessness of ever finding any respectable circle 
 of society in his new sphere. Other observers have remarked, 
 that the unhappy convert is not admitted to the English Caste, 
 which is the strongest and most arrogant and exclusive Caste in 
 India, and of which the Mahometans, in spite of themselves, 
 share the feelings. 
 
 Bishop Sargent very pertinently observed in 1871: "So long 
 " as all sit together in the Church, partake of the same cup 
 " in the Lord's Supper, admit the administrations of men 
 " considered originally of lower Caste, and abstain from all 
 " heathen rites and ceremonies, what other overt acts are there, 
 " that we can legitimately insist on ? Now the above is the 
 " extent, to which our rural congregations in the mass go." Have 
 " we power to insist upon this promiscuous eating in a social 
 " manner as a sine qua non} It seems to me that the only 
 " power left us in dealing with this matter is that of example and 
 " persuasion. In my mind, to whatever means I have recourse, 
 " I see that Love must be the spring, or the result will be 
 " disappointment." 
 
 We may be thankful, that there has been a Christian Bishop, 
 such as the man who wrote this, and who had lived years among 
 the people. The Love, that is required to subdue this evil, would 
 prevent the uttering of such exaggerations, and the penning of 
 such abuse, as disfigure the Periodicals of Evangelical Societies 
 on this subject, and which are a scandal to the Christian Church, 
 and reflect 'upon the judgment of those who penned them. 
 
 In the Christian settlement of Kishnagar in Barigal a great 
 trouble broke out a few years ago, and three well-known and 
 esteemed Native Christians were sent from Calcutta to visit the 
 Christians, and report. They were Bangali, and knew what 
 they were about. They were of opinion, that the more the 
 removal of the Caste-distinction was insisted upon at the present 
 
( 315 ) 
 
 moment, the less likelihood there was of success, and that the 
 best solution of the difficulty was to let matters alone ; to treat 
 the people kindly, and so win their affections as gradually to 
 dispel their prejudices by some Christian teaching. A European 
 Missionary did not hesitate to express his opinion, that no one 
 would like to be compelled to eat and associate with people 
 given to filthy habits, and that the angry feeling of the people in 
 this case was caused by the exhibition of an overbearing spirit 
 on the part of the Missionary. 
 
 Of course scores of quotations could be given in the opposite 
 sense to the preceding ones. It often happens, with regard to 
 the writers, that they faithfully repeat the same cuckoo-note, and 
 " quod non intelligunt damnant." The writers are either good 
 men of the exalted type, who dream of a Christian Utopia 
 " of faultless men, born again to a new life " ; or they are 
 ignorant men, knowing neither the people, nor their Language, 
 and certainly imbued with no Love towards them. No doubt 
 there is a difficulty in getting a suitable wife for a young neo- 
 Christian of an isolated Caste, and it is not well for the Indian 
 convert to remain unmarried. These are the difficulties of all 
 nascent Communities. Again, the re-Marriage of young widows 
 is a measure of the greatest importance. Paul felt it .to be so 
 in his time. There is little sentiment in such unions in India, 
 though they may claim an average amount of happiness and 
 fidelity. Protestant Missionaries in these matters are un- 
 consciously following the example of all the Hindu Sectarian 
 Reformers, who, century after century, have attacked Caste, but 
 without success. Such movements were the result of the up- 
 heaving of the lower classes against the Priesthood, and against 
 the oppression of the upper classes generally, and in all cases 
 the vernacular Languages were made use of to influence the 
 people. It may be added, that the educated atheistical classes 
 of modern India are fighting against Caste, in the interest of 
 unrestricted eating, and promiscuous marriage, and are not 
 desirable allies for the Missionary. 
 
 There is too great a tendency on the part of Missionaries to 
 treat the people as children. Babes they are, indeed, in Christ ; 
 but a robust and vital Church must be composed of hardy and 
 independent members. The late General Dalton remarks, that 
 Christianity is offered, even to non-Arian races, in the least 
 alluring form. The Kole are fond of ornaments, and the women 
 like to wear natural flowers in their hair. The Missionaries 
 require, as a mortification of the flesh, that they shall wear no 
 decoration. The General expresses his hope, that the necessity 
 for such rigid austerity may cease, and that the girls may be 
 allowed the harmless and pleasing custom of wearing flowers in 
 their hair. The wish may also be expressed, that the Brahmin, 
 
( 316 ) 
 
 who is gentle in birth and by culture, may not, on becoming a 
 Christian, be compelled to associate with, and pressed even to 
 marry amongst, those who form, socially, the dregs of his Nation. 
 
 While, on the one hand, the State guarantees the rights of the 
 people of India to their immemorial customs, on the other hand, 
 when individuals or families have deliberately abandoned Caste, 
 or tribal designations, and accepted the new denomination of 
 " Christian," the conduct of the Courts of Justice, and the Re- 
 corders of the Census, in persisting in the use of the abandoned 
 description, in spite of a protest, is open to serious objection, 
 and would not be maintained for an instant, if proper remon- 
 strance were made to Government. The Madras Government 
 approved, that Native Christians should be recorded as such, ' 
 irrespective of their former Castes. 
 
 There is, then, a portion of this Indian custom of Caste, which 
 is protected by the Law of the land, and there is another portion, 
 which has the sanction of what the natives are pleased to call 
 " Dharrna," or Religion. The question for the prudent Christian 
 is to decide, whether the social portion, so deeply entwined with 
 the feelings of the people, cannot be dissociated from the 
 objectionable Religious portion, and be accepted, or at any rate 
 tolerated, in a Christian Church. The Legislature of British 
 India has by Statute declared, and declared justly, that no person 
 shall forfeit any rights, which he would otherwise have enjoyed, 
 by becoming a Christian. The Hindu and Mahometan popula- 
 tion have acquiesced in this Law, imposed upon them by an 
 alien Government, and which they would never have enacted 
 themselves, though, in truth, it has been practically the Common 
 Law of India for many centuries. The convert thus passes into 
 the new Community with such property, as he is entitled to by 
 inheritance, and the Law allows no disqualification or disability 
 of any kind to operate against him. In what other country, 
 except Great Britain and the United States, does such liberty 
 prevail ? Let the Christian Church, on her side, allow these 
 converts to* retain their social customs, until such shall, under 
 the influence of Education and higher Civilization, lose their' 
 present rigid and exaggerated forms, and assume the elasticity, 
 which is enjoyed in European countries. Upon a review of the 
 entire subject, I am forced to the following conclusions : 
 
 (i) Whatever the Missionary Society . in England, or the 
 Missionary Agent in India, may wish to advise, the Native 
 Church, which will, sooner or later, be independent, will do 
 what it likes in the matter. The Civil Power in India will 
 support it in the exercise of rights guaranteed to all subjects. 
 Public Opinion is, and ever will be, strongly in its favour, and 
 against the extreme section of the Missionaries. No Reformed 
 Church will ever be supported in the enforcement of' arbitrary 
 
( 317 ) 
 
 regulations, restricting the lawful liberty of citizens; nor will 
 harsh Ecclesiastical discipline be tolerated, or be possible, in 
 a country full of rival Churches. 
 
 (2) One of the greatest obstacles to Conversion is the entire 
 destitution of all social respectability, which accompanies the 
 acceptance of Christianity. Some remarkable men, like Ram 
 Chandra of Dehli, Nehemiah Goreh of Banaras, Krishna Mohun 
 Banerji of Calcutta, have been practically incorporated into 
 English Society, and have found a new status, to which their 
 great talents, their high culture, as well as their earnest Faith, 
 entitled them. But the respectable member of the middle class, 
 with small talents, and less Education, but whose Soul is as dear 
 to God and the Church, as that of his exalted brethren above 
 alluded to, loses his companions, his social ties, his credit, and 
 all that makes up the charm of life, and finds no new Community 
 with which he can associate. It is a fearful thing to contem- 
 plate the position of such a man. Great will be his reward 
 hereafter, for he has given up all for his Master's sake, and taken 
 his Saviour at His word. But the flesh is proverbially weak. 
 In India the Martyr, in the old sense, is unknown, but compara- 
 tively few will have strength to be Confessors, unless their way 
 is smoothed in all things lawful, and their entrance into the 
 Church is barred by no unnecessary stumbling-blocks laid upon 
 its threshold. 
 
 " The best way of putting down Caste is to preach a full 
 " Gospel. 
 
 " The man, who is born of the Spirit, will not walk after the 
 " flesh, but after the Spirit. He will not use his liberty for an 
 " occasion to the flesh, but by love serve his brother, and bring 
 " forth the fruits of the Spirit, Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, 
 " gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. 
 
 " God made all of one blood. There is neither Jew nor 
 " Gentile, bond nor free, male nor female. 
 
 "In the 14th chapter of Romans, Paul gives us specimens of the 
 " difficulties, which arose between Jews and Gentiles, the former 
 " naturally desiring to bind the Gentiles to their own customs, 
 " such as days of fasting, circumcision, the distinction of meats, 
 " etc. ; and in this chapter I think we may find a principle to 
 " guide. ' Him that is weak in the Faith receive ye, but not 
 " to judge his doubtful thoughts.' Paul treated the scruples 
 " of others with tenderness and indulgence. He circumcised 
 " Timotheus because of the Jews. Again, he shaved his 
 " head and purified himself with four others, to satisfy Jewish 
 " prejudice. At Antioch he censured Peter for not eating with 
 " the Gentiles." 
 
 The above remarks were made by a friend, and I gladly accept 
 the views as my own. 
 
( 318 ) 
 
 I would hot for one moment be supposed to suggest any con- 
 cession of Christian doctrine and practice, or any amalgam of 
 Hinduism and Christianity; but I would remind all, who are 
 interested in the spread of Christ's Kingdom, that the Church in 
 India may be as much built on Christ 'as our own, and yet have 
 very different external developments. It may be free from many 
 of the weaknesses, which disgrace our own, and may be exposed 
 to others, from which we have never suffered. I am deliberately 
 of opinion, from a long and intimate knowledge of the great 
 races of Northern India, that to struggling converts trying to 
 pass into the Christian fold through the mazes of an Oriental 
 Civilization, an Oriental Morality, and Oriental weakness of 
 character, it is desirable, that the boon should be conceded of 
 being allowed to marry only within certain families, if they 
 wish to be so restricted, and to eat and drink only with certain 
 people, except at the Lord's Table. It is amazing to think, that 
 Christian Ministers should place on such weak backs a burden 
 which strong Christians, such as may be found in an old 
 Christian country like this, would not allow their Ministers to 
 suggest to them from the Pulpit. The whole mistake arises 
 from our forgetting, that the people of India are men of like 
 passions to ourselves, neither worse nor better. The Mis- 
 sionary will find it as much as he can do to wean them from 
 Idolatry, keep them from Immorality, and protect them from 
 Infidelity. And the permanency of his work will depend upon 
 his remembering this. The British domination may pass away 
 like a dream in the course of another generation, and only be 
 remembered as a somewhat important incident in the long 
 history of Indian Civilization. But Institutions, built up on the 
 Great Truths of Scripture, upon the solid foundations of Natural 
 Equity, will stand unshaken amidst the ruin of Empires, and 
 wield no lessened power, when the mightiest thrones have fallen. 
 
 1881-1895. 
 
( 319 ) 
 
 H. Difficulties of Missions. 
 
 i. General, 
 z. African. 
 
 i. General. 
 
 Missionary Warnings for the Twentieth Century. 
 
 Lecture delivered in the Chapter House of St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 November 5, 1894, to the Association of Lay -Helpers ' of the 
 Diocese of London. 
 
 Let me widen the expression of the subject, on which I have 
 been invited to address you, and for the words " Missions to the 
 Heathen" substitute "Missions to the non-Christian world," as 
 neither Jew nor Mahometan can be classed as Heathen. The 
 subject is many-sided, and it is desirable to fix the thoughts on 
 certain aspects, and on this occasion omit reference to some of 
 the aspects most familiar, such as : 
 
 (1) The Duty and privilege of Evangelization, 
 (z) The Geographical distribution of the Missions of the 
 different Churches, or Associations. 
 
 (3) The reflex blessings on the Church, which sends out 
 
 the Mission. 
 
 (4) The comparative excellence, or the contrary, of the 
 
 different Methods. 
 
 (5) The necessary qualifications and training of the agents, 
 
 male and female, lay and ordained. 
 
 (6) The importance of Translations of the Bible, and a 
 
 good vernacular, Religious and secular, Missionary 
 literature. 
 
 All such aspects are discussed annually from the Pulpit, the 
 Platform, in special Periodicals, or in separate volumes, some- 
 times with great fulness, and freshness, sometimes totally 
 inadequately and erroneously. The methods of Evangelization 
 are rapidly becoming the greatest of Human Sciences, and the 
 most difficult. 
 
 I am addressing a select body of Christian workers, and I 
 present to you certain aspects of the subject, which are not 
 always thought of, or are intentionally passed over. I place in 
 the hands of each one of you a copy of the heads of my Lecture, 
 that you may, after hearing my words, and the discussion, which 
 
( 320 ) 
 
 will follow, take them home and ponder over them. Some of 
 these are not pleasant aspects. 1 am not one, who speaks 
 smooth things: perhaps there may be some among you, who 
 would rather, that some of my statements were not made in 
 public. We are in the midst of the great battle of the Faith 
 of Christ against the world : we admit, that there are errors 
 in the tactics of the Church of Rome. Are there any in our 
 own ? Do we prefer darkness to light ? We cannot go on in 
 a kind of mist. 
 
 (i) The number of non-Christians in the round world (not 
 the conventional world of a writer or speaker, who 
 has never left Great Britain) is much greater at the 
 end of the Nineteenth Century than it was at the 
 beginning. 
 
 India may be taken as a fair test, as we have a decennial 
 Census: the population has increased between 1 88 1 and 1 891 
 by thirty Millions, or three Millions per annum. The result of 
 the labour of Christian Missionaries of every kind during the 
 last three hundred years, the old Syrian Church, the Church of 
 Rome, and Protestants, does not reach three Millions, and this 
 includes all the British Soldiers, and the European population. 
 The annual dead weight of non-Christians increases by the 
 generation of children, and preservation of life ; for the great 
 Pax Britannica of nearly one century has put down, or restricted, 
 the influence of War, Famine, and Pestilence : there is no 
 Immigration into India, but annually the Pagan tribes of the 
 Hills, without any attempt at conversion, gravitate into the great 
 reservoirs of the Hindu and Mahometan systems, because they 
 are indigenous : Christianity is presented as an Exotic from 
 Europe, and in a non-Asiatic form. And yet enthusiasts talk 
 and write of the conversion of the population of the great globe 
 within a near Future ! 
 
 (2) The European Civilization, which accompanies the 
 Missionary, or precedes him, or follows him, is one 
 of the most insidious, and deadly, enemies to real, 
 as opposed to nominal, Christianity. 
 
 Can this be doubted ? The Missionary in his address to the 
 people talks about a " new life," a subjection of the body to 
 the Soul by the overpowering Grace of the Holy Spirit : the 
 Europeans present object-lessons of the contrary tendency : 
 relaxation of Morals, undue indulgence in Liquor, which latter 
 seems to accompany the Missionary even in Mahometan countries, 
 
( 321 ) 
 
 where its use had been previously forbidden : European Educa- 
 tion levels those bulwarks of Morality, which ancient Religions 
 have erected : these Religious conceptions are attacked, abused, 
 and if possible driven out, and the last state of the man becomes 
 worse than the first. 
 
 The European Civilization brings with it the import of liquor 
 of every kind, lethal weapons, diseases previously unknown : 
 the loathsome Venereal disease is called, and justly called, the 
 " English wind " by the Natives of India. Nor are the English 
 alone in this shame. I quote the following from a Newspaper : 
 " At the close of the indaba the indunas begged, that a quantity 
 " of medicine should be distributed among their people, for 
 " they declared, and it is unfortunately true, that the whole 
 " Ma-Tab61e Nation is eaten up with a foul disease in its most 
 " virulent form. On being asked how this disease had reached 
 " their country, they replied that it had been spread among 
 " them by the Gazaland Portuguese." 
 
 Canon Scott-Holland, at a Meeting on the subject of Missions 
 in Japan, thus expressed himself in 1895: " They would be 
 " Oriental without being tropical. The Bishop did not disguise 
 " the particular type he had got to deal with. He did not want 
 " to Anglicize it. We must send to them the Gospel as it had 
 " come to us English, stripping off, as far as we could, the 
 " accidents of our position, and then we must leave them to 
 " assimilate the Message we gave them, and we looked for some 
 " special power they could give to it. We had to see that the 
 " Message of Jesus Christ would bear the strain of grim, earnest 
 " work. We had to show, that Christianity was not only a 
 " Religion of consolation in sorrow, and a Religion, that could 
 " promise deliverance from sin within, but also that it was more 
 " than that, that it had the power to stand the strain of a great 
 " Civilization upon it, and that it had the power to uphold a 
 " great Nation in the hour of victory." . 
 
 (3) The contact of great Truths of Christian Dogma, and 
 Christian Morality, with the prevailing Religious 
 conceptions of a non-Christian people has often the 
 result of generating new forms of Religious con- 
 ceptions, resembling both parents, more dangerous 
 than the antiquated, and often decaying, forms. 
 
 It used to be to me a comfort to think, that anyhow, under 
 the influence of Civilization, Education, Missionary Preaching, 
 the contact of the outer world as regards Polytheism, and 
 Idolatry, at least a change was at hand. Great Pan was dying, 
 or dead. But Mahometanism, the absolute belief in one only 
 God, and the certainty of a Day of Judgment, remains, purged 
 
( 322. ) 
 
 of any dross contracted by contact with Polytheism. New 
 Religious conceptions are coming into existence, based on 
 more or less Morality, the Aria-Somaj, the Brahmo-Somaj, 
 Theosophism, Mormonism, Unitarianism, and are being propa- 
 gated by Preaching, Schools, and literature, and their principles 
 enforced by men of ability, eloquence, and blameless lives. 
 Even among the comparative barbarians of New Zealand, a new 
 Religious conception, called Hau Hau-ism, has drawn away 
 hundreds of neo-Christians among the Maori: one change of 
 belief leads to another. 
 
 (4) High Education of the European type, and the trans- 
 mission to a non- Christian people of European 
 literature of sceptical, immoral, and atheistical, type, 
 render the intellectual and spiritual position of that 
 people worse than it was before, as all Religious 
 Sanction for Morality disappears. 
 
 It might have been expected, that a preacher of the Gospel 
 would have confined himself to teaching in his elementary 
 Schools a sufficient knowledge for the status of life of his 
 converts, or adherents. We hear nothing in Apostolic, or sub- 
 Apostolic, times of Schools of learning, and Science and 
 Mathematics, started by the early Christians. Christianity suits 
 all grades of life, all degrees of culture, or non-culture, all 
 gradations of Human Knowledge, or want of Knowledge. Its 
 object is the next world, not the present. The European 
 Missionary wishes to impart something more than the good 
 tidings of Salvation through Faith. His sole commission was 
 to preach Christ, and through Him Repentance, Pardon, Holiness. 
 The carnal spirit of the Nineteenth Century provokes him to do 
 something more : he forgets that the power of reading, and the 
 supply of literature, are two-edged weapons. The long discipline 
 of ignorant Christian centuries taught the European, when the 
 time of enlightenment came, to use the weapons of culture with 
 caution. The Missionary places in the hands of the poor, and 
 lowly, babes in Christ lethal weapons, which they have not been 
 taught to use. 
 
 High Education of a European type in India supplies the 
 representatives of the non-Christian Religious conceptions with 
 the weapons to carry on the war against the Missionary. Tract- 
 Societies are started for distributing anti-Christian literature ; 
 Schools are opened to compete with Christian Schools : if the 
 Missionary forgets himself so far as to publish Tracts placing the 
 Religious character of the Hindu and Mahometan sages and 
 prophets, and the objects of their Worship, in an unfavourable 
 light, counter Tracts are published : both are painful to me to 
 
( 323 ) 
 
 read, as both are so contrary to Christian principles : aspersions 
 against the birth and life of our Blessed Lord cause deep pain, 
 but they are provoked by bitterly hostile biographies of Mahomet, 
 caricatures of Krishna, or garbled extracts from the Koran or 
 Veda. The filthy and atheistical literature of London finds a 
 sale among partially educated Asiatics: it would be well for 
 them, had they not known the English Language, or been taught 
 to read. In very truth Christianity was intended for the require- 
 ments of every part of the Human race, without reference to the 
 grade or nature of its Civilization, and should not be presented to 
 Asiatics and Africans in a European dress. 
 
 (5) The contemptuous way, in which the Missionary talks, 
 and writes, about the Religious conceptions of a 
 great people of more than a hundred Millions, for 
 twenty centuries, and attempts to Europeanize, as 
 well as convert to Christianity, Asiatic, African, 
 Oceanic, and American, races, leads to a National 
 antipathy of the foreigner, which seems likely to 
 bring forth sad consequences in the Twentieth 
 century. 
 
 This is a very sad subject indeed : it is obvious, that had it 
 been the Will of our Heavenly Father, all-powerful, all-merciful, 
 all-wise, the Ruler of the hearts of Sovereigns and Nations, all 
 the inhabitants of the round world might have been brought to 
 Christianity five thousand years ago. The comparatively few 
 that have been converted, owe their conversion to the Power of 
 the Holy Spirit, acting through the imperfect teaching of zealous, 
 though inadequately prepared, men. 
 
 This fact must be accepted, as Paul accepted it : his preaching 
 was foolishness to his hearers. He never railed against the 
 Hellenic Deities, but he tried to teach the Heathen better 
 things, and to explain to them the Divine Plan, which the 
 greatest and wisest of their race had failed to grasp. The 
 people of India, China, and the extreme Orient, are not the 
 savages, which our ancestors were in the time of Julius Caesar, 
 but an ancient, highly cultured people with a wonderful Religious 
 literature, and a knowledge of Arts and Sciences- equal to our 
 own : and yet they are derided by a Missionary with his small 
 knapsack of knowledge accumulated in a Missionary College, 
 and an entire ignorance of the great Story of Man in all ages, 
 climes, and degrees of culture, seeking after God, if haply he 
 could find Him, and rendering thanks for benefits received, 
 though in a wrong way, and to a wrong object of Worship ; 
 but as Paul says, " God overlooked their Ignorance in times 
 past, and suffered all the Nations to walk in their own ways." 
 
( 324 ) 
 
 Cardinal Vaughan, on the other hand, in 1868 quoted Xavier : 
 " Who can sit at home complacent and self-satisfied, while Hell 
 is being filled with the Souls of the Heathen?" 
 
 The speeches of the Apostle Paul at Athens and Lystra teach 
 us how the highly educated classes in a great University city in 
 one case, and the residents of a Provincial town, probably low 
 down in the scale of culture, are to be reasoned with : in Love, 
 in sympathy, a style of argument free from contempt, or egoism, 
 or national arrogance ; and yet he also was by birth a Roman 
 citizen, a man of Education, and devoted to his Mission. In 
 his Epistles there are no tirades against the Worship of the 
 Greek Divinities. He remembered a fact, which modern Mis- 
 sionaries do not care to remember, that the Religious con- 
 ceptions of the Gentile Nations were just such as their Heavenly 
 Father had permitted them to develop out of their own imagi- 
 nation. They were born, and allowed to live long lives, to attain 
 great wealth and power, and Knowledge, and to write wonderful 
 books like those of Plato and Aristotle, and erect buildings, the 
 beauty of which we still admire. Paul was conciliatory to them, 
 and told them, that he knew that what they did they did in 
 Ignorance, that God winked at their errors in times past, but 
 that now was come the time for better things. And it did come. 
 If it were the Will of the Almighty, the whole world could still 
 be converted to Christianity without Human agency : but 
 God's counsels are past finding out. In abusing the non- 
 Christians, and importing the name of Satan, we are uncon- 
 sciously scoffing at the Power and Wisdom of the Ruler of the 
 Universe. 
 
 (6) The refusal of the European, or American Missionary, 
 to give independence to self-supporting Native 
 Churches, of four or five generations of Christians, 
 and the attempt to prolong their own Spiritual 
 tutelage, seem likely to eventuate in the creation of 
 phantom-Associations, consisting of Salaried Officials 
 paid with foreign money, and a nominal indigenous 
 Christianity, which will disappear, when the cessa- 
 tion of the Missionary gold, and the withdrawal of 
 European Political Protection, leaves the White- 
 Man-Religion like a house built upon the sand. 
 
 The Egoistic Albocracy of the Anglo-Saxon on both sides of 
 the Atlantic is notorious. The Churches of Asia and Africa 
 existed long before any European, or American, Church, and 
 have survived the hard times of Mahometan oppression : not 
 very Spiritual, but still national, self-supporting, and self- 
 respecting. Can this be said of the alien establishments, paid 
 
( 325 ) 
 
 by foreign gold, with aged native clergy domineered over by young 
 strangers in a constantly changing stream from the different 
 Seminaries of the far West? A deadly injury is done to the 
 Native Churches by withholding from them that constitutional 
 independence, to which they are entitled. How were the 
 Churches in the first centuries formed ? There were no com- 
 mittees to collect funds and send out men : and yet — and yet — 
 they developed into the Churches, which now occupy Europe, 
 North America, parts of North Africa, and Western Asia. If 
 these nascent Churches cannot with the help of the Holy 
 Spirit manage their own affairs, their conversion is a mere name. 
 The longer that they are kept in bondage, the less will they 
 be worthy of the honour of being members of Christ's Body, 
 the Church. If the English were driven out of India by a 
 Mahometan, or Buddhist, or Hindu, Power, all the Christian 
 Associations, except that of Travanc6r, would disappear. 
 
 Why are they deprived of that Spiritual independence, to 
 which in the third and fourth generations of Christians they are 
 entitled ? This was the Apostolic practice : the converts were 
 taught from the first to provide for their own Pastors, Teachers, 
 Buildings, Widows, and Orphans. As it is now, a native salaried 
 class, paid by the Associations in Europe and America, has 
 come into existence; and in the hour of political peril the same 
 fate will overwhelm this century's work by Protestants, as over- 
 whelmed last century the Missions of the Church of Rome in 
 South America and West Africa, when no more Priests, and no 
 more gold, came to them from Europe. It is usual to say, that 
 the Natives of India and Africa are not fit for independence, and 
 yet British India has its form of Municipal Government, and 
 Natives of India are notorious for their ability, taking places in 
 the examinations for the Civil Service above Englishmen. In 
 West Africa there is no want of educated Native Clergy and 
 Laymen. There may be failures, as there have been in European 
 Churches, but let the experiment be tried. 
 
 (7) The foundation of so-called Churches of different 
 denominations in the same Cities and Provinces, 
 always alienated from each other, in some instances 
 violently hostile, must in the next generation produce 
 consequences most unfavourable to the common 
 Christianity. 
 
 This is a frightful difficulty : we have nothing parallel to it in 
 early Church-History : there were then parties and sectaries, each 
 callingione another "heretic," and themselves "orthodox," and 
 appealing to the Arm of the Flesh to help them; but there are 
 no facilities now for driving out, or burning, or proscribing, and 
 
( 326 ) 
 
 in each City and Province there will be different sets of so-called 
 Christians, not loving each other at all ; and half-hearted converts 
 will migrate from one Church to the other, as it suits them. 
 
 We have only to imagine what the position of our early 
 Christianity would have been in these islands, if it had been 
 presented to the Anglo-Saxon and Briton, while still devoid of 
 culture, and unlettered, in the multiform variety, in which it is 
 presented to people of India, China, and Japan : if a man wants 
 to marry his deceased wife's sister, and the Pastor of his flock 
 refuses to read the service, he goes to the Pastor of another 
 denomination, and gets it done: if a difference arises about 
 salary, or Dogma, or practice with his Pastor, the Native 
 Christian goes elsewhere. The Annual reports tell us how the 
 Protestant and Papist Missionaries do not hesitate to proselyte 
 in the rival camps : fortunately neither has power to use force, 
 and the Civil Government, Gallio-like, takes no care of such 
 things. A Ba-Suto Chief in South Africa remarked, " that he had 
 " in his dominions four kinds of Christians, the Ma-Franze, the 
 " Ma- Roma, the Ma- Wesley, and Ma-Churchee of England, and 
 " that it was like a man having four cows : sometimes he can 
 " milk them all, and when one failed, he can always reckon on 
 " a supply of milk from the others." 
 
 (8) Too much leaning on the part of the weak-kneed 
 Missionary on the Arm of the Flesh ; the Treaty- 
 Right wrung by European Powers from the Chinese 
 and Turk ; the Protectorate, forced upon an un- 
 willing British Government by political importunity 
 in Eastern Equatorial Africa ; the dispatch of United 
 States Ships of War to the Islands of Oceania; the 
 connivance of the French Republic with Roman 
 Catholic Propaganda, in all parts of the world : all 
 these features are deadly obstacles to pure Evan- 
 gelization. 
 
 No person can have studied the Mission-field everywhere with 
 a judicial mind without being aware of this. Of course, each 
 individual justifies the proceedings of his own Society, or Nation, 
 or Agent, and denounces the conduct of others. I used to 
 wonder, how the Missionaries of the Middle Ages could have 
 found it consistent with their Spiritual Duties to act as they did 
 with the help of superstitious, immoral, and cruel Monarchs; 
 but after the story of U-Ganda in 1892-3-4, I have ceased to 
 wonder. In past History no armed interference was ever so 
 earnestly solicited, and even paid for by thousands of pounds, 
 collected from friends of Missions for this specific purpose. 
 Secular power was never so ruthlessly employed in destroying 
 
( 327 ) 
 
 the opposite party. Never was political organization so un- 
 scrupulously used to force a Protectorate on an unwilling 
 Government. Nothing of this kind has ever happened before 
 in the prosecution of British Missions in any part of the world. 
 It is well known, that Europe in the Middle Ages was converted 
 by sheer force, and it took one thousand years to complete the 
 work. The Missionary will not remember, that the power of 
 sheer force is still used in Russia to prevent secession from the 
 Russian Church. Conversion is from the Lord, and a faithful 
 presentation of Gospel-Truth is all that is required of the 
 Missionary. Had it pleased the Ruler of the Universe, the 
 fourteen hundred Millions, which make up the population of 
 the round world, might long ago have been converted. But no 
 Prophet, or Apostle, during forty Centuries was ever sent to the 
 large mass of Human creatures, so that in the Nineteenth 
 century only one-third are Christians, and many of these only 
 nominally. And yet the Missionary is always trying to secure the 
 aid of the Civil Power, instead of resting on the Almighty Arm. 
 
 (9) The tendency on the part of misguided Missionaries to 
 meddle with the mundane politics of the people, 
 and their social habits, must make them unpopular, 
 and injure them in their proper Spiritual Duty, as 
 laid down in the Neyv Testament, of preaching the 
 Gospel. Take, for instance, the Anti-Opium, and 
 Anti-Opium-Trade-craze ; the crusade against the 
 Drink-Traffic, the denunciation of Child-marriages, 
 Caste, Respect paid to Ancestors, etc., etc. 
 
 This head speaks for itself. If the Chinese only had the 
 power, they would cry out in the words of Prince Kung, " Take 
 away your Opium and your Missionaries." Paul set such a 
 different example : he had to put up with the coldness of the 
 Philosophic Schools of Athens, the libidinous profligacy of 
 Corinth, the fact that a large proportion of mankind were in 
 bondage to the other part, the cruelty of the Roman Emperors, 
 and the Roman system : he never railed against dignitaries, or 
 denounced particular articles of traffic : the Kingdom, which he 
 preached, was not the Kingdom of this world. 
 
 The Missionary Periodicals, and the stump-orator of the 
 platform, and even the Preacher, who has crammed the subject 
 of Missions for his Annual Sermon, know nothing of these 
 features, and yet they exist : in the Future we shall hear more 
 of them. We may lose the Empire of India, if the Faddists 
 get the upper hand. " Fiat Fad, ruat India." 
 
 In the Annual reports of modern days we read of the 
 numbers, who annually fall away; they are generally the 
 
( 328 ) 
 
 children of the first converts : it must be very difficult for 
 a neo-Christian family to lead a consistent life in such an 
 environment, as is presented by an Indian or Chinese town: 
 they find themselves excluded from many means of live- 
 lihood : our hearts go out to them, for they have to take up 
 the Cross. In other parts of the world neo-Christians relapse 
 into immorality, and will hold their fellows in Slavery, or 
 worse still, keep up hateful practices. Taking the lowest line 
 of argument, if Slavery and Polygamy were ever tolerable, 
 the conscience of the world has outgrown them now, and 
 yet the Negro Christians of West Africa clamour for them. 
 
 The Missionary of the Nineteenth century is but carrying on 
 the great work, which commenced, when Abraham was called. 
 At sundry times and in divers manners God sent Messages to 
 His poor children, created in His own Image, and scattered 
 over the globe, in thousands of cities, and in tens of thousands 
 of villages ; and in the fulness of time sent His Son ; but there 
 is a marked difference in the present environment and the 
 existing opportunities. The Hebrew Prophets repeatedly 
 appeal to History, asking, whether God ever dealt with any 
 other Nation, as He had dealt with the Hebrew tribes of a few 
 Millions ; but neither the Prophet, nor his hearers, had any 
 knowledge whatever of the History of past times, or of con- 
 temporary Nations, and their. Geographical Knowledge was 
 confined to Amnion, Moab, Edom, Egypt, Phenicia, and 
 Assyria : so isolated were they, that Plato had never hear,d of 
 their Sacred Books, and no echoes of Homer's great song had 
 from any one of his reputed birthplaces, none of which are 
 far from the shores of Palestine, reached any Hebrew ear. 
 The Missionary band in the first century knew something 
 about the countries included in the Roman Empire', but little 
 enough about Britain, India, and China, except by vague 
 report. As to the literature of past ages, Apollos possibly 
 may have read Plato in the Schools of Alexandria, and Paul 
 quotes Greek Poets, but that is all : the Wisdom of the Heathen 
 world was nothing to them ; though, as Hebrews, they were 
 socially inferior to the Greek and Roman in Arts and Arms, 
 they were new creatures, preaching a new Gospel, propagating 
 a new idea, not by Might or Wisdom, or the Arm of the Flesh, 
 but by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The Missionary of to-day belongs to a different Epoch, and 
 environment. Every country is mapped out ; the name of every 
 city, and tribe, and Language, is known ; all ancient literature is 
 printed, translated, and revealed to astonished eyes : we come 
 face to face with Inscriptions and documents, full of Faith in 
 their national Deities, prepared by ancient men, who died long 
 before Anno Domini : the majority are on Religious subjects : 
 
( 329 ) 
 
 some of these Religious conceptions are cherished by Millions 
 to this day ; some have been trodden out by younger, and yet 
 still non-Christian, conceptions. Traces of profound Wisdom, 
 and high Morality, are not wanting. These ancient men were 
 neither fools, nor Atheists, nor barbarians, and haughty Time 
 has been just in- sparing for the encouragement and reproof 
 of the men of this generation, the wonderful outcome of the. 
 brains, and consciences, and speculative heart-searchings, of 
 past Epochs, and different races, as they felt after God. 
 
 Has the young Missionary even heard of the Sacred Books of 
 the ancient Religious conceptions in Asia and North Africa, tran- 
 scending the Hebrew Scriptures in secular literary beauty (which 
 matters not), and in antiquity, and holding influence over ten 
 times the number of God's creatures, and some of which have 
 been permitted by the Almighty to retain their power (whether 
 for good or for evil) to this day ? 
 
 We are saved by Faith ; we wish to save a dying world 
 through Faith : what is Faith ? " Now Faith is the substance 
 of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen " (Hebrews, 
 xi, i) ; and Paul writes to the Ephesians (ii, 8), "By Grace 
 are ye saved through Faith, and that not of yourselves : it is the 
 Gift of God." No philosophic argument, no historic analogy, no 
 appeal to ancient Sacred Books, will convince even the Jew, 
 much less the Hindu, and Confucianist, and Mahometan : Faith 
 comes from the direct Gift of God by revelation to the Soul of 
 the neo-Christian, or by early teaching to the children of 
 Christian parents : one great, perhaps the greatest, English 
 Philosopher of modern times tells us in his Memoirs, how he 
 tried to have Faith, but his intellect was so hardened by seeking 
 for material proof of all his theories, that he could not: the same 
 story is told of a sincere Christian in Egypt in the time of 
 the Arian controversy, that he could not grasp the belief, that 
 Christ was God, which is so easy to the nominal Christian, who 
 has never thought it out, but accepted the blessed Truth even as 
 a little child. The son of a Mahometan came to me in India to 
 describe the death of his father, one of my honoured friends : 
 " He took the Koran into his hands, covered his head with a 
 sheet, and died in full ' iman,' " the Arabic term for Faith, in 
 one mightier than the believer. This word " iman " is used for 
 Faith in the Old Testament : Deut, xxxii, zo ; Habakkuk, ii, 4. 
 Among the dying words of Socrates were these : 
 
 " KaXov to u.6\ov, fier/aXrj y eXwis. 
 
 This last word is rendered as Faith in Hebrews, x, 23. In con- 
 versation with a Brahmin Priest, he would at once put forward 
 his Faith, "bis was" or "bhakti," in Vishnu both for this world 
 
( 330 ) 
 
 and the next. The Buddhist, and Confucianist, and Parsi, would 
 fall back on the sayings of their great Sages, as the Hebrews 
 did on Moses : " Gautama, and Kong-Fu-Tsee, and Zoroaster, 
 said so." I mention this not to cast any doubt on the Faith, 
 which we hold in Jesus, but on the extreme difficulty, which 
 meets the Missionary, ignorant of everything but his own 
 Shibboleth. 
 
 Is the ordinary Missionary agent, male or female, lay or 
 ordained, fit for the contest in intellect, acquired Knowledge, and 
 sympathy ? He is brought up in the narrow environment of a 
 sect, rather than of a national Religion, where any attempt to 
 question a received interpretation of Scripture, or a practice of 
 the particular Church-party, or a question as to the funda- 
 mental relation of man to God, would be coughed down. 
 Such an intellect suddenly, at the age of twenty-four, brought 
 face to face, with a totally different environment, is helpless : 
 " Ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius, sed ex quovis juveni non fit 
 nuntius Dei." Has he ever given a passing thought to the 
 dealings of the Creator with His poor creatures scattered over 
 the world since the day of Creation ? The Spirit of God 
 moved on the face of the waters : the Divine Wisdom, that 
 is to say, the Son, was with His Father, when He laid out 
 the world, and created man in His own Image. Has the 
 young Missionary thought out the problem of the Millions, 
 who have passed to their account during the 4000 years of Arch- 
 bishop Usher, the 6000 of Egyptian Scholars, and the 8000 of 
 other Scholars, -which intervened betwixt the day of Creation, and 
 the Fulness of Time, when Christ came ? What a small figure 
 do the Nineteen Centuries since Anno Domini appear in com- 
 parison, and one-third only of the Human race brought into 
 the fold ! 
 
 We hear a hoarse voice from a platform in a crowded hall of 
 " More men ! more men ! " But what kind of men ? Is any of 
 the applicants, like Paul, ready to be all things to all men, 
 forgetting his own people and country, leading a life even to the 
 grave of poverty, celibacy, and self-Sacrifice ; like Paul, conde- 
 scending to allude to Pagan conceptions, as at Athens and , 
 Lystra ; gently pardoning gross moral sins, if repented of, as at 
 Corinth ; though a Roman Citizen, not domineering over the 
 races, to whom he comes as God's Ambassador, not speaking 
 evil of dignitaries, not contending against the lawful Governors, 
 not denouncing the' Worship of the Temple of Artemis at 
 Ephesus, however degraded, or the Worship of the Temple of 
 Athene' at Athens, however magnificent, or particular articles of 
 Commerce, or particular social habits of a great Nation, which 
 had the sanction of long usage. 
 
 Let us imagine the young Missionary fresh from the 
 
( 331 ) 
 
 University, or the Training Colleges, of Canterbury or Islington, 
 or an older Missionary, who has been occupied ten years in a 
 Mission-station teaching the rudiments in a School (those, who 
 stay on to old age, are so few, that they are a negligable 
 quantity), closeted with such a man as Claude Montefiore among 
 the Hebrews, Sayid Ahmed Ali among the Mahometans, 
 Dayananda of the Aria-Somaj, Keshab Chandra of the Brahmo- 
 Somaj, a Parsi Dastur, or a learned Pandit of the Vedanta, or 
 the Sankya, School of the orthodox Hindu, to discuss, in a 
 friendly manner, as men educated in English Colleges, the 
 great fundamental questions of the world, which underlie all 
 Religious conceptions : " Self, the World, God : the mysteries 
 of life and death, pain and poverty, impurity and Holiness (what 
 constitute them ?), and the great Hereafter." 
 
 Uov ryevofiai ; tivos el'fii ; rivo9 ^dpiv rj\9ov, awrfkOov ; 
 
 Such a discussion betwixt such men would be outside the con- 
 ventional quotation of Scripture-Texts, would bear no reference 
 to the practice of the Mediaeval Church of Europe, and the small 
 stock of theological Knowledge in the Missionary's knapsack : 
 each disputant would have in his hand the authorized Translation 
 of his own ancient Religious books of bygone years, well 
 thumbed, read, and prayed over, but none of them would be 
 accepted by both parties, except the Old Testament by the Jew 
 and Christian. The real question on common ground would be 
 the great secret of the relation of the Soul of man to God, 
 the secret of a man's conscience of what is really good and 
 positively evil ; the influence of the Spirit of God on that 
 conscience, and what is God's plan of Salvation for man ? 
 The Providence of God is not limited to the care of Christian 
 Churches in these latter days, any more than it was to the care 
 of the rebellious Hebrew before Anno Domini: "He hateth 
 nothing that He hath made." 
 
 We may be thankful for the beautiful thoughts contained in 
 verses 24, 25, 26, cap. xi, of the Wisdom of Solomon: 
 
 " For Thou lovest all things that are, and abhorreth nothing 
 " which Thou hast made, for never wouldest Thou have made 
 " anything, if Thou hatest it. 
 
 " And how could anything have existed, if it had not been 
 " Thy Will, or been preserved, if not called by Thee ? 
 
 " But Thou sparest all, for they are Thine, O Lord, Thou lover 
 " of Souls." 
 
 It may be disheartening to listen to my words ; but I am not 
 addressing an ordinary Missionary Meeting, in the emotional 
 way so common, nor with the object of making a collection. 
 I am addressing earnest workers, whose desire is to understand 
 
( 332 ) 
 
 this great problem, the greatest of the Epoch : how can we 
 Evangelize the non-Christian world ? It will not be done by- 
 gush, or uncontrolled enthusiasm, by the sounding brass of 
 Exeter Hall monster-gatherings, or the tinkling cymbal of the 
 Missionary Periodical. Each one of the heads stated in the 
 paper, which you carry away, are worth reflecting upon : they 
 indicate the point, at which I have arrived after a study of the 
 subject for fifty years. I wish you to carry away something of 
 a definite character: perhaps some of the points may never 
 have occurred to you. 
 
 The paid Officials of the Missionary Associations, who are 
 .exceedingly jealous of allowing the local Missionary committee 
 any power of self-government, have as much business on their 
 hands as they can get through, such as giving Missionaries 
 leave to come home, or get married, or arranging for the Educa- 
 tion of the children of Missionaries, and the most trivial details, 
 to have time to take a large view of the prospects of the Future: 
 there is such a mass of correspondence and accounts to be got 
 through, and so much useless talking, that there is no leisure to 
 look round, backwards, or ahead. The Annual reports and 
 Periodicals are the work of one or two hands, who for a long 
 period of years keep a tight hold on the Publishing Department. 
 Everything unpleasant is hushed up : euphemism is the rule : 
 " Bona verba quaeso": "Speak no scandal of Queen Elizabeth!'' 
 a great deal of twaddle is written. The Members of the com- 
 mittee set out the Agenda-Paper, or at least a small number 
 of Members do so: if any Member is "troublesome" he, 
 is got rid of at the next annual Election. The Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, at the Mission Conference in 1894 (page 15 of the 
 Report), " It is not possible for Societies to deal with Geniuses : 
 either the Society must repress the Genius, or the Genius must 
 make the Society exceedingly uncomfortable." The majority 
 of commonplace men, of the dummy kind, led by the paid 
 Secretaries, stamp out all independence of thought, or prevision 
 of coming events, all looking out on the horizon, watching the 
 presages of human possibilities, preparing for changes, which 
 must come in the second and third generation of neo-Christians, 
 all sympathy with local and national aspirations. We know too 
 well what this is in the Colonial Office, or Foreign Office, or the 
 secret council of an autocrat Sovereign, such as the Emperor of 
 Russia, and the present Sultan of Turkey. A Missionary com- 
 mittee is a miniature-copy of such organizations. 
 
 But do not the Missionaries, by their letters, or their oral 
 counsels, correct this tendency to red-tape, and indifference to 
 the Future ? Certainlynot. A Missionary is entirely ignorant 
 of anything outside of, or different from, his one particular field : 
 he is bound by the ties of Language to one environment the 
 
( 333 ) 
 
 whole time of his service. And in that field he is influenced by 
 his contact with the Missionaries of other Associations : they 
 must all act much in the same way : stand up for each other 
 if friendly ; oppose and abuse each other, if, as in the case of 
 the Church of Rome, there is, down to the very root, hostility. 
 
 The more that I reflect on the future, the more difficult the 
 problem threatens to become : " The Rev. Professor Oswald 
 " Dykes remarked, that in the Future Missionary Societies would 
 " have to be locked in a life and death struggle with the four 
 " great Religions associated with Oriental Civilization, Confu- 
 " cianism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Islam : the last would 
 " be the worst enemy to the Christian Church, he feared." 
 But his view is limited ; for the new brood of Religious con- 
 ceptions, Mormonism, Theosophism, Brahmoism, Arianism, 
 Unitarianism, are infinitely more deadly, being creatures of 
 the Nineteenth century, free from Idolatry, and old-world 
 weaknesses, with a high standard of Morality. 
 
 Some writers think, that diffusion of the Gospel, so that every 
 person under Heaven may have the chance of being saved, is the 
 object of Missions, and the question of the hour : never mind, 
 whether the hearer refuses the Message or accepts it, and then 
 relapses ; never mind, whether no permanent Association is 
 formed to carry on the Message to future generations : the crying 
 object of this generation is to try to save the present generation of 
 unsaved. Thus, the whole Christian world is to abandon its 
 home-duties, and, whether suited or not, to sally out on a 
 Crusade. 
 
 To me all this seems high-flown nonsense: it is not everyone, 
 who is fit to be a Missionary. God is not in a hurry, whatever 
 man may be : Nineteen Centuries have passed away, and yet 
 real Christianity is but a small company: much misdirected 
 zeal has been exhibited, acts of cruel ferocity committed, and 
 yet the world is revealed to us as a non-Christian world. 
 
 Is there any cause for despondency as to the result, or relaxa- 
 tion as to' effort ? Certainly not. If it were a Human affair, 
 this might be the case, but this enterprize is from God. One of 
 the great Indian sages, in one of the Immortal Poems of his race, 
 remarks : 
 
 " Set your heart on the Work itself, not on the result." 
 
 Man gives the Labour: the Lord in His own time gives the 
 increase. 
 
 The errors in the Missionary system at the end of the 
 Nineteenth century are " Egoism, and committee-ism," the 
 exaggeration of the Platform, the Euphemism of the Missionary 
 Publications. 
 
( 334 ) 
 
 Is the Message conveyed to the non-Christian world the 
 Message of the Master as given in Galilee ? I quote the words 
 of the Lagos Times, July, 1 894 : 
 
 " The Rev. A. F. F. Eastman, in a paper read before 
 "the Parliament of Religions, used these striking words: 
 " ' Organized or European Christianity is not the imitation of 
 " the life and teachings of Christ among His followers. 
 " Christianity, as it has come to us, is the teaching of Jesus, 
 " plus Judaism, plus the Roman spirit of Law and Justice and 
 " German philosophy, plus the ideals of mediaeval art, plus the 
 " nature of the Germanic races, plus the scientific spirit of the 
 " modern age.' " 
 
 In Livingstone's Article on Missionary Sacrifice occur the 
 following words: "We ought to try and see a larger arc of 
 " the great Providential Circle, and not only the poor segment, 
 " which concerns ourselves and our generation. We should be 
 " more willing to trust God's unerring Wisdom." 
 
 Another writer says : " People go about the world with their 
 " own particular two-foot rulers. The later Greeks and Romans 
 " no doubt thought the Arabs of their time savages of the 
 " meanest capacity, yet somehow or other they broke up the 
 " Roman Empire." 
 
 Is not this the way, in which our emissaries go on blundering 
 in their benevolent labours, in their hearts despising the capacity 
 of the people, whom they are striving to convert ; their desire 
 being to drill and train their native converts after the fashion 
 of the middle classes of Europe, from which they themselves 
 came forth ; excellent people for their own environment, their 
 own Epoch, and their own antecedents; but without the creative 
 and adaptive power of Paul, who became all things to all men, 
 and belonged to no one Epoch and environment. 
 
 The word "Conversion" flows easily from the pen: what is 
 it ? The making of a new creature, the crucifying of the old 
 man ; not the putting on of a cloak of the Western fashion over 
 the old Oriental garment, but a deliberate tearing up, and 
 burning, of the old materials ; a realizing of what God is, 
 and what Sin is, and what is the meaning of a Love to Man- 
 kind, because the Son of Man Loved us and died for us. 
 
 I quote the words of Handley Mpule : " I ask no questions 
 " about your Soul's past history in its details. I do not wait to 
 " inquire, whether your discoveries of Jesus Christ in the Past 
 " have been slow or swift, gradual or convulsive, a rising of the 
 " day beyond the hills, or a great sudden light in the inner 
 " Heaven above the brightness of all other suns. God works 
 " both ways. Let not the man suddenly converted judge him, 
 " who can name no day or year. Let not the man, on whom 
 " Christ has slowly dawned deny, because he hath not felt it, the 
 
( 335 ) 
 
 " profound realities of a sudden and conscious transition into 
 " life. But the main question, after all, is to-day, and the 
 " present scene, and our sight now of the indwelling Lord. 
 " And in view of this, how simple, how cheering, are the 
 "promises of Grace! Christian minister, do you desire now, 
 " at present, henceforth, in entire simplicity, with lips and also 
 " with life, to ' preach Him ' as one who sees Him ? He waits, 
 " He advances, to meet your need. He is already at your door, 
 " with the knock, and with the beloved voice. And your part is 
 '' with the hand of however trembling a Faith, to open the door, 
 " and the sweet abiding revelation shall be yours. ' If any man ' 
 " (and remember those words were spoken to a Christian Pastor 
 " first) ' hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, 
 " and will sup with him, and he with Me.' Amen." 
 
 Men become Christians from finding in the life and words, 
 and death of Jesus Christ, something that touches them, some- 
 thing, that opens new revelations to their previously dormant 
 hearts, something that makes them for the first time understand 
 the wondrous feeling which men call Divine Love, the feeling 
 that God loves us and cares for us ; and the least thing that we 
 can do in return is to love Him. It is like the magic of a new 
 melody, the first hearing of a wondrous poem, the contempla- 
 tion of a noble act of self-sacrifice, which makes the heart of the 
 looker-on beat high. Can it be that we poor creatures are dear 
 and precious to God ? Can it be that we, who think so well of 
 ourselves, are miserable sinners, and require this action of self- 
 Sacrifice ? Old things are cast away : we see things in a new 
 light : Repentance, Faith, Pardon, Peace, and Holiness, not 
 after the manner of the Jew and the Brahmin, in order to be 
 saved, but because we are saved. Does the new convert look 
 out on the old familiar world with a changed power of vision, or 
 has he merely changed his place of Worship, his Census- 
 denomination, the modicum of Dogma, which his brain is able 
 to take in, and his Shibboleth ? Even in a congregation of new 
 converts, to quote the words of Archdeacon Wilson, " We have 
 " made our Religion to consist far too much in meeting for 
 " Worship and listening to hymns and prayers and sermons ; we 
 " have forgotten that these are not the end, but the means; the end 
 " is the coming upon earth of the Kingdom of God. Many of 
 " our Services are Spiritual luxuries ; to attend them so regularly 
 " is very like diligently stoking a fire so arranged as to give no 
 " heat and drive no engine. Year after year passes and who is 
 " the better for them ? It is not marching forward, it is the 
 " operation our Volunteers know as 'marking time,' regularly 
 " lifting up our feet and regularly putting them down in the same 
 " place. Where in the Gospels and Epistles do we read of such 
 " a conception of Religion ? We find it difficult to keep before 
 
( 336 ) 
 
 " us the ideal of mutual service, that friendship for the brethren 
 " which is distinctively the Christian virtue." 
 And the work of the Missionary is twofold : 
 
 (i) To convert the individual Soul, which comes under his 
 personal influence, of a man, who will die. 
 
 (2) To lay the foundations of a new Christian Church, 
 which, if properly built up, will last for ever. 
 
 1894, l8 95- 
 
 2. Difficulties of Missions in Africa. 
 
 Address delivered at Bury St. Edmunds, November, 1894, at the 
 Diocesan Missionary Conference of the S.P. G. 
 
 Let me define the Geographical limits. Africa is divided by 
 the necessity of space, and the essential, difference of circum- 
 stances, into four Regions : 
 
 Northern, down to the Tropic of Cancer, which intersects the 
 first Cataract of the Nile. 
 
 Southern, below the Tropic of Capricorn, which intersects the 
 basin of the Zambezi. 
 
 Eastern, ) divided from each other by an imaginary line 
 
 Western, ) bisecting Central Africa. 
 
 We may omit ■ the Northern section from this discussion. 
 There are Missions of the London Jews Society in Egypt, 
 Tunis, Algeria, Morocco. There is a Church of England School 
 in Cairo for Kopts, and Mahometans, and a Mission of the 
 C.M.S. in Egypt : with this exception the Church of England 
 is conspicuously absent : the Mahometan Religion is dominant. 
 The Missions of the Church of Rome are strong. 
 
 In the other three sections excellent work is being done by 
 the S.P.G., C.M.S., Universities Mission to East Equatorial 
 Africa, the Rio Pongas Mission, and the different Diocesan 
 Missions of South Africa, such as Missions to Zulu-land, Ma- 
 Shonaland, etc., etc. 
 
 The work of a Missionary in Africa is distinctly different 
 from that of a Missionary in Asia. In Africa the population is 
 sparse compared to the enormous area ; the people are barbarian, 
 illiterate ; in some localities given to savage and inhuman 
 customs, such as Human Sacrifice, Cannibalism, Witchcraft, 
 
( 337 ) 
 
 Slaughter of Twin-children. With the exception of the Arabic 
 literature, which has found its way in some Regions, there are 
 no Books, nor even an Alphabet ; but the Languages spoken 
 are very numerous, very powerful, and not in the least likely to 
 give way to European Languages. Mahometanism has extended 
 in some directions, bringing with it a certain amount of culture, 
 and Knowledge, and by its total abstinence from intoxicating 
 liquors, contrasts favourably with Christianity, which is accom- 
 panied by English, German, and American, intoxicants. Slavery 
 and the Slave-trade, though circumscribed, and no longer 
 crossing the Ocean, have a wide influence. The population, 
 male and female, are nearly entirely nude, except on the Coast, 
 where European culture has established a footing. 
 
 It is obvious, that a very different kind of Missionary is 
 required for such a field. In Asia we find ancient highly polished 
 races with Book-Religions, a magnificent literature, a vast 
 population dwelling in hundreds of great cities, and thousands 
 of villages, well-clothed, industrious, with a Civilization older 
 than our own : the attitude assumed by a Missionary, who knows 
 his work, must be very different, and his training ought to be 
 more profound. 
 
 In Africa the difficulties are fivefold : 
 
 (i) The climate, except in certain portions of South Africa, 
 (z) The difficulty of locomotion and living, with the above 
 exception. 
 
 (3) The low state of culture of the common people. 
 
 (4) The necessity of elementary teaching, introducing the 
 
 very idea of a book, and an Alphabet. 
 
 (5) The curse of Slavery, Polygamy in its grossest forms, 
 
 ill-treatment of the female sex, contempt of Human 
 life. 
 
 (1) The climate. We have only to consider the death-list, 
 and the record of those compelled by health to abandon the 
 field not suited for the constitution of Europeans : the absence 
 of needful appliances and aids in case of sickness. _ This 
 appears to be an obstacle, which as regards the white Missionary 
 can never be got over, and points to the necessity of training 
 indigenous Agents to work among their own countrymen, but 
 they also must be of the same Region. It is not an easy 
 problem, for difficult as it is to secure competent white Agents, 
 it will be still more so to train and maintain in morality and 
 purity a Native staff. 
 
 (2) The difficulty in locomotion and living. No doubt Paul 
 and his companions, and the early Briton and Saxon Missionaries 
 
( 338 ) 
 
 sent by our island to the Continent, and the Missionaries 
 sent from Rome to Canterbury, had a hard time of it both as 
 regards travelling, houses, food, and raiment. We think lightly 
 of these things in Europe now, but we can realize them when 
 we deal with Africa. We know, that they wrote letters in those 
 far-off days, as imperishable documents have, by God's Grace, 
 survived to our edification. There were no regular posts : 
 letters confided to a male or female friend to convey to the 
 correspondent must in many cases have perished. From 
 U-G&nda it takes three months to get a letter : if the runner, to 
 whom the bags are entrusted, is cut down, all are lost. Still, 
 European Agents require a certain supply of books, clothes, 
 medicines, and tinned provisions, and unfortunately the Nine- 
 teenth century has insensibly created luxurious necessities of 
 life, which were not thought of in the early centuries, and the 
 absence of which imperils health and life. I do not at all see 
 my way out of these difficulties for many a long year. 
 
 (3) The low state of the common people. An excellent 
 Missionary puts this very blankly : " It takes some time to be 
 able to preach to an assembly of men and women standing 
 round you all entirely naked." This might be cured by 
 distributing what are called " Kisibais," calico-shirts ; but the 
 long mental slumber, varied by suffering and oppression, has 
 to be reckoned with : with regard to those advanced in life the 
 case is desperate ; to the adult it is doubtful : we have to thank 
 God for the children, the young opening intellect, fresh from 
 the Maker's hand, the tender young hearts, round which the 
 hard rind of the struggle for daily existence,- has not yet been 
 formed, are ready for the new idea : the hope of the Missionary 
 lies in the School for the children, and the Hospital and dis- 
 pensary for the elder ones. 
 
 (4) But the School should be elementary only: reading, a 
 little writing, and a small amount of arithmetic : printing-presses 
 are brought from home, the Roman Alphabet is made use of 
 with variations : the words are caught alive, as it were, from the 
 lips of the speakers : they cannot understand what the Missionary 
 is about, making unintelligible scratches with a stick upon a 
 white substance called ' ' paper." Here there is no silent growth of 
 centuries, no process of experiments in ideographs, or syllabaries, 
 on clay, on rocks, on wood, on papyrus, on skins ; but per 
 saltum the Native African leaps from entire Ignorance of the idea 
 of conveying sounds by symbols into alphabetic writing by the 
 aid of the goose-quill, and pulp pressed into paper. The 
 Natives themselves are converted into printers, and strike off 
 sheets to be pored over in the School, and, when the dignity of 
 
( 339 ) 
 
 the art is developed, to be read as Translations of the Bible in 
 the Chapel. The desire of possessing a copy, as their very own, 
 comes next, and the proud delight of reading aloud for the 
 benefit of others. Time, tranquillity, health, are elements to be 
 reckoned with in this operation, the teaching young ideas how 
 to shoot, the breaking of the silence of centuries, the revelation 
 of the Divine elements in the most ignorant and uncultured. It 
 is obvious, that great difficulties surround the Missionary in 
 Africa, of which the Missionary in India, or China, knows 
 nothing. 
 
 (5) Another difficulty is the debasing effects of Slavery, and 
 the curse of Slave-hunting and the Slave-trade. The very 
 presence of a Missionary in their midst is a surprise to the 
 Native, for he does not murder, or steal, or beat, though he seems 
 to have the power to do so. We may hope, that gradually the 
 Slave-trade will be put down by the force of arms, and Slavery 
 allowed to die out ; but in comparing the position of the Mission- 
 ary in Africa with his brother in Asia, this is a fearful additional 
 weight in Africa. With regard to Polygamy, it prevails in Asia 
 and Africa, but in a realm of Law that custom is tolerable, 
 though deplorable ; in Africa it becomes a hideous blot. The 
 Polygamist, whose heart is opened to the Gospel, is in a dilemma : 
 he cannot put away his lawful wives (as distinguished from 
 slaves and concubines), as that would drive poor women, with 
 whom they had consorted faithfully, into adultery ; he cannot be 
 baptized, if living with a plurality of women, the mothers of his 
 legitimate children. The degradation of the female sex into 
 beasts of burden, or objects of lust, is a frightful feature, which 
 has to be grappled with. Time is an element here also. 
 
 The slow progress of centuries, and the Grace of God working 
 through Human agencies, here a little, there a little, have 
 converted the Kelts and Teutons of Europe from what they 
 were in the Epoch of the great Anno Domini to what they are 
 now. We must not be foolishly sanguine, and expect results 
 corresponding to our desires in one generation or one century : 
 all the old and middle-aged must pass away, and new genera- 
 tions be born. At the end of the first century of serious 
 Evangelization we have made but little progress. Nor need we 
 despair of the Grace of God : the vivifying Power of an Epoch of 
 Progress, and Enlightenment, and Time, are on our side. 
 
 We have the authority of Bishop Smythies to say, that there 
 is no Idolatry in the strict meaning of that often misused word 
 within the Region of East Equatorial Africa : there is plenty of 
 it in India, but none in Africa. The Religious conceptions of 
 the people are in the lowest possible stage, which is called by 
 those, who study the Science of Religion, " Animism," or Spirit- 
 
{ 340 ) 
 
 Worship : a supernatural Power of some kind is postulated, in 
 Regions, where the elements have great power, and men have 
 not been taught by experience to meet their violence, Fear 
 generates a desire to appease a Deity, who has been in some 
 way offended : the stages are passed through of Totemism, 
 Fetichism, Therio-anthropism, Anthropomorphism, which last, 
 when accompanied by images, is known as Idolatry. 
 
 Contact with the higher Civilization of Europe is hot an 
 unmixed blessing, nor does it conduce to Evangelization. On 
 the West Coast of Africa the Liquor-Import-Trade is a hideous 
 evil: the import of Gunpowder and lethal weapons both into 
 the East and West Regions, between the tropics, is a positive 
 misfortune. Last century we stole Africans from Africa : now 
 we are deliberately stealing Africa from the African. The lust 
 for gold, diamonds, the desire to open new fields for Commerce 
 and Colonies, seem to have closed the ears of England against 
 Justice and Mercy. Ma-Tabe'le-land was last year appropriated 
 by freebooters. This adds to the difficulties of Missionaries. 
 The people of Africa paint the Devil in white. The Gospel can 
 scarcely be preached in sight of object-lessons so contrary to 
 the Gospel. Another difficulty to true Evangelization is presented 
 by Missionaries leaning on the Arm of the Flesh, as in U-Ganda, 
 and taking part in attacks on Missions of another form of 
 Christianity. These two last features are startling, and there 
 can be no blessing on the work of Gospel-preaching in such 
 an environment. 
 
 Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods must take the place of the old- 
 fashioned comfortable development of the Missionary and his 
 wife, and half-a-dozen children. In India this desire for early 
 marriage on the part of the Missionary is to be deplored, as the 
 people of India have for centuries connected their notion of 
 a man of God, a Prophet, with self-Sacrifice, asceticism, and a 
 withdrawal from the ordinary comforts of social life. In Africa 
 the climate is the obstacle, and the dangers of an unsettled 
 political environment in the interior. Within a radius of one 
 hundred miles from the coast the residence of women may be 
 possible, but they should be unmarried sisters of the age of 
 thirty. I have seen wife after wife in extreme youth pass from 
 the committee - room to Equatorial Africa to die under the 
 perils of married life, aggravated by the climate, and absence 
 of decent comforts. It seems like insanity to suggest the idea 
 of their advancing into the interior of Africa; and yet it is 
 being done. The Church of Rome prudently holds back. 
 
 Another feature of African Missions is, that it is absolutely 
 necessary, that the European Agent return for a short season 
 to Europe in the fourth year at the very outside. In Asia ten 
 years or more can safely be the term entitling to furlough. 
 
( 341 ) 
 
 The average of deaths and broken-down constitutions in Africa 
 is much greater. 
 
 On the West Coast is one Mission of special interest, the 
 Rio-Pongas Mission : it has a separate committee, but it is under 
 the wing of the S.P.G., and meets in Delahay Street : the Mis- 
 sionaries are Negroes from the West India islands/who desire 
 to convey the blessing of the Gospel to their Native land : 
 unfortunately the Region has passed into the hands of the 
 French Colonists, and France allows no other European 
 Language to be used save French. This is a serious obstacle. 
 
 A few remarks are required with regard to the Region south 
 of the Tropic of Capricorn. Here the S.P.G. has done a great 
 work through the agency of the different Dioceses, into which 
 a great portion of this Region is distributed. The country is 
 elevated, and is out of the Tropics, and therefore suitable for 
 the residence of Europeans for pastoral, agricultural, or mining 
 purposes. As a fact there are large numbers of English, Dutch, 
 German, and French, settlers. This gradually leads to the 
 killing down, or the reducing to serfdom, of the indigenous 
 races, the Bantu tribes, Zulu, Chuana, Xosa alias Kafir, H6rero, 
 and others, as well as the Hottentot and Bushmen. There 
 are many other Missions in this Region sent from the United 
 States, the Continent of Europe, and the Nonconformist Asso- 
 ciations of Great Britain. In course of time it is possible, that 
 it may become a Christian country, occupied by European 
 immigrants, and half-bloods. The Native Churches and Con- 
 gregations, the result of the labour of this and the next 
 century, will probably disappear, and the unhappy survivors of 
 the indigenous population be reduced to hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water. This a sad end to a Christian Mission of the 
 Nineteenth century, but it is difficult to arrest the course of 
 events. In countries like India, China, or Japan, the indigenous 
 population will survive for ever. On the West Coast of 
 Equatorial Africa, and the East Coast, the Tropical climate is 
 the safeguard. For the Southern Region there is no hope. 
 There was a time, when large portions of the United States 
 were occupied by the Red Indians down to last century : where 
 are they now ? Such will, in all probability, be the fate of 
 South Africa. 
 
 i8g4, 1895. 
 
( 342 ) 
 
 I. The Religions of the Ancient World. 
 
 Missionary Warnings for the Twentieth Century. 
 
 Prefatory Remarks on the Religious conceptions of the 
 Human race, Past and Present. 
 
 The subject should be ' treated with the greatest reverence 
 and restraint. We are, as it were, in the presence of God, when 
 we are considering the sundry times and manners, in which His 
 poor creatures have felt for Him. It must be treated dis- 
 passionately also. 
 
 The followers of each of the Book-Religions would rightly, 
 or wrongly, maintain that their system was the best, the only 
 form of belief, revealed by God, hallowed by Tradition, fortified 
 by Morality, supported by Miracles, Fulfilment of Prophecy, 
 and Theophanies. Mankind has got beyond that stage of stupid 
 Conservatism, at least all who think have done so : a great 
 majority of the Human race do not think, and are so foolish, 
 that Religion is the great engine of, deception practised by 
 Priesthoods^ and other persons, who make their livelihood out 
 of the folly of their fellows. Those, who are thoughtful, study, 
 and think out, this momentous subject. 
 
 I freely admit, that the Gospel preached in Galilee at the time 
 of Anno Domini was, and is, the completest expression of what 
 is good for Mankind, morally and spiritually. I try to divest 
 myself of hereditary prejudices, and weigh the rival systems, past 
 or present ; but I can find nothing so good, so universal, so 
 individual, so sufficient for this world and, as far as our limited 
 Knowledge enables us to judge, for the next, if we can but free 
 it from the Paganism and Judaism, which more or less envelop, 
 both the Greek, Roman, and Protestant developments, accretions, 
 disfigurements, of the Gospel preached in Galilee. My readers 
 can therefore read on without fear of meeting any remarks 
 contrary to the Faith, which is held in Jesus. 
 
 I know the common form of abuse passed by Missionaries on 
 the Brahmanical and Mahometan systems : their only resemblance 
 is their antagonism to Christianity; in everything else they 
 differ from each other absolutely, entirely, irreconcilably : 
 
( 313 ) 
 
 A. The Brahmanical system ( i ) is older than Moses. 
 
 (2) is Polytheistic. 
 
 (3) is non-propagandist and quiescent. 
 
 (4) is the peculiar heritage of one 
 
 Nation. 
 
 ( 5 ) is a mere Ritual, all Spiritual power 
 being gone. 
 
 (6) is unconscious of the existence of 
 any Semitic Religious concep- 
 tion. 
 
 B. The Mahometan system ( 1 ) is subsequent to the conversion 
 
 of England by Augustine. 
 
 (2) is Monotheistic in the most ex- 
 
 treme form. 
 
 (3) is propagandist, and as intolerant 
 
 as Christianity. 
 
 (4) absorbs the whole of the concep- 
 
 tions of the Jew and Christian. 
 
 (5) is extremely Spiritual in its main 
 
 dogma, whatever it may be in 
 practice. 
 
 In a few words the former is a dead trunk, the latter a living 
 Power, susceptible of Reform, and if reformed, may still rule 
 the world ; unless its elder Sister, Christianity, reforms itself, 
 gets rid of its Paganism, and national idiosyncrasies, and makes 
 itself in reality, as in name, a World-Religion, neither European 
 nor Indian, neither American nor Chinese, neither African nor 
 middle-class British, without nationality, careless of linguistic 
 variations, suitable to every form of Human culture, adaptable 
 to every requirement of God's creatures, to be their guide in 
 life, and hope in death. 
 
 Heads of Lecture. 
 
 I. The ancient Religious conceptions of the world before 
 Anno Domini should not be the object of ridicule, or 
 abuse, by Christian people, and Missionaries. 
 
 II. A full and impartial study of them, and an appreciation of 
 the good in them, is quite compatible with a full, and 
 entire, belief in the Christian Dispensation, and in fact 
 fortifies that belief by justifying the ways of God to man. 
 
 III. The subject is divided into two portions: 
 
 (1) Animism, or Nature-Worship. 
 
 (2) Ethical conceptions, or Book-Religions. 
 
( 344 ) 
 
 IV. As far as regards our present subject, Animism belongs to 
 a remote Past, and in the present Epoch is only found 
 in the tribes standing on the lowest round of Human 
 culture. 
 
 V. The following Ethical conceptions existed before Anno 
 Domini, and exist to this day : 
 
 (i) Zoroastrianism India. 
 
 (2) Brahmanism . do. 
 
 (3) Jainism . . 
 
 (4) Buddhism . 
 
 (5) Confucianism 
 
 (6) Taouism 
 
 (7) Shintoism . 
 
 (8) Judaism . . 
 
 do. 
 
 Ceylon, Indo-China, China. 
 
 China, 
 do. 
 
 Japan. 
 
 The Hebrew Race, now scattered in 
 many parts of the world, with a 
 population of nine Millions, or one 
 hundredand fiftieth of thepopulation 
 of the world. 
 
 In a lecture on this subject you must not expect to hear from 
 me a word, or the suggestion of a thought, derogatory to the 
 Doctrines of Christianity : you would not have come to me, if 
 you had anticipated any such thing, nor should I have accepted 
 your invitation with such a view : we stand on an entire and 
 unfeigned belief, that in the Fulness of Time God so loved the 
 world, that He gave us His only Son, that through Him all the 
 world might be saved, not the Hebrew race only. 
 
 My subject relates solely to what happened before the great 
 Anno Domini, so no allusions to Mahometanism, or any 
 Religious conception, whose origin is of a later date, will be 
 found in my remarks. The position of Mankind before, and 
 subsequent to, that Epoch is totally different : up to that Epoch, 
 God's plan of Salvation had not been made known to Mankind ; 
 after that date this cannot by us at least be said. We are not 
 here to pass judgment on the Spiritual position of those, who 
 know not the Lord, but we must note the fact, that only one- 
 third of the population of the world are nominally Christians at 
 the close of" the Nineteenth century, and that the annual 
 increase, by excess of births over deaths, of the non-Christian 
 world, far exceeds the number of converts to Christianity in non- 
 Christian Regions. 
 
 I. My first point is, that it is wrong, thoroughly wrong, to 
 scoff and laugh at the Ancient Religious conceptions of the 
 Human race : they were men like ourselves, of like passions as 
 
C 345 ) 
 
 our contemporaries. Many of the great Nations of antiquity 
 have left behind them splendid architectural monuments, and a 
 vast and noble literature. There were Philosophers in their 
 midst, such as Socrates and Plato, Zoroaster, the Hindu Sages, 
 Gautama, Buddha, and Kong-Fu-Tsee, and others, who have 
 left behind words and thoughts, which the world will not 
 willingly let die. On the Monuments they are depicted, in 
 Painting and Sculpture, as worshipping their national and 
 Personal God, flying to Him in adversity, seeking His counsel, 
 returning thanks for His bounty : that the form, which that 
 Worship assumed, differs from ours and this Epoch, isnot to be 
 wondered at. Each generation of men is the creature of its own 
 Epoch : the chances are, that they in their Ignorance would 
 smile at our Churches, and Worship : let us be more noble, and 
 show that we are wiser : we know that God is no respecter of 
 persons ; that he is a Spirit, and must be worshipped in Spirit 
 and Truth ; that He searches the heart, and that outward show 
 goes for nothing. 
 
 II. We have then to meet another objection, that to show any 
 interest in such subjects, to give any credit for piety, or purity, 
 to the ancient races of Mankind, indicates a laxity of belief in 
 the Christian Verity : there are some, who composedly consign 
 all the non-Christian races before Anno Domini to Hell-fire, 
 reserving a modified way of escape to the petty tribe of the 
 Hebrews. How is it then that in Acts, xvii, 26 we read, that 
 God made of one blood all the Nations of men ; and that 
 another writer tells us, that He hateth nothing that He hath 
 made ? All such unchristian ideas must be brushed away. 
 An inquiry into the Religious conceptions of the ancient races 
 is one of the most profitable and interesting of studies : it 
 fortifies the belief of Christians, because it justifies the ways of 
 God to man. 
 
 III. On reaching my third point I must lay down as a fact, 
 that man has been, and is, and always will be, a Religious Animal. 
 Historians record no race, which has not some indication of 
 a recognition by man of a Power greater than himself, and a 
 Worship : it is the same now among the most barbarous races, 
 to which Europeans have access. And there is found to be a 
 progress in the Religious conception, as people rise in Civiliza- 
 tion, and Knowledge. 
 
 IV. The first stage is Animism, or the Worship of Spirits, bad 
 or good, friendly to man, or hostile: the manner in which 
 this has been developed is multiform. The Tree, the Serpent, 
 the Lingam, seem to have been the primeval objects of Worship ; 
 
( 346 ) 
 
 rising higher came the Worship of Animals, Totemism, Fetichism, 
 Anthropomorphism. We can form a judgment as to what they 
 were by considering the account sent home of what some now 
 are : in East Equatorial Africa, in many tribes, no such things 
 as Idolatry or Fetich are to be found. There are, however, the 
 greatest superstitions, and ramifications of Witchcraft, and trial 
 by the ordeal is paramount. The natives have some belief in a 
 Creation, and a shadowy belief in the personality of a great 
 Being, who, they thought, had created them. Practically, however, 
 they have no belief in God, as an Ethical Being, and they are 
 really ignorant of sin, although they know something of Moral 
 evil. They recognize murder and adultery as Moral evils, and 
 their rulers (and the tribes are well-ruled, even in absolute 
 heathenism, by a patriarchal Government) punish these evils, 
 without recognizing them as sins. They believe nothing about 
 a Future life, and although they have a great fear of death, that 
 arises, not from fear of what was coming after death, but because 
 of their intense liking for, and great enjoyment of, life. They 
 do not believe in natural death, but feel certain, that death 
 is caused by some living person. The great enemy, which has to 
 be fought, is the profound indifference of the tribes to all Religious 
 Teaching. In the "Encyclopaedia Britanhica," ninth edition, 
 vol. xx, page 358, word ' Religions,' all these phases are set out in 
 detail by a most competent Scholar, and we may pass this portion 
 of the subject by, and turn to the others : Ethical conceptions, 
 or Book-Religions. 
 
 V. The detail of names shows, that they are Geographically 
 confined to Asia, and that they all exist to this day. This gives 
 the study of them an importance, which is wanting to those 
 Religious conceptions, which passed out in existence in the early 
 centuries of the Christian era, leaving no trace of themselves 
 behind. I mention (1) the Egyptian, (z) the Babylonian, (3) the 
 Assyrian, and (4) the Grseco-Latin, which have left a vast 
 literature illustrative of their Religious conceptions, and 
 monuments of different kinds of material, but not one single 
 hereditary worshipper. 
 
 The first three in my list are now confined to British India : 
 ( i ) Zoroastrianism is perhaps the most ancient in time : Zoroaster's 
 date is uncertain, but it is placed at 1500 B.C. Its Region was 
 Central Asia, and Cyrus, the great King of Persia, and his 
 successors, represent it in its most illustrious period. There 
 was no Idolatry there : it came into contact with the Hebrews 
 at Babylon, and it is asserted, that it lent to them the conception 
 of Angels, or personified qualities of the great Creator, the idea 
 of a Future State of Rewards and Punishments, and of the Spirit 
 
( 347 ) 
 
 of Evil or Satan, whose name occurs but in three of the pre- 
 Exilic Books of the Old Testament, while the name of Beelzebub 
 never occurs at all in the Old Testament. Subsequently it was 
 uprooted from Persia by the Mahometan Religion, and is now 
 represented by a few thousand of worthy and respectable Parsi 
 settlers in India : the literature of this Religious conception is 
 very ample and interesting, and has been translated and published 
 in Europe. 
 
 (2) Brahmanism is represented by at least two hundred Millions 
 of Her Majesty's subjects spread over an enormous area : with 
 a powerful Priesthood, splendid Temples, a magnificent literature, 
 and an antiquity, to which it is difficult to fix any date : it has 
 sects and subdivisions, each containing Millions : it never was 
 either intolerant of other Relrgions outside of itself, or of 
 divergence of conceptions, which in Europe are called Heresies, 
 within. It never was intentionally Propagandist, and yet year 
 by year under the slow progress of Civilization, tribes who were 
 previously Animistic, pass into the lower Castes of Hinduism : 
 it is distinctly idolatrous in practice, though highly Spiritual in 
 dogma. In the last quarter of a century it is giving out of its 
 bosom new forms of Religious conceptions, highly Spiritual and 
 Moral, based on its own sacred Books, but borrowing much from 
 the Religious conceptions, which came into existence after the 
 great Anno Domini. 
 
 (3) Jainism. Sometimes Jainism is mixed up with Buddhism, 
 and sometimes blended with Brahmanism, from which it issued. 
 Contemporary with the other wise and great men, who left a mark 
 on the Religious History of the world, 600 B.C. lived Parasnath, 
 the founder of the Jaina ascetics, which word means " conqueror 
 of lusts and desires " : two centuries later lived Mahavira, who 
 gave the ultimate form to the conception and the brotherhood. 
 Both Jainism and Buddhism, in their very essence, represented 
 a rebellion against Priestcraft and the Brahmins; they differ 
 from each other in dogma : Jainism never left India : both lay 
 stress on Morality, Charity, Purity, Patience, Contemplation, 
 Knowledge : both get rid of Caste, and are atheistic : ineffable 
 bliss is the object of Jainism, as Nirvana is of Buddhism ; they 
 number one and a half Million ; they enjoin mercy to all living 
 creatures, and place a cloth over their mouths to protect insects 
 from absorption into their throats ; they have a considerable 
 literature, a Priesthood, and forms of Worship, and an antiquity 
 of 2500 years. 
 
 (4) With Buddhism we leave the shores of India, and pass 
 into the great round world both in theory and practice: up 
 
( 348 ) 
 
 to this Epoch, 600 B.C., a Religious conception had been 
 a national affair : it was possible to extend the area by Colonies 
 or Conquest, but Buddhism marks an Epoch in the History of 
 man : it was the first attempt by argument and by example to 
 spread a universal belief, not by the force of arms, but by the 
 force of words of advice. It is remarked by Beal ("Buddhism 
 in China," p. 82), that the secret of the Power of the Buddhist 
 lies in this : it was utterly unselfish : its Teachers, following the 
 example of Buddha, lay down, that the greatest good and 
 happiness, that a man can enjoy, is to do good to others : 
 the thought of self is evil: the greater Love of others than of 
 ourselves is the end of Religion. Can we wonder that such 
 a doctrine, illustrated by the outward living of the Teacher, 
 conquered the Far East, and in spite of frightful corruption, 
 and contamination by previously existing forms of Animism, 
 still retains its hold on Millions, far beyond the sum-total of the 
 followers of any other Religious conception. Six centuries later 
 the same Doctrines of pure Altruism, and Christian Socialism, 
 were heard from the lips of One greater than Buddha ; but it 
 may be received as a certainty, that there is not the slightest 
 evidence, or reasonable probability, of any historical connection 
 between them : if there be a resemblance (and there is), it is not 
 due to the quoting by our Master of the utterances of His great 
 predecessor in the Far East, but solely to the similarity of the 
 condition, under which the two movements grew in an Asiatic, 
 People, and the teaching of the same Holy Spirit to Buddha, 
 the humblest and holiest of the Human race, pointing out the 
 Noble Way of loving one's neighbour better than one's self. 
 Let us, therefore, guard ourselves against two errors : the first of 
 thinking for a moment, that the teaching of our Master was 
 only a reproduction of the teaching of Human Teachers in days 
 gone by ; and the second, almost greater than the first, of 
 withholding from seekers after God, like Socrates, Buddha, 
 Kong-Fu-Tsee, and Zoroaster, the honour due to them of being 
 in their particular age and country,, and up to the degree of 
 development of their countrymen, and the extent of the 
 Message entrusted to them by the Holy Spirit, charged by 
 the Ruler of the World with a Message to their fellow-creatures, 
 the influence of which has lasted so many centuries, and can 
 never die. When the Fulness of Time came, and the Son of God 
 became Incarnate, their work was completed, and, though in 
 a degraded form they linger on, they are out of touch with the 
 Religious conceptions of the present Epoch, and if left alone, 
 and without persecution, will die out gradually, as the wonderful 
 conception of the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Graeco-Roman died 
 before them. 
 
( 349 ) 
 
 (5. 6 ) The g reat Religious conceptions of China, Confucianism 
 and Taouism, may be passed over with a few words : accom- 
 plished writers have made all classes familiar with them. Like 
 Buddhism they both imply Atheism : Confucianism partakes 
 more of the character of a Social Moral Code, than of a 
 Theology: the Emperor is the pinnacle of the edifice, the 
 structure of which is for this world only: Kong-Fu-Tsee, who 
 lived about 600 B.C., did not pretend to be a Legislator, but 
 a careful collector and codifier of existing precepts, oral or 
 written, which date back to a remote Past : we seemed to see an 
 analogue of the literary position of Ezra on the return of the 
 Hebrews from Exile, about the same date, when the Books of 
 the Hebrews were edited and got into order. Ancestral Worship 
 is a great feature, but there is no word about a Future State, 
 Purgatory, or Hell, The great codifier never claimed the power 
 of Miracles, or the gift of Inspiration, but he clearly felt, that he 
 had a superhuman Mission : Goodness and happiness in this 
 world was the object of his teaching : he died uttering no prayer, 
 and evincing no apprehension : he was one of the greatest of 
 men. His contemporary, Laou-Tsee, founded the system, called 
 Taouism, which may be described as the Philosophy of Nature. 
 
 (7) Shintoism is the old political Religion of Japan : it is 
 scarcely worth notice, and a much longer existence cannot be 
 expected : it is a survival of past ages. 
 
 (8) The last on my list is Judaism, the holders of which 
 Religious conception number now about nine Millions, and are 
 scattered over many parts of the world. Their Religion is 
 nominally a national one, but for eighteen centuries they have 
 had no Nation or country : it belongs with some exceptions to 
 the Hebrew race, in whatever Gentile country they have intro- 
 duced themselves : the fact is crushing to all thoughtful minds, 
 that so many of the seed of Abraham, after centuries of cruel 
 discipline, expatriation, and disappointment of their own fond 
 hopes of a Messiah, should still deny Him, who came of their 
 own race, and fulfilled their own Prophecies ; it seems strange 
 that a Zoroastrian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucianist, should 
 in so many cases accept the Precious Promises, which the Jew 
 refuses, though based on his own Scriptures, and developed on 
 his own lines, and prefers a vain, hopeless alternative of a 
 system of degraded legalism, or an uncovenanted Theism, 
 which stultifies the records of his Race ; for what were the 
 Promises made to Abraham, and repeated by the Prophets, if 
 after the lapse of so many centuries nothing has fallen to the 
 Hebrew, but to be placed spiritually in the category of the 
 ancient Zoroastrian, or the modern Agnostic ? 
 
( 350 ) 
 
 Dr. Westcott, Bishop of Durham, writes thus in his " Gospel 
 of Life" (p. 109): "Our knowledge of God depends on the 
 " Revelation, which He is pleased to make of Himself: the 
 " natural voice of Humanity proclaims with no uncertain sound, 
 " that He has in fact made Himself known in various ways, 
 " and at various times"; and again (p. 123): "The Gospel is 
 " the answer to every Religious aspiration, and need of man: 
 " we must then, if we are to comprehend its scope, try to hear, 
 " and understand, every voice of those, who have sought God, 
 " even if they be only the voice of children crying in the dark." 
 I quote these words, that my hearers may perceive, that I do 
 not stand alone. The Christian Missionary forgets his high 
 Duty, when he stoops to ridicule or abuse the Religious con- 
 ceptions of ancient races, which he does not himself understand, 
 and which have been permitted by the Ruler of the Universe to 
 possess the hearts of man for so many generations and centuries. 
 I seek to justify the ways of God to man : Millions of Millions, 
 from the dawn of the Creation to the great Anno Domini, were 
 not permitted to pass through their allotted term of life without 
 some penumbra of the great Truth, some influence of the Holy 
 Spirit, some knowledge of Good and Evil, some desire to find 
 God, to worship Him, and, as the Sanskrit Poet describes it, 
 fly to Him for Refuge. 
 
 Dr. Maclear writes as follows (Ely Sermon, p. 18) : "English 
 " writers, such as Cardinal Newman, have no knowledge what- 
 " ever of the great Religions of the East: they talk of them 
 " just as the Buddhist, or Mahometan, talks of Christianity, or 
 " as a Papist talks of Protestantism. This is a most unsatis- 
 " factory and unjudicial way of treating a solemn fact." 
 
 A careful consideration of the mysteries of Human life, and 
 the pages of History, must lead a thoughtful student of the 
 relations betwixt God and man, as far as we can understand 
 them, to some such answer, as the Christian dispensation 
 supplies ; for, in truth, Christianity is so reasonable, so simple, 
 and so sufficient for all Human- requirements. But before Christ 
 came in the Flesh, the elder world had to work out the great 
 problem in its own way, feeling and groping through darkness 
 for more light, and find such an answer as it could to the great 
 riddle of birth, life, and death. History supplies us with 
 solemn narratives of the attempts to feel after God by pious and 
 spiritual men, if haply they could find Him. In our fuller light 
 we must not despise them. Their temples were not destroyed 
 by lightning ; their Priests were not consumed at the altar by 
 fire from Heaven : God was not in a hurry, as some modern 
 enthusiasts are. He has allowed nineteen centuries to pass 
 by since the Word became Flesh, and countless centuries pre- 
 ceding that great event: we must wait His pleasure for the 
 
( 351 ) 
 
 conversion of mankind : a cold Philosophy, such as that of 
 the Athenian schools, will not effect it, as the mass can never 
 understand it ; a stern Morality, such as that of Kong-Fu-Tsee, 
 will not attain to it, as a Spiritual Power is required to enforce 
 that Morality, and the mass are by their passions opposed to it. 
 At any rate, we can reverently study His dealings with mankind 
 since the day of their Creation. 
 
 Consider the situation of the Pleathen man in the time of his 
 Ignorance, his segregation from contact with other races, his 
 intellectual isolation. He had a bewildered sense of the un- 
 fathomable mysteries of Human life, which were palpable 
 to him : it was out of his power to comprehend the drift of 
 Human luck and ill-luck, mortal happiness and sorrow : we have 
 not, indeed, got much beyond this state in our Christian dis- 
 pensation, but we have learned to trust in One that is mightier. 
 The Heathen man saw, or seemed to see, a bright and beautiful 
 Universe ; he felt himself in possession of animal health and 
 power; his conscience told him, that some things were "mala 
 per se," and some inexpedient ; he could not hide from his sight 
 the existence of Pain, Sickness, Death, Sorrow, Want, Cruelty, 
 Weakness ; the power of the Elements, and the fickleness of the 
 Seasons, puzzled him hopelessly. All these things were to him 
 secrets incomprehensible : we can believe, nothing doubting, that 
 there is a God, who arranges all things in the best possible way ; 
 but the poor Heathen could see nothing, and had nothing to 
 believe, nor the faculty of believing. 
 
 In his Past there was a dead silence, an absence of all 
 experience piled up by History and Geography, and intercourse 
 with other races. No Revelation came to him : he sought for 
 some evidence of the Divine Will in incantations, and omens ; 
 he tried to conciliate the unknown Power, which seemed to be 
 able to influence everything ; but the strife of the Elements, and 
 the cruel sufferings, which he occasionally underwent from the 
 ferocious attacks of more powerful races, convinced him, and all 
 the non-Christian world, that there must be two sets of super- 
 natural Powers, a good one, and an evil one : he tried to 
 propitiate and buy off the hostility of the latter, and to praise 
 and magnify, and evince gratitude to, the former. 
 
 After all, the study of Religious conceptions of the Human 
 race is the most important branch of Human Knowledge : the 
 problem of " Self, the World, and God " is eternal and omni- 
 present, the beginning and the end of all Philosophy : I do not 
 allude to "my Doxy," or "your Doxy," which each of us calls 
 Orthodoxy, but the True Religion, which the believer under- 
 stands, the origin, the condition, the result, by which he tries 
 to live, and hopes to die. In the discussions, which arise on 
 this great subject, no hard words should be used : it is the great 
 problem of the world. 
 
( 352 ) 
 
 Can we not humbly believe that a non-Christian — not by his 
 own fault, but by his environment of place and Epoch, who has 
 humbly thought out the problem, and led a holy life, will be 
 saved through Christ ? 
 
 The full meaning of the great Parable (Matthew, xxv, 31) of 
 the Sheep and the Goats is sometimes not fully understood. 
 In verse 32 we read that all Nations, wavia t« i0vi), shall be 
 gathered together before the Throne. In the previous Parable 
 of the Talents, the Jew and the Christian had been disposed of. 
 To them had been vouchsafed Talents, opportunities, Revelation 
 of Divine Truth ; and those, who had not made use of those 
 Talents, lent, to them for the purpose of being used, were 
 punished as unprofitable servants, who had not made use of their 
 means of Grace; 
 
 The Parable of the Sheep and Goats applies to m eOvrj, the 
 poor Heathen, to whom no such high favours had been 
 conceded: they will be judged, as Paul states (Romans, ii, 14), 
 according to their own lights. 
 
 The Hebrew people in their early centuries were not 
 Monotheists, but Monolatrists : they indeed worshipped one 
 God, the God of their own Nation, but they seem to have admitted 
 the existence of other gods among other tribes and Nations. As 
 the eyes of the Prophets became clearer, they realized, that there 
 could be but one God only in the whole world, who made all 
 mankind, and loved all His poor creatures'. By the same 
 process of enlightenment they had arrived at the conviction 
 of the infinite Purity, Mercy, and Love of the one great Creator, 
 and a feeling for other races began to develop itself, unknown 
 to Moses, and the early Hebrews, who killed men, women, and 
 children without mercy, like wild beasts (Deut. vii, 16). 
 
 Paul had advanced with the advancing ages and the develop- 
 ment of Divine Truth, when in Romans, x, n, he writes : 
 
 ' ' For the Scripture [Isaiah, xlix, 23] says, whosoever believeth on Him shall not 
 be ashamed. 
 
 ' ' For there is no difference betwixt the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord 
 over all is rich unto all that call upon Him. 
 
 "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." 
 (Joel ii, 32. ) 
 
 A few words in conclusion : all these Religious conceptions 
 were, and still are, tolerant : if left alone themselves, they will 
 leave others alone : the curse of Intolerance came into existence 
 with the Religious conceptions after the great Anno Domini, 
 and the followers of the great Teacher of Love and Peace have 
 been the great persecutors. Islam but followed the example of 
 Christianity, and Islam offered the alternative of conversion or 
 double taxation ; Christianity offered the alternative of Baptism 
 or death, until the date of the Reformation. 
 
( 353 ) 
 
 This is not the place to go into the particular tenets of each 
 Religious conception: there are excellent treatises on the subject, 
 readily accessible, at the depots of the S.P.C.K. None of these 
 great ancient Religious conceptions, with the exception of 
 Judaism, stooped to the low-water mark of Religious degradation, 
 so as to mutilate or disfigure the body made in the Image of God. 
 And with reference to the survival of these ancient conceptions, 
 if any Missionary thinks, that he would much prefer a tabula 
 rasa, and to deal with Nations of Agnostics, let him learn, that 
 the latter presents the most dangerous form of Spiritual error, 
 to which man can reach. 
 
 Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, wrote to Boniface, the Apostle 
 of Germany, some advice : " Do not make violent and useless 
 ' declamation against Native Superstition ; rather argue with 
 ' them, whether their gods had a beginning, and whether the 
 ' world had a beginning : if it had, who created it ? If they 
 ' argue, that the world had no beginning, try and show them 
 ' the folly of this idea. 
 
 " Ask whence and how their first god and goddess were born : 
 ' whether there was not a danger of failing to discover, who 
 ' was the most powerful, and thus offending him ? What was 
 ' the object in worshipping them ? What was the object of 
 ' Sacrifices ? The gods cannot have need of them, so Sacrifice 
 ' is superfluous. Do not irritate or taunt them ; compare their 
 ' system with the Church kindly and gently." — Maclear, 
 ' Missions of Middle Ages," p. 187. 
 
 Hear what Archbishop Benson of Canterbury says : " It has 
 ' been borne in upon us, that a Religious tone of mind, though 
 ' Heathen, is a better field for Christian effort than a non- 
 ' Religious tone of mind. In those Regions, where Europeans 
 ' are destroying belief in the old Religions, if they have not 
 ' the Religion of Christ at hand immediately to substitute, 
 ' they have done more harm to Religion than good : it is not 
 ' true, that the mind, from which every possible Superstition 
 ' has been banished, is in a better taste of receptivity for the 
 ' Truths which we have in hand, than the mind, which still 
 ' retains its Religious tone, though corrupt : if one single 
 ' generation intervenes, which has no Religious habits, no 
 ' thought beyond the grave, no tone, which makes it perpetually 
 ' look up to that which is beyond it, we shall find it harder to 
 ' convert the children of that generation than to convert the 
 ' followers of the decaying Religions of ancient days, however 
 ' firmly they hold their own ideas." These great lawgivers were 
 each in their Epoch Schoolmasters to lead man to something 
 higher, that in future days was to come : their teachings were 
 separate Messages to Mankind, an earnest, that our Heavenly 
 Father cared for all His poor children, and did not restrict His 
 
 2 3 
 
( 354 ) 
 
 parental Love to the few Millions of the disobedient, and 
 egotistical, sons of Abraham. 
 
 The French Theologian, the late Dr. Pressens6, in his Book 
 on "The Ancient World and Christianity" (1888), makes remarks 
 to the following purport : "The Spirit of God has been at work 
 " in the Pagan world: Divine lessons are to be found, not in 
 " the literature of the Jews alone, but also in the manifold 
 " Religious conceptions of all times : to recognize the munificent 
 " equipment of Humanity is to take a higher view of man as 
 " man. This is a more excellent lever than the proclamation 
 " of the doctrine of depravity. Nothing is gained for the 
 " Gospel by depreciating and vilifying Human Nature." 
 
 Ponder over in your hearts, my friends, the way, in which the 
 Creator of the Universe has dealt with His poor children : think 
 of His inexhaustible patience and longsuffering : His presence 
 throughout all the ages was made manifest by acts of mercy 
 and pity. He chose the Hebrew race ; and the utterances of 
 Jeremiah and Ezekiel before the Exile, and of our Lord at the 
 Epoch of the great Anno Domini, show how miserably the chosen 
 race failed, not only in Duty to Jehovah, but in the ordinary 
 requirements of Morality to each other. But it is the same 
 God in 1900 a.d. as it was in the time of Abraham, 1900 B.C., 
 merciful, slow to anger, and of exceeding great kindness to the 
 children of men ; and man is the same man, desirous of finding 
 out God, and yet slow to obey Him, knowing the right way, 
 and yet prone to error. The story, which I have told you, reads 
 like a great parable, but the actors were real men, of the same 
 passions as those of the present day. 
 
 We can only see dimly into the past, and wonder what the 
 Divine plan was in creating man in His own Image. But His 
 Revealed Word convinces us, that He could not have created 
 man merely for everlasting Perdition, for He "so loved the 
 " world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever 
 " believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 " life" ; and again : " He hateth nothing that He hath made." 
 Through those silent centuries He in His Wisdom sent no 
 Prophets or Evangelists to teach His poor children the Truth : 
 as Paul said at Lystra, " He suffered all Nations to walk in their 
 own ways." "A thousand years in His sight is but as one day," 
 and the value of the Soul of one of His poor creatures cannot 
 be estimated. 
 
 We cannot wonder, that the barbarous tribes feared the 
 capricious Elements of Nature, and worshipped the glorious 
 unchanging procession of the Heavenly Host, bringing the 
 seasons, and day and night, in unfailing order: we seem to 
 gather from Deut. iv, 19, that Moses was of the same opinion: 
 "The Sun, and the Moon, and the Stars, even all the Host 
 
( 355 ) 
 
 " of Heaven .... which the Lord thy God hath divided [or 
 "apportioned: airevelfiev, Septuagint; chalaq, Hebrew] unto all 
 " Nations under the whole Heaven." 
 
 In the time of Justin Martyr, it was believed, that God had 
 allowed the Heathen to worship the Heavenly Host. In our 
 own time Bishop Westcott remarks ("Gospel of Life," p. 114): 
 " In two passages of Deuteronomy even false Religions are 
 presented as part of the Divine ordering of Humanity ; even 
 their Idolatries had a work to do in the discipline of men." 
 
 Professor Driver, in his " Commentary on Deuteronomy," 1895, 
 writes: "God assigns to every Nation its objects of Worship, 
 and the veneration of the Heavenly bodies by the Nations forms 
 part 'of His providential order of the world." 
 
 Clement suggests a reason : 
 
 " cua ytt'/y TeXeov aOeoi ryevofievoi reXews Kal bta^>6cipwffiv. 
 oBos yop avr/j doOeiaa tois eOveaiv avaicutyai 7rpos Oedv." 
 
 This is evidenced in the origin of the Indian, Chaldaean, and 
 Egyptian, Religious conceptions. We may be thankful, that 
 Christ has opened a new way, but we must not heedlessly condemn 
 those, who were not blessed with our privileges, lest haply in 
 doing so we cast scorn on the Holy Wisdom, 'H 07/0 1,o(f>la, of 
 the Most High. 
 
 I happened to quote some lines of a great Sanskrit writer, 
 embodying a great Truth, which can never die, in the presence 
 of a Missionary, whom I greatly esteemed. He exclaimed : 
 " Surely you place no value on the rubbish contained in Hindu 
 literature." I asked him, whether he had ever studied any of 
 these books, or read the dialogues of Plato, or the essays of 
 Cicero, or the lately disentombed records in Egypt and Babylonia : 
 he admitted, that the whole subject was blank to him, that he 
 was convinced of his own belief, and that for him was enough : 
 for himself certainly, but he had to convince others. As it was, he 
 was storming a fortress without the necessary intellectual 
 armour, and without a Knowledge of the plan of the fortress 
 attacked. Moreover, he treated with contempt the stored-up 
 Wisdom, which had held captive Millions for many centuries, 
 and which the Great Ruler of the Universe had permitted to 
 survive, though Empires, and Dynasties, and Cities, and Lan- 
 guages had passed away. Was not this the same arrogance, as 
 is evidenced by the modern Jew, who refuses even to read the 
 New Testament ? 
 
 1895. 
 
( 357 ) 
 
 CAP. IV. RESULTS. 
 
 A. Native Episcopate. 
 
 B. Native Place of Worship, School, Village. 
 
 C. The Trials, to which converts are exposed. 
 
 D. The Home-organization of Missions. 
 
 E. Prospects of the Future. 
 
 A. Native Episcopate. 
 
 i. The Adolescence of a Native Church in non-Christian 
 Lands. 
 
 2. Speech at the Missionary Conference of the Church of 
 
 England, 1894. 
 
 3. Letter to the Secretary of the African Sub-committee. 
 
 Missionary Warnings for the Twentieth Century. 
 1. The Adolescence of a Native Church in non-Christian Lands. 
 
 When a youth by the lapse of years passes from childhood into 
 manhood, he is said to be adolescent; the same Law applies 
 unconsciously to Groups of men, as they pass from Political, or 
 Spiritual, subordination into independence. 
 
 The great work of the Nineteenth century has been to bring 
 the Gospel to the ears and hearts of the ignorant, and untutored, 
 non-Christian world : the problems, which lie before the 
 Twentieth century, are different : 
 
 (1) The degraded Pagan types of non-Christian belief are 
 disappearing, and their place is being taken by reformed, and 
 reburnished, forms of Theology, and Worship, based on a 
 varying standard of Morality, and Education, both however 
 advancing year by year. 
 
 (2) New forms of belief, and practice, are coming into 
 existence, equally opposed to Christian belief, but neither 
 degraded, nor immoral, nor entirely unspiritual. 
 
 (3) The loosely connected Groups of converts to Christianity 
 are forming into Churches, which will have to fight their own 
 battles with their neighbours and countrymen, and manage as 
 best they can their own affairs : to these last my remarks 
 apply. 
 
( 358 ) 
 
 Episcopacy is the only form of Christian Government, which 
 it is worth while to discuss, as Episcopacy is the only form, which 
 weathered the struggle of the early and middle Ages in Europe ; 
 and 1 feel convinced, that the Nations of Asia, Africa, America, 
 and Oceania, are not likely in things secular or Spiritual to 
 dispense with a Ruler, whether in the form of a Sovereign, or a 
 Spiritual overseer. 
 
 So long as the original Missionaries, the Fathers in the Lord, 
 the first Christians, who converted, and baptized, and ordained, 
 survive, the difficulty does not exist : but the time comes, when 
 men, like Bishop Caldwell and Bishop Sargent, die : in the 
 meantime the Native Pastors are getting older and older, while 
 the English Missionaries come out in a continual flow of young 
 untrained men, young enough to be the sons or grandsons of 
 their Native Brethren, and yet asserting authority over them, 
 because their colour is white, and they come from London: 
 those, who were converted in middle life, have passed away ; a 
 new race of men has been born as Christians : the problem is 
 confessedly difficult, but it is one, which the Mother-Church must 
 decide : it is no longer a purely Missionary committee-question ; 
 the work of the Missionary is assumed to have been done, and 
 done well, as regards a particular Group of neo-Christians, 
 though the Duty of evangelizing the Regions beyond remains, 
 and the nascent Native Church must take its part in this Duty. 
 This brings me face to face with the Board of Missions of the 
 Mother-Church : I am totally opposed to any attempt on the 
 part of this Board to interfere with the economy of Missionary 
 Societies : it would be the interference of men, who were 
 uninstructed in details, with men, who are well instructed ; but 
 the great principle, which is discussed in this paper, " The 
 Adolescence of a Native Church," awaits the decision of the 
 Church itself, and, if not attended to now, will produce greater 
 trouble in the next generation : the Board of Missions should 
 regard such phenomena as their peculiar Duty. 
 
 The problem, put nakedly, relates to the personality of the 
 Bishop : should he be an alien white stranger from the Mother- 
 Church, or a Native of the same colour, speaking the same 
 Language ? 
 
 Let me brush away the idea once for all, that the Natives of 
 South India, or West Africa, can ever coalesce with the ephemeral 
 European sojourners from Europe in one organized Church : 
 Language, Customs, Dress, Social Habits, Prejudices, present 
 an insuperable bar, which Time will accentuate rather than 
 diminish. 
 
 We may also anticipate, that the Territorial Bishops, appointed 
 and paid by the State from the Public Revenue in India, and 
 Sierra Leone, will very shortly disappear: the Bishop will be 
 
( 359 ) 
 
 paid by his own endowment-fund : it is not just to spend funds, 
 collected by taxes from the non-Christian Natives, on Christian 
 Spiritual Officials. Christians would not like to have to con- 
 tribute to the salary of the Hindu Priest. 
 
 More than this : there is no reason, why in the course of time 
 the power of Great Britain may not pass away like that of Rome 
 and Spain, and her Commerce fade like the Palaces of Venice : 
 but in dealing with things Spiritual, connected with the 
 adolescence of Native Churches, we build too low, if we do not 
 build for Eternity. The Church of England during this its day 
 should strive so to order the affairs of the Churches, that have 
 sprung up under its shadow, that they may have a chance of 
 lasting by the Grace of God after the hand of the Mother-Church 
 has been shortened by misfortune, or by misconception of its 
 Duty, or by supineness in discharge of its high office : this is 
 what Paul calls, the care of all the Churches. Do Churchmen 
 realize the position, which the Church of England occupies, in 
 alliance with the Episcopal Church of the United States, as 
 regards the Christian \iaairopa among the Gentiles ? The 
 Fathers of the Church in England are so fully occupied with 
 pressing home-affairs, and the magnitude of the work has grown 
 so suddenly and so mightily, that something analogous to the 
 College of the Propaganda of Rome is required to keep informa- 
 tion up to date : in fact a Foreign Office to the Church of 
 England. 
 
 No greater delusion has ever been suggested, than that the 
 Church of England in its corporate capacity, through the agency 
 of its Bishops, should control the details of the Evangelization of 
 the world : those, who suggest this, ought to know, that History, 
 neither past nor present, gives any example of such a policy being 
 successfully carried out. The gigantic and ubiquitous Church 
 of Rome is too astute for such a policy : it leaves the Evangeli- 
 zation, or Papalization, of the World, to the great Congregations, 
 such as the Benedictine, Capuchin, Franciscan, and Jesuit, who 
 belong to all Nations, or to the special Missionary Associations 
 of each Nation, while it maintains in the College of the Propa- 
 ganda of Rome under specially appointed Officials full, ready, 
 and accurate, information, the power of appointing Bishops, 
 and Vicars Apostolic, and the absolute control of Doctrine. 
 Even the tiny Protestant Church of Sweden has not been able 
 to prevent the establishment of independent Episcopal Missions, 
 and the Nonconformist Churches of Great Britain work through 
 Associations, or practically independent departments of their 
 particular Church-organization. 
 
 But the problems, which are discussed in this paper, are just 
 those, which come properly and solely under a Board of Missions, 
 or a College of the Propaganda, and lie beyond the capacity 
 
( 360 ) 
 
 and competence of the committee of a Missionary Society: I 
 allude to the phenomena, which present themselves in a new 
 Christianity in Asia or Africa, or elsewhere. I wish to write 
 with due respect of the Secretaries and committees, with which 
 I am familiar, but their constitution is not perfect : all the work 
 in the first instance comes before a territorial Sub-committee 
 of about a dozen, half laymen, half clergymen, chosen for each 
 particular part of the field, at which Vice-Presidents and Secre- 
 taries freely attend. Free from any rules of public debate, each 
 question is there thoroughly discussed, and an order recorded : 
 this comes up for revision before the Correspondence-com- 
 mittee, consisting of all the different territorial Sub-committees, 
 the numerous Secretaries and Assistant-Secretaries, and a great 
 many other members of the Society selected each year, but less 
 qualified to pass judgment on any case than the specially 
 selected Sub-committee ; here the matter is discussed fully 
 according to the ordinary laws of debate, and a vote taken by 
 show of hands. But a week or so afterwards the matter again 
 comes before a body of men still, less fitted to take cognizance of 
 it than the Committee of correspondence,' viz., the General com- 
 mittee ; of this anomalous body, Honorary Life-Governors, £$ 
 lay Life-Governors, ten-and-sixpenny clergymen of every age, 
 and degree of experience, or rather want of experience, have 
 a vote equal to that of the most experienced member of the 
 Sub-committee : the majority know little, and some absolutely 
 nothing, of the principle underlying the case, or even of the 
 merits of the case itself, and yet they can by dead weight of 
 parson-power cancel or modify previous orders : they are no 
 more fit to decide, whether a black or white Bishop should be 
 sent to the Niger or South India, than they are to decide, 
 whether a black or white Viceroy should be sent to India ; it is 
 . a fair hypothesis, that the younger clergy vote very much as 
 they think, that the Honorary Clerical Secretary wishes them to 
 do. It appears, therefore, that the Committee of a Missionary 
 Society, at least of one so constituted, has not the capacity to 
 decide a question affecting the Future of the Church at large, 
 and that nothing short of representatives of the whole Church 
 of England have the competence to decide, whether a Native 
 Church should be ruled by a young, alien, white Bishop, an 
 absolute stranger to the people, who in his old age will go back 
 to the country of his birth, or by an experienced and middle- 
 aged member of the Native Pastorate, of good repute, and proved 
 capacity, who is prepared to die amidst his flock. 
 
 The decision of this issue does not turn on the fact, that the 
 stipend is supplied by the Missionary Society. In the case of 
 Japan, and Palestine, the Primate reserved to himself the right 
 of nomination, although the stipend was supplied in whole or 
 
( 361 ) 
 
 part by two Missionary Societies. When a purely Missionary 
 Bishop is appointed by a Society, such as the Bishop of 
 Melanesia, or Equatorial Africa, the selection may with safety 
 be left to the Missionary Society, because the Native Church is 
 only in its infancy ; but, when a more advanced stage has been 
 reached, and a Native Bishop has held the office with success 
 for a series of years, it is a retrograde step, and one calculated 
 to alienate the affection of the Native Church, and wound the 
 legitimate aspirations of the Pastorate, to declare, that no Native 
 is fit to be a Bishop, and that a young Curate, who would 
 probably die within two years unless he left his diocese for 
 England, must be looked for by the Honorary Secretary with a 
 sufficiency of physical, intellectual, Spiritual, and self-Sacrificing 
 gifts, very much as Diogenes looked for an honest man with 
 a lantern in broad daylight. . 
 
 Now what do the Annals of the historical Churches tell us ? 
 The fallen Churches in Asia, viz., the Greek, Armenian, 
 Georgian, Syrian, Assyrian, Travanc6r, and in Africa the 
 Abyssinian, and Koptic, cannot boast of much Spirituality, but 
 somehow or other, through the dull dreary centuries of Christian 
 Ignorance and Mahometan oppression, unvisited by Prophet, or 
 Apostle, or Evangelist, of the more fortunate Churches, they 
 have kept their candlestick lighted, and conserved copies of the 
 Word of God in their own particular Ecclesiastical form of 
 speech : this is a great fact : to what feature of their internal 
 organization under the Grace of God can this survival be traced, 
 when all around them perished ? To the fact of Episcopacy, and 
 indigenous Episcopacy : it is so far true, that to this day the 
 Abyssinian Church receives willingly', and by request, an Abuna 
 from its Mother-Church, the Koptic, but the two Nations are 
 closely allied in their level of culture, their geographical neigh- 
 bourhood, and their Religious tenets. Can it be said of the 
 Native Churches of South India, and West Africa, that they in 
 the least degree are akin to the Church of England, except 
 in the fact, that they received from it the great Truths of Christi- 
 anity, contained in the Hebrew and Greek Texts of the Bible ? 
 The ancient Civilization of the people of India is of a totally 
 different type from that of the Anglo-Saxon : the barbarism of 
 the African is of different type from the ancient barbarism of 
 the European, for the African still hankers after Polygamy even 
 in a Christian Church, a desire which never entered into the 
 conception of the Greek and Latin Pagan races, and those who 
 drew from them Civilization during the last three thousand years. 
 
 If we are not careful, Churches composed of the so-called 
 inferior races will discover, that Episcopalianism is a barrier 
 against independence; that a Church, based upon Presby- 
 terianism or Congregationalism, offers an easier channel for 
 
( 362 ) 
 
 the just aspirations of the neo-Christian Community to manage 
 its own affairs, Spiritual and secular. Hear what the repre- 
 sentatives of the most elastic form of Church Government, the 
 Congregationalist, say: "It has been the peculiar glory of the 
 " Society in the Past, and the feature in its constitution, which 
 " has attracted to its ranks many of its noblest workers, that 
 " the ecclesiastical organization of the Mission- Churches has 
 " been shaped, not in rigid conformity to any particular model, 
 " but in accordance with the necessities of different fields of 
 " labour, and the special characteristics of different peoples. 
 " It will be its strength and the pledge of its success in days 
 " to come to endeavour to cultivate among those, who are 
 " brought to the Knowledge of Christ by means of its Missions, 
 " an intelligent and independent study of the Truths of the 
 " Divine Revelation in the freedom of a life, which is not com- 
 " pelled to form itself on Western models." — L.M.S. Annual 
 Report, 1 880. 
 
 We cannot, indeed, control the future development of Native 
 Churches, which by the Grace of God we have been permitted 
 to call into existence, but we can at least so act, that they do 
 not part from us in anger, with wounded self-respect, and bad 
 passions, roused by undeserved and contemptuous ill-treatment. 
 If we reflect on what was the object of the godly men, who 
 at the commencement of this century, brought into existence 
 the great agencies of the Church of England for Evangelizing 
 the non- Christian world, the like of which no other national 
 Church can show, we cannot but believe, that this object was 
 to found at as an early date as possible independent Churches, 
 supporting their own Pastors, ruled by their own Native Bishops; 
 and this is precisely what is the desire of many among us. We 
 are now at the close of the Nineteenth century, which gave birth 
 to the new Missionary idea, and the taunt may be justified, that 
 our enterprize has been a failure, if there are no Native Churches. 
 In that period to many Colonies and subject Kingdoms entire 
 or partial independence in things secular has been conceded 
 by the Imperial Parliament, which has outlived the Epoch of 
 Egotistic jealousy of their offspring. Within a century after the 
 preaching of Paul there were independent Churches in exist- 
 ence under their own Bishops. Had there been a Missionary 
 committee at Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, or Rome, of the 
 same manner of thinking as those in London, the independence 
 of these young Churches, and their energy, would have been 
 crushed by Hebrew Chief Shepherds forced upon, them, ignorant 
 of their Languages, customs, and social life. At the end of the 
 Nineteenth century the Synod at Lambeth will not be honoured 
 by the presence of a single coloured independent Bishop: the, 
 fact, that one, whose loss we mourn, was for many years a Bishop, 
 
( 363 ) 
 
 and that no successor in the next generation was selected out 
 of several fit for the office, renders the position more deplorable. 
 The Church of Rome openly denies the Episcopate to any 
 member of an inferior race. In some particulars the Church 
 of Rome never grows wiser in consequence of failure : it was 
 driven out of South America,' West Africa, China, and Japan, 
 because the Native Church of Priests and Bishops had never 
 been built up of indigenous material ; and yet it goes on in the 
 same insensate way. The Church of Rome would rather see 
 the Natives of a country heathen than run the risk of their being 
 Christian out of obedience to Rome. Is the Church of England 
 prepared to affirm, that the Episcopal is not an office adapted 
 for any but members of a dominant race ? It is true, that this 
 is a new problem: the work of the Church, for 300 years, lay 
 amidst the Grseco-Latin and Semitic races, admittedly the races 
 foremost in the ranks of that Epoch : later on the Kelts, Teutons, 
 and Slavs, supplied themselves with Bishops in Europe of their 
 own race, and in Asia the Armenians, Syrians, Assyrians, and 
 Georgians ; while in Africa the Hamitic and Semitic races were 
 represented by the Koptic and Abyssinian Bishops, and the 
 Church in Travancor, South India, had its Dravidian Bishops. 
 It is only in this Nineteenth century, that the world has been 
 thrown open to the Gospel, and unfortunately the Anglo-Saxon 
 race has accustomed itself to lord it over other races, to think 
 contemptuously of them, and to refuse to trust them. I feel 
 convinced, as the result of long reflection, that this distrust 
 arises in the breasts of good men from the innate albocracy of 
 the white man, and the contempt, which accompanies it, of men 
 of colour, but it may be presumed with certainty, that our Lord 
 Himself was a man of colour. Among the lower classes this 
 prejudice against so-called "niggers" is excessive, but those, 
 who have lived a quarter of a century in India in close contact 
 with the people, and who have studied the anthropology of the 
 world in all its varieties, know that this sentiment is ridiculous. 
 The Periodicals and reports of Missionary Societies have ac- 
 centuated these prejudices, and in their pages we find to our 
 surprise the great Empires of India and China described as 
 the Kingdom of Satan, because the primeval custom of Caste 
 prevails in the one, and the poppy is cultivated there, and 
 because the primeval practice of reverencing dead ancestors 
 prevails in the other, and opium is consumed to a disgusting 
 excess. The writer of such Periodicals forgets, or has not cared 
 to learn, that man is a Religious animal, and that the Human 
 heart turns to God, as a sunflower turns to the sun, and seeks 
 for Him, if haply it can find Him, and rejoices, when the Message 
 comes; but by the dispensation of an all-wise Providence no 
 Prophet or Evangelist has ever come with the Message to these 
 
( 364 ) 
 
 magnificent races, compared to whom the petty Hebrew, and, 
 Greek, and Egyptian, races are numerically but as a drop in the 
 Ocean : races who have left behind them imperishable Monu- 
 ments of literature and Art, and yet they are weighed in the 
 balance and found wanting by men, springing from the manu- 
 factories of Lancashire, on the farms in Devonshire, or the 
 business-house in London ; and it goes forth from India, and 
 the echo is caught up in the Missionary committee in London, 
 that no one is fit in the second or third generation of Christians 
 to be a chief shepherd of the sheep of his own flock. Another 
 excuse for this failure of Duty is, that the Native Pastors are 
 jealous of each other, and would not willingly accept the rule 
 of a former colleague : we have not yet had an opportunity of 
 testing this feeling in India, and it was not felt at all with regard 
 to Bishop Crowther in Africa ; but the existence of the feeling 
 is not unknown in England. I have heard old clergymen in 
 England speaking with a certain amount of disparagement of 
 a younger new Bishop : this is one of the objections, which 
 must be brushed aside. 
 
 The difficulty in its present form has only just appeared, but 
 as years go on, the phenomena will become more marked. In 
 the case of Sierra Leone and Lagos, the Missionary Society 
 withdrew from all control, leaving it to the Native African 
 Pastorate under a territorial Bishop appointed by the Colonial 
 Office. In the case of New Zealand, where the white population 
 so far exceeded in numbers the Native Maori, the Missionary 
 Society handed over the work to the Episcopal Synod. Such, 
 no doubt, will ultimately be the case with the Missions in the 
 Dominion of Canada : the Canadian Church will take them 
 over, when the time comes. In the West Indies the Missionary 
 Societies have gradually withdrawn, leaving the local Church 
 in possession. In Asia and Africa, where the Natives so far 
 exceed in numbers the European immigrants, and there are no 
 settlers as in healthy climates, the problem is more acute, and, 
 as each combination of circumstances presents itself, it will have 
 to be considered. In two regions. South India and West Africa, 
 the matter is very pressing, as Sees once occupied are vacant, 
 and it is not a question of creating, but filling a vacancy, that 
 is before us. 
 
 Let us consider the circumstances of the Mission in South 
 India, as collected from statements of a faithful, sympathetic, 
 and experienced ex-Missionary in 1 890-1 : 
 
 (1) Christianity in possession more than 50 years : 65 clergy- 
 
 men, some ordained 40 years : the Missions above 15. 
 
 (2) Congregations, some of 60 years standing, most not 
 
 less than 30. 
 
( 365 ) 
 
 (3) Large sums spent by the Native Christians in Lawsuits 
 
 and Marriage of daughters. 
 
 (4) Great improvement of the material circumstances of 
 
 the people during the last quarter of a century. 
 
 (5) Majority of the Native Pastors indifferent, feeding 
 
 themselves rather than their flocks, unable to win 
 the love or respect of their people. 
 
 (6) English Missionaries to withdraw from Pastoral duties, 
 
 but a certain amount of supervision to remain of 
 Pastoral duties, and entire control of Evangelizing 
 duties. 
 
 (7) Ambition of the people to build brick or stone Churches. 
 
 (8) Voluntary contribution of the people far below the scale 
 
 fairly to be expected of them, considering their 
 circumstances. 
 
 (9) Want of Spirituality, and of true piety, in the Pastors 
 
 and other Native Agents. 
 (10) Dissatisfaction of the people with their Pastors on the 
 ground of partiality and neglect of Duty, and absolute 
 confidence reposed by the people in the English Missionary : 
 this complacent opinion is recorded by an English- 
 man, who confessedly could not speak the Language 
 of the people, and only formed it through an 
 interpreter. 
 
 Thus there is no suggestion to grant self-government, or 
 independence, in favour of a Church, which has existed for two 
 generations of men : and this is an understatement, as some 
 Christians of this Church are in the third and fourth generation : 
 it does not seem to pass through the minds of those connected 
 with this Mission, that the British Government may be compelled 
 ..to withdraw in a few years from South India, that the country 
 may be too disturbed for the residence of an English Missionary, 
 and that the Native Church must be left to itself. Would it not 
 be wiser, and more in consonance with the practice of the early 
 centuries of Christianity, to give this promising Church of 
 46,000 souls a constitution, and let it run alone ? Is there not 
 a want of Spirituality on the part of the Home-committee in 
 London in concluding, that the existence and well-being of 
 such a Community depends upon their feeble advice, protection, 
 and assistance, and not on the presence of the Holy Spirit 
 promised, and manifestly granted, to this Association of neo- 
 Christians, who have come out of Brahmanism and Animism, 
 into Christianity ? 
 
 The problem in South India is still further complicated by the 
 existence of another body of neo-Christians within the same 
 Region, equally belonging to the same Church of England, 
 
( 366 ) 
 
 equally mourning the loss of its father in God, and Spiritual 
 Pastor. The members of this flock are in precisely the same 
 stratum of social culture, speak the same Language, follow the 
 same ancestral customs, are liable to the same natural weak- 
 nesses, and heirs of the same ancient Civilization, and yet up 
 to this time they have been under different Bishops, because, 
 it is really difficult to say why : a deadly injury is being done to 
 the Church of South India by the stereotyping of dfferences, 
 which ought never to have existed in the Church at home. 
 Missionary Associations become a curse, if they introduce 
 schism in churches yet to be born. 
 
 Did I hear some one doubting the capacity of the people of 
 India to supply individuals fit to be a Bishop ? While the Anglo- 
 Saxon race was still savage, the Hindu Nation was great in 
 Arms, Arts, and Sciences, and has left a literature unrivalled in 
 the world. In the present generation the highest offices of State 
 are filled by Natives of India, and filled well : if some posts are 
 reserved to Englishmen, it is from Political reasons, and the 
 fact, that India is a subject-country always liable to a Mutiny, 
 or a Rebellion. There is no post, to which they are not equal, 
 in their own country. How does the Christian Church of 
 Travanc6r supply itself with Bishops ? As the Church-Members, 
 so are the Church-officers and the Bishop : I have no doubt, that 
 the Bishops of the renowned Keltic Church of Ireland, Scotland, 
 and Northumbria, were not such as would have satisfied the 
 requirements of a Missionary committee in London of the 
 Nineteenth century, but none the less they kept their candle- 
 stick lighted, and handed down something worth inheriting to 
 future generations. Are we doing our Duty to the Church of 
 South India in thus, for the sake of an imaginary perfection, 
 which will never be attained, restraining the natural develop- 
 ment of a young Church ? The Tinnevelly Church is a sickly- 
 plant now, because it has not been allowed to grow spontaneously 
 to its proper stature of indigenous development: it may be, 
 that, while committees at home are practising the art of doing 
 nothing, and putting off the manifest discharge of their Duty to 
 the next generation, these Churches may secede, like the 
 Pastorates on the Niger, and pass into Congregationalism or 
 Presbyterianism : if we only keep to Scripture-precedents, the 
 Lord will provide a Timothy, a Titus, or a Clement. The 
 people of South India are infinitely superior to the Cretans at 
 the time of Paul. 
 
 We are standing in Asia on the edge of a precipice : the old 
 order of things is dissolving very much as happened in the time 
 of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the Roman world. The 
 Secretaries of Missionary Societies, and the Missionary himself, 
 are necessarily narrow in their views : the subject must be looked 
 
( 367 ) 
 
 at with the eye of a Christian Statesman, not the less a faithful 
 Christian, because he looks back for guidance to the lesson 
 taught by History, and forward to the slowly unfolding picture of 
 Christ's Universal Church, where there will be Unity, but not 
 Uniformity, and it will not be pretended, that the white man is 
 of necessity, per se, more Spiritual, more capable of managing his 
 own affairs, and more Christlike, than the man of colour : we 
 should be ready for Divine Possibilities, and hang upon Divine 
 Promises : the same Grace, and Strength, and Wisdom, which 
 accompanied the spread of the Gospel in the comparatively in- 
 significant Roman Empire, spread round the tiny Mediterranean 
 Sea, will accompany it, now that the whole world is thrown 
 open, and the sound has actually gone out to Regions of the 
 Earth, beyond the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 
 
 The position of affairs in West Africa is still more critical. The 
 African race is not likely to be stamped out like the poor weak 
 races of North America, or of the South Sea islands : centuries 
 of oppression have failed to make any impression on the African : 
 transported across the Atlantic to another Continent, they have 
 achieved freedom, acquired culture, and cannot be denied 
 citizenship : the African takes the varnish of European culture 
 much more readily than the Native of British India : I know 
 them both. If I found myself in the company of some of the 
 Pastors of West Africa in the dark, I should not be aware, that 
 I was not conversing with a well-instructed English Clergyman ; 
 if I laid their letters on the table by the side of those of an 
 English correspondent, no one could suppose that between the 
 writers of the two there was a vast abyss of race, colour, and 
 even physical structure. The Africans of the West Coast, from 
 contact with their countrymen from North America, and Liberia, 
 have acquired ideas of independence, and personal dignity, and 
 do not love the white man. 
 
 Thirty years ago the experiment was made of an African 
 Bishop on the Niger, and it has not proved a failure. Many lost 
 an honoured friend, when Dr. Samuel Crowther died on the last 
 day of 1891. The American Episcopal Church is represented 
 by a most worthy African Bishop, Dr. Fergusson, at Cape 
 Palmas ; in the West Indies there is an African Bishop, Dr. 
 Holly, at Haiti; and yet a Missionary committee decided, that 
 there was no African fit to be a Bishop, that he might possibly 
 be an assistant-Bishop, and expressed " a desire', that an 
 African Bishop, or Bishops, whether assistant or independent, 
 should be appointed in West Africa, as soon as in the interests of 
 the Church there such appointment seems desirable." As if to give 
 point to this decision a letter was published in the same 
 Periodical of the Missionary Society, which announced this 
 decision, that the Native Churches must wait as long for a 
 
( 368 ) 
 
 Native Bishop as the Israelites waited for Christ, and that the 
 English Bishop was the pedagogue to bring the African to 
 Christ. It would appear, therefore, that as far as the com- 
 mittee is concerned, the recommendation of a coloured Bishop 
 is deferred to the next generation. Now this is not a matter 
 affecting Africa only, or one particular Missionary Society only, 
 but it affects the Church of England in its entirety, and the 
 Church of Christ all over the world. Moreover, it is a message 
 of War to the Church in West Africa. 
 
 In a certain committee-room the following advice was given 
 
 publicly to an outgoing Missionary by a retired veteran : " Race- 
 
 ' peculiarities it is equally easy to invest with too much or too 
 
 ' little importance. They ought never to be forgotten, but 
 
 ' many of these differences between race and race are differences 
 
 ' without being on the whole necessarily either superiorities or 
 
 ' inferiorities. They rather indicate, that to different Nations 
 
 ' God has allotted different tasks. . . . Do not attribute to 
 
 ' race any seeming inferiority without thoroughly good ground 
 
 ' for doing so, not even in your mind ; to do so in words to 
 
 ' any member of such a race would, of course, be, in most cases 
 
 ' at least, an act of the grossest discourtesy. That there is any 
 
 ' absolutely and permanently invincible inferiority of race, seems 
 
 ' scarcely consonant with Scriptural teaching. The power of 
 
 ' heredity cannot be altogether denied, but it may certainly 
 
 ' be overrated. Education and surrounding influences from 
 
 ' earliest years not infrequently, especially when made use of 
 
 ' by Divine Grace, cause race inferiority to disappear entirely." 
 
 In consequence of the injudicious and unsympathetic conduct 
 
 of young English agents on the Niger (both of whom are dead, 
 
 and therefore the less said about them the better), certain 
 
 Pastorates of the Niger have under their Archdeacon , seceded 
 
 from the protection of the Missionary Society, to whom they are 
 
 indebted for their Knowledge of Christ, and thrown themselves 
 
 upon their own resources, and the alms of the African Churches 
 
 of Sierra Leone and Lagos. This measure was announced 
 
 before the aged Bishop died, and actually took place on April 
 
 zq, 1892, and it was known, that it would take place before 
 
 the committee of the Missionary Society determined to replace 
 
 the African with an English Bishop : there was no attempt to 
 
 give time to the seceding Pastorates for reflection by delay ; in 
 
 a few months they might have returned to their allegiance, and 
 
 under an African Bishop they may do so still : it is devoutly to 
 
 be hoped, that they will make no approaches for union to the 
 
 Nonconformist British Churches, or the American non-Episcopal 
 
 Churches, represented on that Coast, or to the Church of Rome : 
 
 these are all contingencies, which have to be reckoned upon : at 
 
 any rate the appointment of a white Bishop, as proposed by the 
 
( 369 ) 
 
 committee, at this conjuncture, was fatal to all possibility of 
 compromise. 
 
 It goes without saying, that if a Native Church, whether in 
 Asia or Africa, determined to have a Native Bishop, contrary to 
 the express wishes of the Parent-Society, they must cease to 
 look for financial assistance from that Society, and must be 
 independent all round, and provide the stipend of their Bishop 
 and Pastors, which need not exceed /*2oo per annum ; but this 
 is no more than is done by all Christian Churches, and more 
 than that, all non-Christian Tribes and Nations do so also : 
 they that minister to the Altar, must live by the Altar: this is 
 the avowed ultimate object of all Missionary Societies, but they 
 hesitate as to the time and mode of attaining it. Of course a 
 Missionary Bishop, the leader of an evangelizing enterprize, is 
 totally distinct from the Bishop of an organized Native Church, 
 and must be a white man ; and a Native Church, when fully 
 organized, must not forget its Missionary Duties to Regions 
 Beyond. Some cases may occur, where there are Church of 
 England European settlers intermixed with the Asiatic and 
 African, but as regards the Diocese of South India, and of the 
 Niger-Delta, there are absolutely none : it is a purely Native 
 Church, the requirements of which have to be considered. 
 
 It would be amusing, were the matter not so awfully serious, 
 to read the remarks of a young Missionary on the utter baseness, 
 immorality, and dishonesty, of the Mahometan, Hindu, Buddhist, 
 and ' Pagan, and the complacent way, in which the Christian 
 as a general term is described : the writer treats both sides in 
 the abstract : I have lived twenty-five years, many years quite 
 alone, amidst Hindu and Mahometan, and not found them 
 morally and socially so very bad : I have lived many more years 
 amidst Christians, especially in London, and found them not 
 of the highest type of Morality. This same feeling influences 
 Missionary committees: the Anglo-Indian Members of such 
 committees try to interfere in favour of the poor Indian, or 
 African, but the majority of Clergy on the committees has no 
 mercy on the nascent Christianity in the midst of Heathens, 
 and yet it is presumed, that they have read Paul's Epistles to 
 the Corinthians, and what the Spirit said to the Churches in the 
 Revelation. And it is the more unjustifiable, since British Mis- 
 sionary agents, ordained and lay, have been disconnected for 
 gross immorality in Africa during late years. The moral lapses 
 of the British Missionary, brought up in Christian environment, 
 are hushed up, and the unhappy offender is most properly 
 provided for in America or elsewhere in secular employment : 
 the scandal to the Mission, and the Cause, is not forgotten in the 
 Mission-field. The least lapse, however, of poor Africans, whose 
 early years were spent amidst the worst forms of Heathendom, 
 
 24. 
 
( 370 ) 
 
 but who have by God's marvellous Grace emerged from the 
 slough entirely, like good Bishop Crowther, or partially in other 
 cases, according to the measure of the Grace and the Temptation, 
 are magnified, and without evidence pass into a Proverb, accepted 
 as a Verity, and alluded to in speech and writing by good men, 
 who would resent as a personal offence a similar insinuation 
 against an English Clergyman ; and on such grounds the whole 
 race is condemned. The Mahometan gentry were informed 
 through the public crier by the newly arrived young white 
 Missionary, that since his arrival, and the departure of the 
 African Archdeacon, they need not fear for the virtue of their 
 households. Is not this a libel by inuendo ? If the superseded 
 Church dignitary were a white man, he would fill the Religious 
 journals with his indignant outcry : he is a black man, and 
 he must submit ; he is not supplied with a copy of the charges, 
 though they are the subject of notoriety on the Niger. To 
 a lover of fair-play such incidents seem lamentable, and supply 
 another reason for the independence of a Native Church under 
 its own Bishop. 
 
 Sometimes we read extravagant praises of the piety of a Native 
 congregation, and the proportion of communicants to the con- 
 gregation is held up as an example to the Home-Church ; we 
 read of daily family-prayer in humble huts, and reading of 
 the Scriptures. In the early stage of the Missions the converts 
 were adults, and conversions were real, and there was a new 
 creature: to these succeeded a generation of Natives born as 
 Christians, and, as time went on, some fell away from the high 
 standard, and lived immoral lives ; and then the depreciation 
 becomes extravagant and unjust. A young Missionary goes out 
 to the field, wound up to the highest pitch by Keswick, or 
 Mildmay, or a Holiness-Retreat, and to him the state of the 
 poor neo-Christians seems abominable, and sweeping censure, 
 arid clean sweeps of Agents, take place ; in this way the opinion 
 of the home-staying committee as to the character of a people 
 is formed. Some experienced Missionaries in Africa write 
 more cautiously, mercifully, and in a higher Christian spirit : 
 here is one : 
 
 " The arrangement made, when the Bishop was here, which 
 " brought me into closer connection with the congregation, has 
 " made me much more alive to the weaknesses and failings of 
 " our people than I was previously. There are some humble, 
 " earnest Souls in that congregation, such as would give strength 
 " to, and illustrate true Christian life in, any congregation, in 
 " this country or elsewhere. But there is much worldliness and 
 "indifference to Spiritual Religion; there is a good deal of 
 " weakness, which comes from half-heartedness, and from 
 " adherence to some superstitious ideas; and there is a good 
 
( 371 ) 
 
 " deal, that would not accord with social and Moral Laws. 
 " Christianity has yet a great work to do in the congregation 
 " before it can be regarded as a people given wholly to God's 
 " Service, and as enjoying the blessings of those, who conform 
 " to Divine Laws. There is less to encourage than J thought 
 " there was before my relation to this congregation was as close 
 " as it has been for the greater part of the past year. It seems 
 " to me, that for years past there has been a considerable leakage 
 " from the congregation. In the minds of many Religion has 
 " had but a decreasing power ; many have drifted awav from 
 " the Church, and in not a few instances have been lost sight of. 
 
 " One cannot feel satisfied with things as they are. One 
 " experiences a longing, that all our people should be more 
 " truly and decidedly on the Lord's side, that they should be 
 " the Master's epistles, known and read by those around them, 
 " and be more evidently pressing forward towards those things, 
 " which are before them. I have sometimes dwelt fondly on 
 " the different state of things, which existed here in the early 
 " days of the Mission, when the progress of the Gospel roused 
 " its opponents to active and bitter persecution of its adherents. 
 " But there comes in the thought, that it would have been well 
 " for the reputations of some of those, who were persecuted, 
 " and bore the ordeal with Christian patience and fortitude, if 
 " they had been taken away earlier. They had the martyr spirit, 
 " apparently, but some of them failed sadly in Christian living. 
 " It is in this respect that our people fail now. Here temptations 
 " are many and strong. They are ever present. There is so 
 " much, that a professing Christian can do that is inconsistent 
 " with the principles of his holy Religion, without being lowered 
 " in public esteem, that the temptation is hardly realized as such. 
 " There are those who have committed the keeping of their 
 " Souls to the Master, and their lives show, that He is able to 
 " keep them. May God greatly multiply the number of such ! " 
 
 I extract some few lines from a sober and thoughtful Report 
 of the S.P.G., 1890, where no Sensationalism finds a place, and 
 the error, if any, is on the side of coldness : 
 
 " The old Missions in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, for 
 " which the Society has cared since 1829, have long been the 
 " subject of anxiety and disappointment. The number of ad- 
 " herents is still believed to be about 3,000, but there has been 
 " too much reason to fear, that of many the Christianity has been 
 " little more than a nominal profession, and of high Spiritual life 
 " there have been few signs. No doubt there have been many 
 " mistakes in the past, on the part of some Missionaries, who 
 " have laboured with all fidelity. There has been too eager 
 " a desire to swell the number of converts. It was discovered 
 " many years ago, that the teachers were selected rather for their 
 
(372 ) 
 
 " social influence among their fellows than for intellectual or 
 " Spiritual qualities." 
 
 While preparing this paper I received a letter from the late 
 ' Sir Charles Aitchison, one of my old assistants in India in 1858, 
 who had since risen to be a Governor successively of two Provinces 
 with a population of many Millions of Hindu, Mahometan, and 
 Buddhist, himself a pious man, and a Vice-President of a 
 Missionary Society, from which I quote the following as bearing 
 on the adherence of a Native Church : 
 
 " I hope, that you will succeed in convincing those, who guide 
 " our Missions, of the necessity of allowing the Native Church 
 " more freedom of self-development. By refusing it we greatly 
 " hamper the spread of Christian Truth in India. Why should 
 " Missionary Societies impose on Native Churches conditions, 
 " which are no essential part of the New Testament-System, but 
 " the outcome of a political life in past centuries in Europe, 
 " which the people of India never have lived, never can live, 
 " and of which they cannot understand the purport?" There 
 is much obvious 'truth in this, and one of the sad experiences 
 of Home-Churches and Home-committees will be in the middle 
 of the next century to witness their babes in Christ, after arriving 
 at maturity, shaking themselves free from European mediaeval 
 fetters, and possibly re-minting the Divine ore of Christ's Truth, 
 mixed up with the alloy of their ancient Faith, just as the 
 Church of the fourth and fifth centuries acted as regards neo- 
 Platonism and the old Roman Theogony. 
 
 And after all, if it be clearly proved, as I think it is, that much 
 of Christian Ritual is derived from Pagan ceremonials, and the 
 form of the Christian Creeds is clothed in the terminology of 
 the Greek Schools of Philosophy, if the heart of the worshipper 
 goes out to God, if the simple doctrines of the Gospel stand 
 out like jewels from the highly ornamented setting, if real 
 Holiness, not ceremonial cleanness, is sought after, if the so- 
 called Christian is in reality a follower of ChrUst, what does it 
 matter ? There is a vast abyss of thought betwixt the Sermon 
 on the Mount, and the Nicene Creed : one might believe 
 ex animo the latter, and still be a very indifferent Christian ; 
 one might be unable to believe it in toto, and yet be qualified by 
 Faith, Hope, and Charity, by Love to God and one's neighbour, 
 by taking Christ at His word, and by welcoming the Holy Spirit, 
 to find a humble corner in Paradise. If the neo-convert in India 
 and China in the course of the next century assimilates some- 
 thing of Manu, something of Buddha, something of Kong : 
 Fu-Tsee, we must not be surprised. The European Christians 
 chose to transfer the Asiatic-Semitic-Syrian germ into an Arian- 
 European setting, and to present it to the non-Christian world, 
 as the very Religion taught by Christ in Galilee and Judea: 
 
( 373 ) 
 
 what wonder if the neo-Christian of Eastern Asia, becoming 
 a careful student of the Old Testament and New Testament, and 
 free from all prejudices in favour of Greek Philosophy or Roman 
 Law, having his own Philosophy and his own Law cast in a 
 , totally different mould, strips the artificial leaves from the 
 artichoke, and substitutes for the use of his own Millions the 
 same essence presented in a totally different environment ? 
 
 The Archbishop of York (Dr. Maclagan) used these remark- 
 able words at Sheffield in 1894: "Our aim is not to build up 
 " the Church of England in every corner of the earth, but to 
 " build up the Native Churches, each with its own characteristics, 
 
 " and its own special needs Although it may be, that at 
 
 " first there is nothing for it but to plant among them those 
 " formularies of Religion, which we have adopted ourselves, yet 
 " we must be ever ready to watch for the time, when they will 
 " be in a fit condition to govern their own Churches, to regulate 
 " their own affairs, and to develop, under the teaching of the 
 " Holy Spirit, their own aspects of Divine Truth. One longs for 
 " the time, when there will be Native Bishops ruling over Native 
 " Churches. Our Mission-work can never attain its own end 
 " in any Mission-field until that desirable result is brought about. 
 " No country ought to trust for its ruling Ministers to a foreign 
 " country. The Bishops of the Native Churches must not be 
 " exotics. They must belong to the country itself." 
 
 Dr. Maclean (" Gradual Conversion of Europe," p. 14) quotes 
 from a Sermon of Dr. Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, on 
 Missionary Effort, the following words : " Is it too much to 
 " believe that, as there has been a Greek, a Latin, and a Teutonic 
 " Church, so there shall gradually arise an Oriental Christianity, 
 " and an Oriental Theology ? " 
 
 Dr. Hatch raises his warning voice (" Bampton Lecture," 
 p. 218): "Any attempt to enforce, or try to enforce, a fixity 
 " of Ecclesiastical Form of a European mould will fail : Forms 
 " must be elastic, and vary from age to age, and clime to clime." 
 The particular Form may be good in itself for the English 
 Church, but it does not follow, that it will be good for Japanese, 
 Chinese, and Indian, Churches. I heard the Bishop of Japan at 
 the S.P.G. boldly state, that the Japanese Church would not 
 accept the Book of Common Prayer. The power to readjust 
 existing Institutions so as to meet novel requirements indicates 
 Divine strength : the environment being changed, the machinery 
 must be changed also : Christianity will shape itself in new 
 forms to meet new conditions, and satisfy new aspirations : in 
 India we have already had an instance of expectation of an 
 immediate appearance of Christ entertained by thousands : we 
 may have instances of that sublime enthusiasm, which drives 
 men and women into asceticism : the Early Church in Europe 
 
( 374 ) 
 
 presented such phenomena : we may expect the same in the 
 Asiatic Churches. 
 
 An old Missionary of thirty-five years in India, Robert Clarke, 
 and known to me all that time, called on me, and I discussed 
 the subject : the anxiety, which he felt, was different from 
 mine : his desire was to prolong the control of the Missionary 
 Society, which belonged to one shade of thought of the national 
 Church of England, so as to prevent the territorial Bishop, who 
 belonged to another shade of thought, introducing into the 
 nascent Christianity ritualistic practices, which, though tolerated 
 by the Church, were abominable in the eyes of the Missionary 
 Society, and of the Agents, which they send out : this, no 
 doubt, is a real difficulty, and a deplorable one, but it has had 
 to be faced in the Colonial, Churches, and is one of the results 
 of the unhappy divisions of the Church of England. I have 
 already alluded to the possibility of a young Native Church, 
 created by the Church of England, passing into Nonconformity, 
 or the Church of Rome : it is impossible to control the Future : 
 the real policy is to prepare the Native Church for self-support, 
 self-respect, self-Sacrifice, and independence, and then leave the 
 issue to God. His Holy Spirit will not fail. 
 
 Those, who are hard upon the poor Negro of the Niger, and 
 the neo-Christians of South India, conveniently forget all about 
 the moral character of the City of London, and its streets 
 reeking with drunkenness, and sexual profligacy. After a life 
 of more than one thousand years, it is only this year, that the 
 English Church has passed a Canon to get free from the stain 
 of profligate Clergy. And all this in spite of the long discipline 
 of centuries, Pulpits, and Sermons, Sorrow following Sin, , 
 Bibles laid open, consciences roused by public denunciations 
 and private advice ; and yet it is expected by the narrow vision 
 of a Missionary committee, that the poor Negro, still suffering 
 from the consequences of Christian Sin during the last century, 
 should rise per saltum into the glorious light of Christian 
 Morality, a light which sometimes he has not the strength 
 to bear. Still, God has not left Himself without a witness in 
 this generation, and even the. most bitter hater; and most 
 contemptuous despiser, of the African can point to no blemish 
 in the moral life of good Samuel Crowther, which lies like an 
 open book before us, from the age of 14 to 84. 
 
 Dr. Stoughton sympathetically remarks : " Think of the 
 heathen-surroundings, heathen-trainings, heathen-relations:" 
 
 Alas ! alas ! " Servabit odorem testa diu." 
 
 Hear what Bishop Lightfoot, my own special guide, says : 
 "Our mode of dealing with the Indian has been too, con- 
 
( 375 ) 
 
 " ventional, too English. Indian Christianity can never be cast 
 " into the same mould as English Christianity. The stamp of 
 " teaching, the mode of life, which experience has justified 
 " as the best possible for an English parish, may be very unfit, 
 " when transported to an Indian soil : we must become as 
 " Indians to the Indian, if we would win India to Christ." 
 — " Comparative Progress of Ancient and Modern Missions," 
 1873, page 14. 
 
 The following suggestion, made by the Rev. J. Barton, is 
 one deserving of all consideration, as coming from one, who 
 has great practical knowledge of the subject, and is kindly 
 disposed to the Natives : " Let the Dioceses be small, and several 
 " Native Bishops be appointed to them, on most moderate 
 " stipends, without any pretence of secular title or dignity, or 
 " undue elevation above the Pastors, beyond what is required 
 " for the maintenance of the authority of the office." So far I 
 am with him, but to place these Bishops with the titles of 
 Assistant or Suffragan, men advanced in life, with personal 
 and local experience, under the control of a young, perfectly 
 uninformed, Bishop from England would produce the very evils, 
 which it is the object of this paper to avoid ; it is mere racial 
 pride, that suggests this : if the African had his way, he would 
 exclude every white man from the country : it is very much the 
 same in every country ; it is a low form of Chauvinism, and 
 not fit to be entertained in the building up of a Christian 
 Church. Somehow or other that Church has been built up 
 among many races of what appeared very inferior material, but 
 it has proved sufficient to carry on the Gospel from generation 
 to generation : we have the example on one side of the up- 
 rooted Roman Catholic Churches, when Political troubles in 
 Europe stopped the supply of European Priests to Africa, and 
 South America : we have the example of the Oriental Churches 
 in West Asia, and North Africa, which have managed by a con- 
 tinuous supply of indigenous Priests and Bishops, though cut 
 off from fellowship with any other Christian Church, and cruelly 
 oppressed by the Mahometan, to maintain their vitality : I assert, 
 that the maintenance of vitality in a Church is one of the chief 
 objects of Missions. 
 
 It may be argued, that the appointment of a Native Bishop 
 will prove a failure, and that a failure is a stumbling-block in 
 the way of further advance. Have no white Bishops ever 
 proved a failure ? Do we not see in our midst Episcopal 
 personages, who have turned their backs on the plough, and 
 forgotten their high Duty, to which they were consecrated, 
 merely for private or domestic convenience ? They have not 
 been willing, like Bishops Caldwell and Sargent, to die amidst 
 their flock. Are not some Bishops a veritable impediment 
 
( 376 ) 
 
 to Missionary-work, the vacation of whose offices would be 
 a blessing to Evangelization ? The longer that the Missionary 
 Society goes on playing with this subject, as a cat plays with a 
 mouse, the less it will like it. There comes up a murmur from 
 every part of the Mission-field against the over-centralization in 
 the committee-room of the many-sided work of the Mission : 
 poor weak human nature thus shows itself. The busybodies on 
 the committee, and the self-satisfied Secretary, are little men, 
 who love power, and flatter themselves, that they know better 
 than the man on the spot. The Missionary committee is an 
 admirable machine for getting in funds ; a fairly good machine 
 for training Missionaries, fitting them out, giving them leave to 
 marry, providing for Missionary children, and for devising new 
 fields for Missionary enterprize. But it is a totally inadequate 
 machine for controlling, or rather guiding, the wonderful spon- 
 taneous growth of young Native Churches, which present totally 
 different phenomena, and idiosyncrasies, in different parts of 
 the world. 
 
 The Missionary committee, in order to get in the funds, is 
 compelled to pander to the weakest side of its fanciful, and 
 sensational, supporters, by the breath of whose favour it exists 
 from year to year. In an Evangelical Society, the Opium-Trade, 
 Caste, Ritualism, and Roman Catholicism, must be annually 
 abused : a particular kind of vague transcendental phraseology, 
 with the use of the Divine name repeated in nearly every page, 
 must be had recourse to. The imagination and fond dreams of 
 the least capable of its many thousand supporters must be con- 
 sulted. In my presence the Secretary informed a committee, 
 that the omission of the annual meaningless formal curse uttered 
 against the Opium-Trade from the Annual report read in Exeter 
 Hall, would give pain to worthy souls, who require this kind of 
 pabulum to their Missionary palates : however, wiser counsels 
 prevailed, and it was omitted. 
 
 Some kind of Statesmanlike view must be taken of the 
 situation. We are creating a great Spiritual Power, which will 
 outlive the British Nation, and its Political Domination. Some 
 sense of historic continuity in the great story of the Life, 
 the never-ending Life, of Christ's Church must be felt. No 
 Christian Church can last without independence. A great Church, 
 like that of the Church of England, in the hour of its greatness, 
 and the noontide of its glorious work of worldwide Evangeli- 
 zation, should evince some sympathy with the just aspirations of 
 younger, weaker, and less fortunate, Churches. Let us not 
 forget the sad lesson taught by the Eighteenth century. A little 
 more sympathy with Wesley might have prevented a lamentable 
 secession. Let us take heed, lest by want of sympathy with the 
 nascent Christianities all over the world, we drive them out of 
 
( 377 ) 
 
 the pale of the Episcopal Church, or at least out of our 
 Communion. 
 
 I have done what seemed a Duty in making this protest. I 
 learned my first Missionary lesson in India fifty years ago from 
 the lips of Bishop Daniel Wilson, of Calcutta, and it has been 
 the joy of my life. Hear the words of Dr. Westcott, Bishop of 
 Durham, to whose teaching in my old age I am more indebted 
 than I can express in words: "The work of Missions, I say 
 " again, is our own work. We need, we sadly need, the Grace 
 " of unity. Those, who work upon the Mission-field, tell us that 
 " they have already been allowed to see the beginning of the 
 " great issue ; and I venture myself to look forward to the time, 
 " when the Native Churches of India and the Far East shall 
 " realize that ideal, which rises before our eyes, of a great Church, 
 " pure in its Scriptural simplicity and Apostolic in its consti- 
 " tution." I learned how to treat subject, and so-called inferior, 
 races with sympathy from my friends and Masters in the art of 
 Rule, John Lord Lawrence, and Sir Bartle Frere. We may not 
 find, that every Native Pastor develops into the proportions of 
 Bishops Caldwell, or Sargent, or Samuel Crowther ; still less 
 shall we find the chance Curate, upon whom the eyes of the 
 Honorary Secretary fall, evince the like capacity. Men, thus 
 chosen by haphazard, may be fit to be Missionary Bishops, to 
 lead the forlorn hope, to suffer hardship and be strong, like 
 a modern Paul. Self- Sacrifice of this kind will always be 
 wanted. But for the peaceful, unsensational, Duties of the 
 overseer, or eVeWon-os, of a young Native Church, a man like 
 unto themselves is required, a coloured Chief-Pastor among 
 coloured Pastors, and a dusky father of dusky Spiritual children. 
 
 ' Ett aXijOeias KaTakafifiavofJiai^ oti 
 
 ovk e'ffTi 7rpoau>7ro\7)TTTr]S 6 0e6s. — Acts, X, 34. 
 
 June, 1892-1895. 
 
 2. Speech at the Missionary Conference of the Church 
 of England, 1894, in London. 
 
 It seems presumptuous in me, as a layman, to follow so many 
 of my right reverend Fathers, and reverend Brothers, who have 
 delivered their opinions before me, but this is one of the most 
 important questions of the Church, looking into the Future. My 
 remarks are confined to Native Indian, and African self- 
 supporting Churches, and to Native Bishops. One hundred 
 
(378 ) 
 
 years have elapsed since the Church of England commenced 
 Mission-work in earnest, for it began at the close of the last 
 century, and during half that period I have had the privilege 
 and honour of watching the moves on the Missionary chess- 
 board, not only in India and Africa, but in every part of the 
 globe ; and sometimes those, who watch the game, see more than 
 the players. It seems to me that, if we allow the present policy 
 to continue in force, there is extreme danger", that at the end of 
 the Nineteenth century there will not be one single independent, 
 self-supporting, Native Church, governed by its own Native 
 Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Let us look back to History, 
 and mark the warnings, which it gives us. We are blindly 
 following in the steps of the Church of Rome. In South 
 America and West Africa it had Missions remarkable for power 
 and greatness. But that Church never allowed anything to be 
 done without the agency of Europeans, and so, when political 
 troubles arose, there was no innate Power in the Native Church 
 to continue its existence by ordaining Native Priests and con- 
 secrating Native Bishops as occasion arose after the withdrawal 
 of the Europeans. Consequently the Churches were swept 
 away. The contrary example is exhibited by the Syrian, 
 Nestorian, Assyrian, Armenian, and Georgian, Churches in Asia, 
 and the Koptic and Ethiopian in Africa. They were not very 
 Spiritual, not very great, not very strong ; yet from the time of 
 the Great Councils they have kept their candlestick lighted, 
 have had an uninterrupted succession of Bishops and Priests and 
 Deacons, and we are doing our best to help them to continue 
 their existence, and to educate them. During the whole period 
 of Mahometan rule they had never been destroyed. An 
 independent, self-supporting Church is the desired object, the 
 reward, and should be the result, of our labours. Some years 
 ago an African Christian of independent position called on the 
 late Mr. Venn, Secretary of the C.M.S., and remarked how much 
 money he was spending on secular objects, good objects, to 
 improve his country. Mr. Venn asked him why he did not 
 spend some of his superfluous money in Missionary-work. His 
 reply was : " Trust us ; give us an independent Church, and we 
 will try to be worthy of it." This remark touched Mr. Venn 
 closely, and led to trie partial independence of the Sierra Leone 
 Church ; the pastorates are independent, but the Bishop is 
 salaried and appointed by the British Colonial Office. It led 
 also to the appointment of a Negro Bishop in the Niger 
 Diocese ; and with reference to the remarks of the Bishop of 
 Bloemfontein, I am glad to say, that there never was the least 
 doubt as to the purity, morality, and goodness, of the late Bishop 
 Crowther. If nothing more had been done by Missionaries in 
 Africa, we should still have had cause to rejoice, that they had 
 
( 379 ) 
 
 taught a freed slave to live a stainless life of seventy years in the 
 midst of his countrymen ; and, when the old Negro Bishop died 
 at the age of eighty-four years, he was deeply lamented. 
 
 Well, there was the Hon. and Rev. James Johnson, Native 
 Pastor of the Bread Fruit Church in Lagos, and member of the 
 Council of the British Governor of Lagos ; there was Arch- 
 deacon Dandeson Crowther, of the Niger Delta, son of the 
 Bishop. If an Englishman happened to converse with these 
 Native Clergymen in the dark, or read their letters, he would 
 suppose, that they were English Clergymen, so much had they 
 assimilated the best features of the English character ; yet to fill 
 the vacant Bishopric some Clergyman from an English parish 
 must be looked for, not knowing a word of the Language of the 
 people. I took the liberty of remonstrating with his Grace the 
 Archbishop, who condescendingly allowed me to correspond 
 with him on this subject, and I was bold enough to write: "Do 
 not allow Canterbury to follow the example of Rome, and crush 
 the independence of the Native African Church." His Grace 
 deemed it right to appoint an otherwise excellent man, Dr. Hill, 
 who died on landing at Lagos : the climate is deadly to a white 
 man; sooner or later they all die. One point was gained, that 
 two excellent young Negroes were appointed Assistant Bishops ; 
 but, if the circumstances had been reversed, would any English 
 Clergyman have liked to have been offered to be an Assistant 
 Bishop ? Why treat the Negro in his own country as an inferior 
 person in Christ's Church to a white man ? A remark fell from 
 a previous speaker, the son of my honoured friend, the Bishop 
 of Durham. He seemed to say (as I understood him), that the 
 people of India could, not produce men fit for Bishops. I have 
 spent twenty-five years in that country, and in every branch of 
 the service of the State there are Judges, Administrators, 
 Councillors, and military Commanders : the people of India are 
 quite fit for the highest secular office : is it possible that there is 
 not a man fit to be a Bishop in the fifth generation of Native 
 Christians ? This does seem an anomaly, for in England 
 the same family and classes of society, that produce Statesmen 
 and soldiers, also produce Bishops. I maintain, that the people 
 of India can produce Bishops, if we have the Grace to look in 
 the right way for them. 
 
 Albocracy, or the " white-man-prejudice against the coloured 
 race," must be got over. It has been the bane of the Church, 
 where it has prevailed. Not a penny should go from the 
 Missionary Associations or Churches in England to support the 
 Pastors and Chief Pastor of settled Christian congregations. 
 Set the Church free, and tell them, ", Now you are independent : 
 support yourselves, and the European Pioneer-Mission will pass 
 on to Regions beyond." Here at the end of the Nineteenth 
 
( 380 ) 
 
 century all the Native. Churches are still in bondage, and we may 
 go into the Twentieth century in the same way, for the difficulties 
 will increase so long as Native Churches remain strangers to 
 intellectual and Spiritual independence. I sit down enforcing 
 my opinion in favour of Native independent self-supporting 
 Churches and a Native Episcopate. The material power of 
 Great Britain may disappear like the power of Rome and Spain ; 
 but the same Holy Spirit, which supported the infant Churches 
 in Asia, Africa, and Europe in the first centuries after Christ, will 
 not be wanting to sustain and guide the Spirituality and 
 Orthodoxy of Native Churches planted by Europeans, and no 
 longer crushed and insulted by an alien stepmother after they 
 had attained to their adolescence. 
 
 1891-1895. 
 
 3. Letter from Dr. R. N. Cust, Chairman of the African 
 sub-Committee of the Church Missionary Society, 
 to the Secretary attached to the sub-Committee, 
 March 23, 1892. 
 
 Dear Friend, 
 
 I listened with pleasure to the weighty words, with 
 which you closed our discussion yesterday, on the subject of 
 the Niger- Bishopric. The discussion had lasted two hours 
 and a half, and had elicited many wise and kindly words from 
 at least twelve speakers, all competent to give an opinion, some, 
 like our two brethren just returned from Africa, most peculiarly 
 fitted to do so. I expressed no opinion : my reason was that, 
 as Chairman of the sub-Committee, my turn came last, and 
 after so long a debate, closing with your most impressive 
 address, I felt it unwise to prolong the discussion, which was 
 accordingly adjourned till some day next week. 
 
 To all students of Church History, and careful surveyors 
 of the position of Christ's Church in the world at this moment, 
 the question at issue is most grave, and a wrong decision would 
 be pregnant with lamentable consequences. I am an European 
 and an Englishman ; but my cosmopolitan Knowledge compels 
 me, to lay down as an axiom, that in the Church of Christ, 
 there is no difference between Jew or Greek, between black 
 man or white man, and that it is a mistake to argue on the 
 foregone conclusion, that every Englishman, selected by chance 
 out of an English curacy, is fit to be a Bishop, while the 
 
( 381 ). 
 
 black man on the spot, ordained, and pointed out by circum- 
 stances for the Duty, is unfit. Such is the weakness of man, 
 that, if the Negro were in power, he would exclude every white 
 man from office : let us try to be taller than the majority of our 
 fellows, and rise superior to such prejudices, throw our 
 thoughts forward to the closing years of the next century, 
 and consider what would conduce most to the well-being and 
 continuity of the Church of Christ on the Niger. 
 
 My studies of the Church of Christ in past centuries, and 
 contemplation of its development in this century in every part of 
 the, world, have led me to the firm conviction, that Episcopacy, 
 as distinguished from State-imposed Prelacy, in some form or 
 other, is, sooner or later, the certain form of Church organization 
 in Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania : we know, that the only • 
 Churches, which have survived from the past, are Episcopal. 
 Nations in a low state of culture, and with no settled Con- 
 stitution, or fitness for self-government, must be ruled both in 
 things Secular and Spiritual, and an 'Ettigkowos or chief shepherd, 
 or Spiritual overseer, is a thing indispensable. Time will show 
 whether non-Episcopal Churches will survive the strain. The 
 Wesleyans are already passing into elective Episcopacy. 
 
 But Episcopacy to be enduring must be indigenous : to send 
 a succession of strangers in colour, blood, culture, and Language 
 to rule over a Native Church is a thing indefensible in theory, 
 and intolerable in practice : what does History tell us ? All 
 the fallen Churches of Asia and Africa, viz., the Greek, Armenian, 
 Georgian, Syrian, Nestorian, the Church in South India, the 
 Abyssinian and Koptic in Egypt, are Episcopal ; they are not, 
 indeed, very Spiritual, because they have been oppressed by their 
 Mahometan Rulers, but they have survived the struggle of 
 centuries : their candlestick is still lighted ; they have in them 
 still the germs of life. England received the Gospel from Rome ; 
 but how long did it tolerate Italian Bishops ? The very 
 existence of a real Church depends on the Clergy, from the 
 highest to the lowest, being indigenous. 
 
 The Church of Rome has ever, to the best of its power, 
 restricted the Episcopacy' to Europeans, or European ized 
 Asiatics ; but it is so far wiser than the Protestant Churches, 
 that it selects tried Missionaries, trained to the work, celibates, 
 men who have no intention of coming home every two years 
 on furlough, to visit their families or consult a committee, or 
 on pension, but intend to die amidst their people : it is true, 
 that in India that ideal has been realized in the case of the late 
 Bishops Sargent and Caldwell ; but in Equatorial Africa it is 
 not possible : the European Bishop of the Protestant Churches 
 has to come home every second or third year, and often puts off 
 his return too late and dies. He is selected at haphazard from 
 
( 382 ) 
 
 the younger Clergy, with no knowledge of the work, the 
 Language, or the people : he cannot even communicate with 
 his Native Clergy, unless they have learnt his Language : he is 
 not in sympathy with the aspirations and feelings of the African. 
 The Negro is as proud of his race as the Englishman is of his : 
 what we call African prejudice and weakness, they call African 
 nationality, and they are in the right. 
 
 What has happened to the Church of Rome with their Euro- 
 pean Episcopacy? In South America, West Africa, India, China, 
 we read the same story: as soon as the supply of Episcopal 
 personages for political reasons failed, the Church' collapsed, and 
 the nominal Christians returned to Heathendom. The Romish 
 crosses and rosaries of the African Mission are now the Fetiches 
 of the Heathen. The English Nation must anticipate a time, 
 when their hand will be shortened, and their power-pass away; 
 but, if the "Churches planted by the Church of England are 
 provided with Native Pastors and Bishops, they will, by the 
 Grace of God, last for ever: if it depends on a chance English 
 Curate to be Bishop, who will stay a few years and then die, 
 or disappear, the Church will soon fall to the ground. 
 
 My opinion is, therefore, given without hesitation in favour of 
 a Native Episcopacy on the Niger, and at once. We have made the 
 trial in dear Bishop Crowther, and that trial has not been a failure. 
 
 The suggestion of a Native Suffragan under an European 
 Bishop, who dwells in another Province, will not meet the 
 requirements, which I have laid down. As the life and health 
 of a white Bishop in West Africa only lasts' a few years, the 
 new Bishop may not continue in sympathy with the Suffragan 
 of his predecessor. If the Bishop be for long periods absent, 
 the Suffragan will practically be master of the position ; he will 
 have the power without the status or responsibility : if the 
 Bishop interferes by letter in all details, there will be friction : 
 but what I lay stress on is, that the continuity of a Church 
 depends upon the Bishop being elected by his countrymen, by 
 the Church itself, if it be free from Prelacy and Secular bondage, 
 or at least by its national Sovereign. The suggestion of a black 
 Suffragan under a white alien Bishop will not satisfy the 
 aspirations of the Negro race in West Africa, imbued, as they 
 are, with ideas of liberty, brought over the Atlantic from the 
 free Negro in the United States. 
 
 Can it be said that there are no Negro ordained Pastors 
 available ? There are three Native Pastors fit for the office 
 from age, character, capacity, and Spirituality : 
 
 (i) Hon. and Rev. James Johnson of Lagos. 
 
 (z) Very Rev. Archdeacon Dandeson Crowther of the Niger. 
 
 (3) Very Rev. Archdeacon Henry Johnson, late of the Niger. 
 
( 383 ) 
 
 It would be ridiculous to say, that one of these men was 
 perfect : we cannot say so much of the English Bishops : they 
 are all above fifty years of age : I am the friend and corre- 
 spondent of all : if their letters fell into the hands of anyone 
 who did not know them, he would not find in their writing, 
 or style, or expression, anything that differed from an ordinary 
 English Clergyman : the character of all is above suspicion. 
 Of the three I place James Johnson first : he is a Member of 
 the Council of the Governor of Lagos, a man of power, and 
 eloquence, and can hold his own : it is said, that he is 1 too much 
 a friend of Dr. Blyden, the American Champion of the Negro 
 race ; but I have yet to learn, that he has imbibed anything 
 contrary to Christian Morals from his friend, or even that his 
 friend, whose published works I have read with admiration, 
 entertains such views himself. At any rate, that might be 
 inquired into. We have the fact stated that Archdeacon 
 Crowther would cooperate willingly with James Johnson as 
 -Bishop, and this is very important. The appointment would 
 be popular, and it must be understood, that the salary must be 
 provided in part, or gradually entirely, by the Christian Com- 
 munity : it is an absurdity for a Community to claim independence, 
 and at the same time refrain from supporting its own Ministers : 
 if the Church Missionary Society supplies any portion of the 
 stipend of the Bishop, it should be on the ground, that he 
 is a Missionary Bishop as well, superintending the work of 
 Evangelists to the non-Christian population. 
 
 A purely Missionary Bishop, such as the Bishop in Eastern 
 Equatorial Africa, should of course be an Englishman, until the 
 time comes that a Christianity is formed, and Native Pastors 
 are appointed, supported by their flocks. We are doing an 
 irremediable injury to the Christian Churches of the Future, if 
 we do not place upon the neo-Christian congregations the Duty 
 of supporting their Pastors, and if we, following the example of 
 the Church of Rome, seek to exert a control over distant 
 Native Churches : it is obvious, that the Romish Priest cares 
 much more for the interests of his Church than the Salvation 
 of the Souls of his flock. We should take care, that we do not 
 fall into the same error ; and the time has now come for us to 
 show to the Native Church on the Niger, that we place their 
 Spiritual interests, and national prejudices, above all other 
 considerations. 
 
 1895. 
 
( 384 ) 
 
 B. Native Place of Worship, School, Village. 
 
 i. The Native Place of Worship. 
 
 2. The Native Christian Village and School. 
 
 3. The Mission-School. 
 
 .4. The Native non-Christian Village. 
 5. The National Festival. 
 
 1. The Native Place of Worship. 
 
 Chance led my steps one Sunday evening to the door of a 
 Native Christian Church, belonging to one of our Missions in 
 one of the largest towns in India. The bells were chiming from 
 the tower, that sweetest of sounds : the hands of the clock 
 pointed to the hour of five, and the congregation was flocking 
 in at the door, men, women, and children. There was some- 
 thing soothing in the sight : a dream of the past came over me, 
 of the absent and of home, associated with feelings of Religion 
 and purity, and, joining the simple crowd with uncovered head 
 and reverential feelings, I entered. 
 
 It has been my lot to sit in the Churches, and join in the 
 Worship, of many branches of the great family of Christians, in 
 far and distant countries, in divers and sundry Languages, in the 
 cold and formal Worship of Northern, in the ardent and demon- 
 strative adoration of Southern Europe, in the evangelical 
 devotions of the Reformed Church of England, in the dark and 
 unsightly oratories of poor degraded Syria; but, though some 
 years a resident in India, this was the first time, that I had 
 joined in the prayers of the chosen few of those Millions, whose 
 destinies we govern. 
 
 The building was handsome and appropriate. Art had lent 
 its assistance to the decoration of the House of God, but with 
 simplicity : there was that, which was sufficiently distinctive 
 from the ornaments of ordinary houses, to recalf wandering 
 thoughts to a recollection of the place ; but there was nothing 
 calculated to transform the House into a Temple, or to lead 
 weak minds to suppose, that the dead walls constituted Christ's 
 Church, and not the living persons of the congregation. Here, 
 at least, no pride or pomp of circumstance disfigured the equality 
 of the Worshippers ; no shining emblems of ephemeral station 
 dishonoured the assembly ; the floor sounded to no clank of 
 
( 385 ) 
 
 martial tread ; the sun, as it streamed through the windows, 
 lighted on no dazzling insignia or scarlet trappings : in this 
 assemblage, he, that was the least, was even as the greatest. 
 
 I looked down the nave with interest and heartfelt pleasure. 
 According to the custom of Oriental Churches, the sexes were 
 divided : on the one side the men and boys of the congre- 
 gation ; on the other the matrons, young women, and children. 
 Nearly all were clothed in white. The men were bareheaded as 
 well as barefooted, the reason for which I did not understand, 
 such not being the practice of Oriental Churches elsewhere, 
 and manifestly inconvenient, and as such to be avoided. The 
 women had their heads decently covered in the folds of their 
 scarves. I saw many sweet expressive countenances, not fearing, 
 in the simple confidence of female virtue, to look in the faces of 
 their husbands, their parents, and their acquaintances, proud 
 of the conceded privilege of equality with their helpmates, with 
 hopes for the Future dependent on their own exertions; shrinking 
 from no recollections of a Past, stained by corruption and 
 degradation. Christianity, if thou hast done this alone, restoring 
 the modest blush o'f innocence to conscious and fearless virtue, 
 thou art the Benefactor of our race ! 
 
 But the Service has commenced : a kind hand supplies me 
 with the Book of Life, and the Book of Prayer ; and that 
 Language, which had hitherto been familiar to me only as an 
 expression of the evil passions of the governed, and the hard 
 Laws of the Ruler, was now for the first time the vehicle to my 
 ears of praise and prayer. Dissociated from their familiar 
 words, which are merely the outward environments of the inward 
 Spirit, the moving Admonition of the Minister, the humble 
 Confession of the People, the Absolution, complete, but con- 
 ditional, came back to my senses, as an old strain of familiar 
 music, long heard, and often from the loved and revered lips of 
 my Father ; now first fully felt, when ringing from the chords 
 of a new, and hitherto untried, instrument. Many are the 
 Languages of men, one the Language of God. How is it, that 
 the voices of the children, responding in their deep and ringing 
 chorus (though the words are in a strange tongue), bring back 
 so truly, so vividly, forgotten Sabbaths and distant Churches ? 
 Is it, that there is but one sound for prayer and praise, that 
 human penitence can be expressed but in one tone ? Is it thus, 
 that the loud Hosannahs of the denizens of the earth will be 
 collected in one joyful chorus at the day of the Second Coming? 
 Is this the cry of the Cherubim and Seraphim ? I was struck 
 and delighted by the devout and attentive behaviour of the 
 congregation : when two or three are thus joined together, He 
 will surely be in the midst of them. 
 
 The Psalms and First Lesson were omitted, that the Service 
 
( 386 ) 
 
 might not be too long, and at the close of the Second Lesson 
 followed the Sacrament of Infant-Baptism ; and now I became 
 aware of another feature of order in this well-arranged congre- 
 gation, which from the position of my seat had hitherto escaped 
 my observation. In front of the Font, but with their backs 
 turned towards it, and concealed from the rest of the Church, 
 sat with solemn, thoughtful, and reverent, faces those, in whom 
 the Spirit of God was working for their Salvation : they were in, 
 but not of, our body ; they were candidates, awaiting Baptism, 
 when they had passed their ordeal, and by their consistent 
 conduct in the Past had given earnest for the Future: seated 
 they were in front of the Font, the waters of which were to 
 them for a season denied, while they beheld the newborn babe, 
 unconscious of all taint, even that of hereditary sin, admitted 
 before their eyes into the Covenant, which they were com- 
 mencing to appreciate. Never till then had I fully recognized, 
 or been sufficiently thankful for, the blessing of being born of 
 a Christian stock, with no fiery ordeal to go through ; no 
 parents, friends, and all, to desert for His sake ; no sad, mourn- 
 ful, but beloved and regretted, associations of the Past to look 
 lingeringly back upon ; no doubtful, scorned, and opprobrious, 
 Future to anticipate. I felt, that they had something to wish 
 for, which I had already in possession ; something, for which 
 they paid a great price, but which to me was a birthright, not 
 the right of being a Briton, but the privilege of being born 
 a Christian. But great will be their reward. Christian children . 
 of Christian parents ! feel for them, and do not in your pride 
 despise the weak and failing brother ! 
 
 Two infants were presented .to be baptized ; their swarthy 
 little faces peeping out of their white garments, and contrasting 
 strangely with the fair hand and face of the Minister. Here the 
 white man appeared in his true and proper dignity ! not the ex- 
 terminator, the stranger, the Ruler by a strong' arm, the enforcer 
 of arbitrary Laws, the one that is bowed down to, and yet shunned 
 in the streets ; that is openly courted, yet secretly scoffed at, and 
 despised as unclean : here I saw the race of the Anglo-Saxon 
 bestowing on its subject-people a greater skill, than the Science 
 of arms, a greater Miracle, than the triumph of manufactures. 
 We are a mighty, strong, and wise people : we have conquered 
 countries unknown to the Romans ; we have measured the paths 
 of the Heavens with a far-distending radius denied to the Greeks ; 
 the achievements of our Present surpass the wonders of their Past : 
 but here we spontaneously convey to our subjects that treasure, 
 of which they knew not, but which in the midst of our wealth we 
 value the most ; that strength, to which they never arrived, but 
 which in the midst of our pride is our greatest glory, the shame 
 of the Cross, and the Precious Promises of Salvation. Who is the 
 
( 387 ) 
 
 lowest in the eyes of the world amidst the congregation ? Upon 
 whom have the doubtful gifts of fortune fallen with abundance ? 
 The Minister takes the child of either in his arms, and signs him 
 with that sign, of which he ought never to be ashamed. 
 
 The sponsors knelt reverently round, and made their answers 
 with feeling. I looked into the features of these men, to see, if 
 any hidden sign would betray a difference between them, and 
 their Heathen brother, any flash of intelligence sparkle from 
 the eye of the mind which had comprehended such Truths. 
 There was none. He, that readeth the heart, will judge what 
 it is forbidden for man to know. 
 
 Then followed the three Collects, the Prayer for the Queen, 
 the Royal Family, the Clergy, Parliament, and all conditions of 
 Men ; and I wondered, as I saw the lips of the women and girls 
 articulating the words Victoria and Albert, what idea they con- 
 nected with the same, what strange pictures they had drawn in 
 their simple minds of the Royal Couple, and the Royal Children. 
 I could almost have wished, that the prayers of Native congre- 
 gations were reserved simply for those in authority over them. 
 
 After the Prayers followed a Hymn, sung by the congregation 
 to the accompaniment of a Harmonium : the chant from the 
 Hindustani Hymnbook possessed apparently but slight poetical 
 merit, but was well suited to the place, and well sung, showing 
 that the Natives of the country have a full appreciation of the 
 system of European music. But, while the Hosannah was 
 swelling up to the roof-beams from these untutored lips, I beheld 
 through the windows, which opened to the ground, the cort6ge 
 of a wealthy Raja sweeping by under the walls of the Church. 
 I heard the rattle of his equipage, as every screw and bolt gave 
 a music of its own. I could see from my place in the Church 
 this ignorant profligate, this bloated abomination of a man, con- 
 temptuously smiling, as the voices of the congregation reached 
 him. I saw the low truckling flatterer leaning over from the 
 back-seat, and with finger pointing to the building, and 
 chuckling laugh, telling what I knew to be some false scandal, 
 his version of what was going on in the interior. I saw the 
 whole at a glance, and comprehended it ; but busy memory, 
 roused by the incident, bore me back many a century to the 
 upper chamber of Troas, and to the school of Tyrannus. 
 I thought of the early Christians at Athens, at Corinth, at 
 Ephesus, and at Rome : thus and thus, as this debased Raja 
 now, did the noble Roman, the philosophic Greek, great in the 
 power of Science and Arms, once ride by, lolling in their chariot, 
 perhaps talking flippantly of, perhaps discussing seriously, the 
 manners arid customs of this new sect, these worshippers in the 
 Catacombs. With them was the flatterer, and busy mocker, the 
 sarcastic stoic, the lively atheist, the sycophantic eunuch, ready 
 
( 388 ) 
 
 to tell ridiculous stories for these good easy men to believe. 
 I thought of these things, and God forgive me, if /triumphed, 
 when I dwelt on the triumphs of God's Revelations, and antici- 
 pated new victories. I have seen standing erect the sign of the 
 Cross in the place, where the early Christians fought after 
 the manner of men in the Roman Amphitheatre. I have stood 
 on the Areopagus to contemplate the ruins of the Parthenon, 
 wondering how it looked, when Paul spoke of Christ and the 
 Resurrection : my voice has rung along the shores of Ionia : 
 " Demetrius, surely thy craft is in danger : where is thy Great 
 Diana of the Ephesians ? " No sound is heard in reply but 
 the splashing of the waves of the Ocean. Returning from the 
 past, in the full confidence of Faith, I pondered on what would 
 be the fate of the great non-Christian city around me. Will 
 not a day arrive, when the gilded pinnacle of that Hindu Temple 
 shining in the sun will be torn down, when the tapering minarets 
 of that Mahometan Mosque will be laid low ? Will it not be 
 more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the Day of Judgment, 
 than for this city, in which the Word of God is daily preached 
 in the streets, in whose ears the bells of this Church are ringing 
 weekly warnings for repentance ? Will not the men of Nineveh 
 rise up in judgment against them ? 
 
 But the Hymn has been finished, and the Sermon com- 
 menced : no new-fangled theories, no polemical discussions, no 
 metaphysical distinctions, no suggestion of Ritual observances, 
 fell from the lips of the Reverend Pastor, who himself was one 
 of the Natives of India predestined to Salvation. I heard a 
 father addressing his own children, expounding simple Scrip- 
 ture narrative with simpler applications. I turned back, and 
 noticed the mOuth opened in interest, the neck outstretched to 
 catch each word. I saw children hanging on the familiar notes 
 of the father. " We are told how Noah in obedience to divine 
 " authority built the Ark, how he and his family entered into 
 " it, and closed the door ; how the wicked scoffed and jeered 
 " at him : how at length the rain did descend, the fountains of 
 " the deep 'were opened, the wicked utterly destroyed, but those 
 " few in the Ark were saved. This Church, my brethren, is the 
 " Ark; over this city of unbelievers is impending the Deluge: 
 " hasten ye in." The page of Scripture further on supplies new 
 motives and fresh consolations : " We hear how Abraham, 
 " trusting in God, nothing doubting, left his country and 
 " kindred, things the nearest and dearest, to go he knew not 
 " whither : yet his Faith was rewarded. And ye, my brethren, 
 " who have sacrificed the ties of home for His sake, if ye endure 
 " to the end, will ye not have your reward also?" No wide 
 gulf separates the Preacher from his hearers : if he propounds 
 a subject interrogatively, the answer appears to burst from the 
 
( 389 ) 
 
 lips of an eager listener, and receives no check. I feel, that 
 one and all have derived instruction from such expositions, and 
 comfort from such counsels. Sincerely I pray, that the words 
 may rest grafted in our hearts, the peace of God on the congre- 
 gation, as they meekly and reverently disperse to their homes. 
 
 And who are the good, the great, men, who have wrought 
 this wondrous work ? Whose hands have offered this incense 
 of sweet savour to the Most High ? Who are those, who have 
 taken this new Jerusalem from the Jebusites, and planted this 
 new Canaan in the land- of the Heathen ? Who have kept 
 together these ten righteous, if peradventure for their sake the 
 sinful city may be spared ? There sit they, the shepherds 
 among their flock, the Christian warriors reposing with their 
 armour off after the combat. By their sides are their good 
 yokefellows, their wives, their fellow -labourers, who have 
 shared in the toil and the victory. On their breasts are no 
 proud insignia of battles, that they have fought, of victories, 
 that they have won : but with a good fight they have carried 
 the entrenchments of Sin and Satan, and have the one Cross 
 engraved on their hearts. They have not sat on earthly judg- 
 ment-seats, they have not collected the tribute of Nations, but 
 they will hereafter sit upon thrones judging the Heathen, they 
 will hereafter offer, as the fruit of their life-labour, a full harvest 
 of redeemed souls. They have no precedence given them in 
 mortal assemblies, but they will be reckoned among the Angels 
 of Heaven. They have not controlled in the Courts of Human 
 Justice the stormy struggles of man's bad heart ; but with the 
 Gospel as their rule, they have guided the economy of the Soul. 
 
 I never see a Missionary, but I blame my fate, that I am not 
 of them. Are they not to be envied, whose duties in this world 
 harmonize with those of the next ; zeal in their earthly vocations 
 promoting, not, as with us, retarding, the work of their own 
 Salvation ? They stand among the Heathen, as an ensign of 
 what each of us values most : the General represents our vic- 
 torious arms, the Governor our triumphs of administration, but 
 the Missionary displays our virtues, our patience, our Christian 
 charity, and shall we not be proud of him? I asked myself 
 how is it that so few of Great Britain's learned and pious sons 
 select this profession. The vision of one man from Macedonia 
 took Paul across the Hellespont, and will no one cross the 
 Indian Ocean for the millions, not in vision, but in reality ? 
 Will no young Augustine spring up to repay the debt of the 
 Occident to the Orient, to bring back the Sun to the East ? 
 Had I life to begin again, this would be my choice : the glories 
 and profits of other professions are but as vanity. We have 
 fought battles: they are scarcely known beyond the narrow limit 
 of the echo of the cannon. We have ruled over Provinces : 
 
( 390 ) 
 
 our fame is as soon forgotten, as we are gone. But should we 
 have saved Souls, a long line of Christians will carry back the 
 legends of their family to our era, and entwine our names with 
 the golden thread of grateful thanksgiving ! Who remembers 
 the Generals, the Proconsuls, of the time of the Csesars ? Who 
 remembers not the Apostles ? 
 
 Thence glanced my thoughts to the early converts, those, who 
 had borne the heat of the day, on whose foreheads I could trace 
 the lines of sorrow and early affliction (for the chain of the world 
 is still dear to us), softened, yet not effaced, by the sweet smile of 
 Faith and resignation. Perhaps in the records of this Church 
 will be handed down, as household-words, the names of these 
 early saints, who, when Christianity was young, forsook all 
 things for His sake. When far and wide over this beautiful, 
 and to me beloved, Indian land, in village and in town floats the 
 ensign of the Cross amidst a Christian people, then on many 
 a Sabbath-evening, when young and old are gathered together 
 for reading and meditation, will their tale be told : old men will 
 point to the ruined temples, and tell to wondering ears, how once 
 Idolatry existed in this land ; soft, tender, womanly cheeks will 
 be stained with tears at the sufferings of the Indian Stephens ; 
 young, manly hearts will glow in sympathy with the intrepid 
 bravery of the Indian Pauls. 
 
 We are standing on the threshold of mighty events : perhaps 
 there may be some amongst us, who will tarry till He comes. In 
 the early Christian Church we can trace three stages : the first, 
 when a few obscure men professed an unknown and unap- 
 preciated Faith, persecuted by fanaticism, and crushed by 
 Ignorance. Miracles had long since ceased, the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost no longer visibly descended ; but the second stage 
 was soon arrived at : thriving congregations began to erect their 
 heads amidst their neighbours, and maintain their rights, with 
 the tacit allowance, if not the sanction, of the Government. 
 Within three hundred years the Temple fell into ruins, and 
 the Cross was erected in the Market-place. 
 
 A few months ago (1852) it was my fortunate lot to join in 
 the Protestant Worship of a few sincere and sturdy Christians 
 in an upper room at Nazareth : no preaching was allowed in the 
 streets, no edifices were then dedicated to Worship; all was fear, 
 trembling, and the possibility of oppression and outrage, but for 
 the protection afforded by the British Consul ; here we have the 
 first stage before our eyes. In the Church, in which I now stood, 
 I recognize the features of the second stage : the well-ordered 
 congregation, the voice of the Preacher in the highways calling 
 loudly to repentance, the modest tower rising up in the outskirts 
 of the city, the bell calling cheerily to prayers, and this under 
 the sceptre of Great Britain in her Colonies. Thrice happy 
 
( 391 ) 
 
 Britain ! the extent of your conquests will be forgotten, for those 
 of Gengis and Timur have perished ; but your Missions will 
 never be forgotten, for they will have given Religion to thousands, 
 and the time will surely come, when the great Idol of Banaras 
 will cease to be an object of Worship. 
 
 Who would not then be a Missionary, the Great King's 
 Messenger, whose treasure is laid up in Heaven ? Those, who 
 cannot attain this high office, must give of their wealth, must give 
 of their pittance, must pray for them, as I did, as I followed the 
 last of the congregation out of the door, thinking, how sad would 
 be the .day, when, like Alexander, we shall have no more 
 countries to conquer and convert : how happy for us to see 
 so rich a harvest gladdening the heart of the Labourer in the 
 Vineyard ! 
 
 Banaras Magazine, August, 1852, 
 
 Forty-three years have passed, and the work has prospered 
 beyond Human expectations. How grateful I am, that I wrote 
 this in my youth and my strength ! 
 
 1895. 
 
 2. The Native Christian Village and School. 
 
 Perhaps a short description of one of our Native Christian 
 villages may be new, and not uninteresting to some readers. 
 The village, to which I now allude, is situated in the old part 
 of Allahabad, not far from the Church, in which building a 
 goodly congregation of Native Christians assemble every Sunday 
 at nine and four o'clock, the services being performed by the 
 Missionary and Native Pastor in Hindustani. I had been 
 urgently requested by this Native Pastor to pay a visit to his 
 village and inspect his School, so one cool morning at six 
 o'clock I walked, according to promise, to see the School. On 
 entering the village, 1 saw the Pastor sitting at the door of the 
 School-house, teaching a class of neatly-dressed tall girls. On 
 my approaching, he came forward to welcome us, and the girls 
 hastened back into the School-room, so as to appear in order in 
 their class. I entered the room and proceeded to inspect the 
 classes, and, at the- particular request of the Pastor, to examine 
 the elder girls. I had but lately arrived from England, and the 
 low mud buildings, bare walls, and especially the dusky faces 
 half shrouded in white muslin scarves, the day dresses (pink 
 being the favourite colour), was a striking contrast to our 
 
( 392 ) 
 
 English, lofty, map-covered walls, and rows of pale or white or 
 rosy-cheeked pinafored children ; but the bright eyes, intelligent 
 looks, eager answers, and merry smiles, were just the same as 
 in an English School, and it was surprising to hear how well 
 they read and pronounced English, translating the sentence 
 into Hindustani with great fluency. I found from their answers, 
 that they quite understood what they read, but they could not 
 converse easily in English, nor understand it well when spoken 
 by us. Their knowledge of Bible-history was very fair, and their 
 writing in English character very good. They are taught by an 
 intelligent-looking woman, who spoke English well, and a 
 Monitor, an elder girl from the first class, who, for a wonder, 
 had not married, a case very rare to find after the age of fourteen 
 or fifteen. Sometimes they will come to School after they are 
 married, but not often. 
 
 Passing from the girls' room we entered the boys' school : 
 here I found several classes, and elder boys acting as Monitors 
 under the superintendence of the Head Master, a very young 
 but clever-looking man, who spoke English very correctly. All 
 the classes are kept well up to their work by the daily visits and 
 examinations of the Pastor. The boys read English fluently, but 
 with a decided Indian accent ; they answered questions in Bible- 
 history, Arithmetic, and on the subjects they- had just read, 
 correctly, and appeared interested in their lessons. On entering 
 and leaving the schools I wished them " Good Morning," which 
 they responded to heartily with many broad grins : it was 
 evidently a well-mastered phrase. From this house I went to 
 another a short distance off, used for an Infant-School : here 
 I found seventy-five children, not abundantly clad, but very neat 
 and clean, arranged on tiers of benches reaching almost to the 
 roof of the building; they all looked very bright and merry, 
 seeming to enjoy the lessons given to them by a grave elderly 
 man, whose appearance certainly belied his mode of instruction. 
 Singing was the especial accomplishment of these little ones, 
 not a very musical performance certainly, but that deficiency was 
 made up by energy and a most hearty appreciation of their own 
 efforts. They sang the well-known Hymns " There is a Happy 
 Land," and " Oh ! that will be joyful," first in English, and then 
 in Hindi ; also " God save the Queen," with great zeal ; they 
 then went through all the approved Infant-School-exercises, 
 folding hands, raising them, clapping, etc., singing an illustrated 
 . song at the, same time capitally. They were told to represent 
 a rising storm, and certainly I never saw or rather heard a better 
 illustration : it is worth a visit to the School to witness this 
 alone : they rubbed their hands together, making at the same 
 time a hissing noise like the distant rising wind ; this grew 
 louder and louder, all keeping in excellent unison, till a loud 
 
( 393 ) 
 
 clap of thunder was heard, caused by the beating and stamping 
 of the many little naked feet on the hollow wooden platform, on 
 which their benches were raised ; this thunder increased, died 
 away, and again increased, as the teacher silently raised or 
 lowered his arm. Then the rain began to pour : this was cleverly 
 imitated by the drumming and rapid playing of their fingers on 
 the boards supporting their seat ; the children remained seated 
 so, still with earnest, almost grave faces, intent on their repre- 
 sentation, all their arms being kept straight down on each side 
 just reaching the boards, that I might as well have supposed 
 them unemployed. I greatly amused them by looking up at the 
 roof and from the door, and exclaiming " Pani ! " " Pani ! " 
 " Rain ! " Leaving these merry, nicely-taught little ones, I 
 proceeded to make a tour of the village, accompanied by the 
 Pastor. 
 
 Women were standing about in groups, all neatly dressed, and 
 most with babies in their arms. Some employ nurses to take 
 care of children, and help in the household ! All the men 
 of this village are employed in the Government-Press, and earn 
 good wages, differing according to their abilities for the work. 
 For compositors really intelligent men are required, and they 
 are accordingly paid highly. I spoke to several of the women, 
 and delighted them much by inquiring after the number of their 
 children, the employment and wages of their husbands, etc. ; 
 many a merry laugh was called forth. The round of the village 
 being made, I said "Good Morning" to the Pastor and left 
 him ; feeling much pleased with all I had seen, and my interest 
 much increased and aroused in the progress and well-being of 
 the Missionaries. 
 
 Should any of our readers feel inclined to bend their steps 
 towards this group of huts, they will be sure to find an object of 
 much interest for their morning walk. 
 
 Allahabad, 1866-1895. 
 
( 394 ) 
 
 3. The Mission-School. 
 
 To all residents in Allahabad the chief scenes on the banks 
 of the Jamna and Ganges are well known. There is the Fort, 
 from the ramparts of which there is a splendid view of the 
 meeting of the two rivers, a spot held in great reverence as 
 a holy place by the Native population. Some little way further 
 up the Jamna is the new Railway - Bridge, a magnificent 
 structure, one of the x marvellous achievements of modern 
 Science ; especially picturesque it looked when I first saw it 
 on a summer evening, when its deep red iron railings were 
 lighted up by rays caught from the setting sun, whilst on the 
 calm, deep stream far below the shades of evening had already 
 fallen. Passing on a short distance further, a large house may 
 be seen built close on the river's bank, its balcony almost over- 
 hanging the water. The house is now occupied by American 
 Missionaries. The grounds are very extensive, and in them 
 are several buildings, Schools and dwellings for the Native 
 Christians. At one end is a long row of low mud huts, occupied 
 by those Natives, who are employed by the Missionaries in 
 different useful and lucrative employments. In the middle of 
 the grounds there is a large building used on Sundays and 
 Thursday evenings for Divine Service, and used during the 
 week for the Girls' School. 
 
 The Missionaries are always ready to show their schools to 
 visitors, so, accepting a kind invitation to come and see the 
 progress of their work, I one morning accordingly went. The 
 Girls' School was my first point of interest. As I entered the 
 building, my attention was attracted by a row of small children 
 seated on the ground : rough, unkempt, and most scantily clad 
 little urchins they certainly were, very still and quiet, seeming to 
 pay great attention to the Native woman, who was trying to 
 teach them the Alphabet ; but school-discipline was evidently 
 a novelty to them, and, to most of them, probably an irksome 
 .restraint, there being no space for the usual rousing and 
 amusing infant-school-exercises. I was told, that the Mis- 
 sionaries actually paid many of the mothers small sums to 
 induce them to send their children to School : of course these 
 were not Christian families. The School is open to all the 
 town, but so few comparatively as yet value the advantages thus 
 to be gained for their children, that, until they can see the 
 benefit in its true light, they must be persuaded by rewards and 
 encouragements to allow their children to be instructed. 
 
( 395 ) 
 
 Passing from this group, I came to what formed the more 
 important part of the School. At the upper end of the building 
 about twenty girls were arranged in classes ; their ages might 
 have been from twelve to twenty: these were all .Christians, 
 daughters of Government clerks,- or .other respectable Christian 
 Natives ; they spoke English easily. Their summing and writing 
 were particularly neat and good, and the answers to my 
 questions on various subjects correctly given. I told them, that 
 they wrote as well as English girls did, and, if we did not see 
 their faces, we could quite fancy we were hearing an English 
 class read. This delighted them extremely. I was told that they 
 liked anything English, and are often heard to wish, that their 
 faces were not quite so black. I thought, however, that some of 
 these black faces were quite as pretty as many white ones, 
 certainly as bright and intelligent-looking ; their large dark 
 eyes sparkled so brilliantly, and their bright muslin-dresses, 
 with clean white muslin-scarfs, forming a kind of head-dress, 
 and falling gracefully over their shoulders, gave them a very 
 picturesque appearance. 
 
 Two or three of these girls were married, but having no 
 children to keep them employed at home, they were allowed 
 by their husbands to continue to attend School ; they all had 
 an easy, yet very respectful, manner, owing doubtless to their 
 being chiefly taught by a lady, the daughter of one of the Mis- 
 sionaries. These girls are especially fond of worsted and bead 
 work, and many of their brothers are smartly shod with slippers 
 worked at the School ; I saw some that were in progress, groups 
 of flowers and many pretty designs, very evenly and nicely 
 worked. The girls seemed delighted to show me all they could 
 do in their studies and work, and it was with difficulty I could 
 part from them to pay a visit to the Boys' School, which was 
 held m another building also in the grounds. I was first shown 
 into one of the class-rooms, where the elder boys were assembled : 
 some of them lads of eighteen or nineteen, preparing, we were 
 told, for College. None of these boys were as yet professed 
 Christians, but they read and studied the Bible daily, and it may 
 earnestly be hoped, that this constant reading may in time lead 
 them to believe in the wondrous Truths it contains. I listened 
 to an examination of these boys in European History, and found 
 their knowledge to be very good ; they also were evidently well 
 instructed in the History of their Native country, both geo- 
 graphically and historically: naming readily the principal rivers, 
 towns, mountains, present English Governors, famous Generals 
 who had, from time to time, fought and conquered in the land, 
 and Native heroes of ancient fame. 
 
 Leaving the class-room, I was taken into the large School- 
 room, where all the boys assembled for the roll-call, a very long 
 
( 396 ) 
 
 narrow room with a small raised platform at one end for the 
 teacher. The whole School soon came trooping in, and arranged 
 themselves in rows for our inspection: about 170 boys of all 
 ages, races, castes, and Religions (for the School is open and free 
 to all), a curious motley assemblage, some bright and intelligent, 
 others hopelessly dull and ignorant, dressed in every conceivable 
 style of costume and Variation of colour ; some in flowing white 
 muslin robes, others in coloured trousers, with a species of loose 
 jacket of a strikingly different colour ; others, again, with little 
 besides a cloth bound round their loins. The diversity of head- 
 dresses was also amusing : smart caps of coloured or white 
 worked muslin, pink or blue handkerchiefs bound -round their 
 heads, turban fashion ; some had their hair closely cropped, 
 forming a kind of thick mat on the head, a sufficient protection 
 from the sun, without the addition of a cap ; others, again, were 
 completely shaven, with the exception of one lock, which was 
 allowed to grow long, and was twisted like a bit of rope, or 
 plaited as a Chinese pigtail ; these latter were indeed queer, 
 odd-looking little creatures : but whatever was their appearance, 
 their rank, or Religion, the fact, that so many could be brought 
 together, to be under the instruction of earnest, working, 
 Christian Teachers, must inspire the hope, that some at least, 
 if not all, may be brought to a Knowledge of the Truth as it is 
 in Jesus, and be made a crown of rejoicing to those devoted 
 servants of the Lord, who have gone forth into a distant land 
 to proclaim His glory, and tell of His appearing. 
 
 All cannot be Missionaries, all cannot personally labour, to 
 teach the Heathen the glorious Truths of the Gospel ; but all, 
 if they had the desire, can sympathize with and encourage 
 this noble work. A friendly visit to these Mission-Schools 
 would show sympathy, and a few words of true praise would be 
 an encouragement. 
 
 Let us not say, " These works are no concern of ours." They 
 do concern every believer in Christ, and show Love to that 
 Saviour, who died and rose again, that all, who believed in Him, 
 should not perish, but have everlasting life : let us try to do some- 
 thing, if only the sympathy of friendly visits and encouraging 
 words, to help those, who are striving to spread the knowledge 
 of His Name amongst those who as yet know Him not. 
 
 Allahabad, 1866, 1895. 
 
397 ) 
 
 \. The Native non-Christian Village. 
 
 Have you ever spent a day in a Native village, a long day 
 among the people, not shut up in the curtains of your tent, not 
 hemmed in by your attendants, but under the hospitable roof of 
 the Landholder, or in the porch of the guest-house, while the 
 simple crowd gather round you unfearing and unrestrained ? 
 I have many, having early learned to sympathize with the people, 
 whose destinies I govern, to make allowance for their 
 shortcomings, to enter into their woes, and listen to their 
 wrongs, to feel an interest in their simple annals, and pity 
 their degraded Ignorance. Some Power may thus have been 
 acquired of arousing their sluggish faculties, and touching the 
 chord of sympathy ; in some such moment (but then only) will 
 the ice of reservation be broken through, and an electric chain 
 of intelligence be established between the subject and the Ruler. 
 
 Walk through the dirty and ill-kept streets ; look not for the 
 traces of simple, yet genuine, comfort, which marks the cottages 
 of Great Britain, nor for the garnered stores of the British 
 Yeoman. Banish from your thoughts the fond vision of Oriental 
 life, which find currency in Europe ; • contemplate the village 
 and the people, as they are ; yet amidst their squalidness and 
 poverty deem not rashly, that happiness is not to be found 
 beneath those mud-walls, and that contentment is unknown in 
 that simple homestead. Feel for them, and with them fancy for 
 a while, that you have been bred up from a child within these 
 narrow limits ; that, your ideas of the world had been formed 
 from -the view here presented ; that your notion of wealth had 
 been circumscribed to some such simple habitation ; and that 
 by you that state only was considered poverty, where the daily 
 meal was denied, and how many a care for superabundances or 
 fancied wants might you thus have escaped, thanking Providence 
 for the small but sufficient store, that the last harvest had left 
 you, careless and dependent on Destiny for the Future. 
 
 Look around you. Flags flying from the trees to com- 
 memorate the sanctity of some spot, which none can properly 
 describe ; or mark the tomb of some Saint, the era of whose 
 existence is unknown. Shops filled with sweetmeats, and 
 swarming with flies, and little boys gaping as wistfully as 
 if were there spread the most exquisite luxuries of the West. 
 The grains and fruits of the country ranged in tempting rows, 
 and doled out to the purchaser with a deceitful balance. Hard 
 by bales of rough home-spun cloth heaped up promiscuously 
 
( 398 ) 
 
 with the many tinted products of European looms. High blank- 
 walled houses, in which fancy might picture the imprisoned 
 beauties of the East, but, if I look in at the entrance, I see 
 them like their Western sisters employed in the endless round 
 of domestic duties : some seated in pairs, and grinding at the 
 mill ; some cleaning cotton ; some, Lucretia-like, singing to 
 the whirring - wheel ; some fondling their newborn infant with 
 the universal tenderness of mothers : some — but not all, for in 
 that distant corner sits Rachel weeping for her bereavement; 
 and I am told, that the little sick child, which was held up to 
 look at me, as I entered in this morning, has just breathed out 
 its tiny atom of life, and the young mother is in the newness of 
 her affliction ; perhaps happier for it, thus early to have shaken 
 off the earthly coil, to have escaped from the thankless office of 
 sucking another generation of serfs ; to have gone prematurely 
 to that bourn, where at least there are no daily pitchers to be 
 filled at the well, no mill to be unceasingly grinding. As we 
 pass on, communities of dogs, whose habitations and profession 
 are the streets, bay at us, but we mind them not, for they are 
 not more savage than the men, amongst whom they inhabit, not 
 more ignorant than the masters, whose crumbs they pick up. 
 
 But my steps are arrested, where, under the vast spreading 
 immemorial tree, stands unbl'ushingly forth the place of Idol- 
 atrous Worship, and the Priest from the threshold salutes me. 
 What true Christian does not feel at such moments very jealous 
 for his Lord ? I wonder when the term of this gross Ignorance 
 will cease ; when the patience and longsuffering of the Most 
 High will be exhausted : but still a thousand years in His sight 
 are but as one day, and this is but the evening of the second 
 morn of Christianity. 
 
 Come- away from such soul-depressing, such degraded sights; 
 come beyond the village-walls ; come away and sit with me on 
 this rising ground, and look out on the sweet charms of Nature 
 undefiled : my village-friends range themselves silently around, 
 while the eager eye wanders over the varied landscape, now 
 tracing the course erf the stream dotted with islands as it 
 meanders through the rich fields, fields partly browned with the 
 exhausted harvest of the Autumn, green, richly green, with the 
 promises of the Spring, and now dwelling in fancy in some 
 distant hamlet nestled in the declivity of yonder hills. The 
 sun is sinking down in the fulness of Oriental majesty : what 
 are the splendours of earthly Courts compared to this daily 
 Durbar? A glorious flood of gold is illuminating every object, 
 and tinting every feature of inanimate nature, gladdening 'every 
 human heart, while the moon rises slowly from behind the 
 verdure of the grove. What a bright contrast of colours ? 
 What an unrivalled harmony of tints from the brush of the 
 
( 399 ) 
 
 Creator? What earthly painter would daringly blend on one 
 canvas the blue of the heavens, the fleecy grey of the clouds, 
 the yellow ambrosial tint of the atmosphere, the dark shades of 
 the mountains, to which distance has lent a strange enchant- 
 ment of beautiful outline, the silvery shield of the moon, and 
 the blood-red of the exhausted sun, as it sinks into the bed of the 
 Ocean in that direction, towards which my heart unceasingly 
 turns, the land of the West, whither are wafted my morning 
 sighs and my evening prayers. 
 
 But see the cattle wending homewards, some drawing with 
 languid neck the inverted ploughshare, some bearing spon- 
 taneously home their full udders for the support and pleasure 
 of ungrateful, unthankful man. They reach the stream : the 
 shadow of the leader tinges the glassy surface, as she stoops 
 to drink, and now the whole herd stands in mid-water in 
 beautiful disorder. Oh for the rare pencil of a Cuyp to paint 
 that bright scene ! Those trees standing out with every leaf so 
 clear against the horizon; those figures of cattle and men 
 standing in the stream, which -winds itself on, till it is lost in the 
 distance ! 
 
 Turn the eye to yonder sequestered nook, where smoke is 
 rising up, and a melancholy group is gathered around the flames, 
 which consume the remains of some revered relative, some 
 beloved companion. Ancient time-honoured custom, how 
 much does thy prudence shame the vanity of those, who 
 foolishly-wise have stored up their dead in cerements to be 
 unfolded many centuries afterwards, as a wonder and a show to 
 a curious posterity ! No vengeance can now be wreaked on 
 that poor senseless frame, no indignities offered by beast or 
 man ! Sleep on quietly, for the meaner worm is- deprived of its 
 banquet on thy carcase ; the jackal cannot fish thy body out of 
 its narrow tomb; the more cruel-hearted Sexton cannot ruthlessly 
 dig out and expose your poor bones in after-ages, nor will a 
 more cold-hearted savant edify an enlightened audience with 
 his notions as to your garments and physical structure. 
 
 Scarce had the flames subsided, the mourners are still 
 purifying themselves in the lustral waters, when the sound of 
 wild music announces the arrival of a bride at the village of the 
 bridegroom. So strangely blended are joy and grief; the tide 
 of life will stop for none, and the anniversary of grief and 
 bereavement to one is hailed by a neighbour as the era of the 
 commencement of his domestic joy. 
 
 Gaily moves on the bridal procession, the boy-bridegroom on 
 horseback careering on this his day of Jubilee ; behind, the 
 covered car that encloses the concealed charms of the childish 
 bride, whose black eyes peep out from under the drapery to stare 
 at the European stranger. The singers and cymbal-beaters go 
 
( 400 ) 
 
 before ; behind them follow the relatives of the bride ; and see 
 from the village precincts issue forth a goodly band to welcome 
 the arrivers. Money is scattered to the crowd, and in gladness 
 and pomp the procession moves in, while behind totters an old 
 grey-beard, leaning on his staff, and calling up in his confused 
 recollections former rejoicings, and forgotten nuptials, of those 
 long since departed. 
 
 See the long string of camels toiling in, bearing rich burdens; 
 but no longer from the looms of Kathay and Bokhara ; no more 
 the muslins of Dacca, or the wools of Kashmir, for the stranger 
 has shown the way to new wants, and has introduced new 
 manufactures : guided by the ruthless policy of selfish Com- 
 merce, he has crushed the productive powers of the country, 
 and in the nursery of manufactures and the garden of cotton, 
 clothes the Indian girls with stuffs grown in New Orleans, and 
 woven at Manchester. Forgive the offence of thy blind Rulers, 
 timely-wise subject ! Thank Providence, that you have been 
 spared the ills of over-productiveness, and the curse of a too- 
 facile manual dexterity ! Your cup of bitterness has not been 
 steeped with the falsely-sweet sugar ; you are not hungry and 
 naked, because your fields teem with rice and with cotton : for 
 you the lash is busy on the plains of New Orleans, and slaves 
 are groaning to keep you warm ; for you children are condemned 
 to premature and crippled old age, girls to do the work of men, 
 and lose the gentleness of their sex, in the villages of 
 Lancashire : fast flies the shuttle for you, for you- iron is poured 
 out like water, for you vessels puff o'er the ocean. Wind your 
 turban, Indian youth, gaily round a brow, which has not sweated 
 for its burden ; tighten your girdle proudly, for that back has 
 not bled with the lash. Shroud your sable beauties, gentle 
 damsels, in your mantle, for the lives of your country-women 
 have not been embittered to weave that tissue, the morals of 
 your daughters have not been contaminated to wind that warp : 
 so you by a bountiful dispensation taste the honey, which others 
 have fabricated ; you wear the fleece, which other flocks have 
 borne. 
 
 Ever and anon the scene is changed, and the road is now 
 covered with an array of carts bringing in the abundant harvest : 
 the large rich ears are concealed from the sight by the broad 
 leaf of the Indian corn, in which they are bound : follows after 
 the glad husbandman, rejoicing in the success of his labours and 
 vaunting of his field, but forgetting that Hand, which watched 
 over the seed, while it rotted in the soil, which shed the evening 
 dew, which vouchsafed in due season the early and second rains, 
 while the tender herb sprang up, and brought forth fruit a 
 hundredfold. The labour of the field is over, but by the 
 morning he will be gathered with his fellows under those trees, 
 
( 401 ) 
 
 where even now we can distinguish the busy husbandman, 
 where he stands with the fan in his hand on the threshing-floor : 
 upward flies the chaff, but the grain is gathered into the garner, 
 while the bullocks are unmuzzled working their eternal round, 
 treading out with unconscious feet the abundant grain. Hard 
 by", the sheep and goats are winding up the declivity on their 
 return from the pasture : mark how they answer to the watchful 
 bark of the dog, and the cry of the shepherd, as he divides 
 them to his right and left, while he tenderly carries the new- 
 born lamb in his arms : hark to the musical cry of the gardener, 
 accompanied at intervals by the splash of water ; and bestow 
 some sympathy on those poor oxen, who, like Sisyphus, have 
 from morn till dewy eve been drawing up that weight, which 
 after discharging its contents rolls back, causing them, poor 
 beasts, endless labour, but blessing the soil with abundance 
 and increase. 
 
 Watch the bright stream purling down the channel, then 
 gushing forth,' and overspreading the soil, which, exhausted by 
 meridional heat, licks up 'greedily the refreshing saturation. 
 How all these little details carry us back to our boyish days, to 
 Arcadian eclogues, to Virgilian strains, as well known and 
 remembered as in Eton's happy days. How we appreciate now 
 what in England's moist climate we little understood ; why, the 
 channels of the fields were to be closed, when the meadows had 
 drank enough ; what meant the warning to the boys to escape 
 from the venomous snake ; why, the injunction to lay aside your 
 garments, while you urge the sluggish oxen with the plough 
 along the furrow, or scatter the seed broadcast over the fallow. 
 Do not the soft cadences of Horatian odes come back to us, 
 while our busy thoughts fly hence to the undulating Sabine hill, 
 and the blue Mediterranean ? 
 
 But touched by the incident, do not those thoughts fleet back 
 to even more distant days ? Do we not insensibly glide from 
 our classical lore, from the arena of our boyish triumphs, to an 
 earlier home, where, at the feet of our mothers we formed our 
 first rude ideas on Oriental subjects ; where from those loved 
 lips we first drank in the sweet incidents of Scripture story ? Do 
 not the inmost chords of our hearts vibrate, as if struck by a well- 
 known hand ? Does it not come back to us sweetly, even as 
 the melody which in former days we have heard ? Do we not 
 bless those lips, which now have no language, but are cold in 
 death, whence we first heard the story of the oxen of Gideon, 
 of the threshing-floor of Araunah ? Who first told us of Him, 
 who planted the vineyard and came to gather the fruits in due 
 season ? From whom did our opening intellects learn the 
 parable of the bridegroom, of the sower, of the sheep and 
 the goats, of the wheat which will be gathered into the garner, 
 
 26 
 
( 402 ) 
 
 of the chaff, which will be burnt by a just and terrible Judge in 
 unquenchable fire ? 
 
 But the shadows of the evening have now closed round us ; the 
 last travellers of the day are hurrying in : oxen with jingling sound 
 coming in with loads of sugar from the South to give in exchange 
 for Salt from the North. So strangely, yet wisely, has Nature 
 distributed her vegetable and mineral treasures : the oxen of 
 the village have long ere this found their way back unbidden 
 to their stalls : passes in at this late hour a group of pilgrims 
 returning from some shrine, some needy mendicant, or bold- 
 faced Fakir, fattening on the Superstition and Ignorance of his 
 countrymen ; or some poor widow on her road to the Ganges, 
 with all that remained of the ashes of her lord from the funeral- 
 pyre, tied up in the corner of her mantle, but which she, urged 
 by strong Faith and Duty, has wandered many a mile to scatter 
 in the sacred stream. Now the sun sinks, and has departed to 
 the land of the West ; now the fleecy clouds are barred with 
 gold ; every varied colour, every tint of green, every object, far 
 and near, is distinguished. How the heart softens and yearns 
 homeward at sunset ! How wistfully we look at the clouds, free 
 to go whither they will ! with how many a message would we 
 charge them ! How we bless the hour and the clime, where 
 to us in bygone years the sound of the Ave Maria-bell has so 
 sweetly tolled the dirge of the day ! Look again ere the scene 
 fades away, for short-lived are the Indian twilights : catch your 
 last glimpse, as if your dearest friend, and not the day, were 
 dying, as if the drops of dew now falling were tears for his loss : 
 gaze your last on the now dimly shadowed out mountains, 'on 
 the fields, where now all is silent and still, on the stream, where 
 the white stork 1 now stands alone, on the lines of long-necked 
 cranes passing over our heads : where do they go, by what 
 marshy pool, what sedgy bank of Caister do they seek their rest ? 
 
 And now that the night has fallen, a cheerful flame has 
 sprung up, against which the figures of the villagers stand out 
 in bold relief, presenting such a contrast of light and shade, as 
 would be worthy of the brush of Rembrandt : in the background 
 the houses and draped figures of women occasionally glance out, 
 and then, as the uncertain flame falls lower, they vanish. Join 
 the circle ; room is made willingly for you : gaze round on the 
 bright faces, and, as you stretch out your hands to the flames, 
 and your eyes are instinctively directed up to the starry vault, 
 and linger with Arcturus and the Pleiades, mark how those simple 
 companions silently watch you ; but little do they know how, as 
 ,your eyes glanced up, your home-yearning thoughts were borne 
 far away, as the recollection came back to you, how often in 
 a distant country you had measured the hours of the night by 
 the declination of Charles' Wain. 
 
( 403 ) 
 
 Hard by, on the stone-raised seat at the gate under the 
 spreading pipal-tree, are gathered the old men of the village ; 
 grey-beards are croning about old days, or plodding through 
 the intricacies of some petty quarrel : round them in noisy 
 groups are congregated the young men and children, in like 
 manner as years ago they stood at the feet of their long-departed 
 forefathers. Here is told the strange tale of magic, or the local 
 legends of Giants, to listening and believing ears ; here the 
 merry laugh, that follows the last strange account of the manners 
 and doings of the white stranger, whom they fear so much, but 
 of whom they know so little ; here the wildest story of the 
 barber, or the childish fable of the Priest, are received in, as 
 Truth itself, with such conviction, as no future reason can shake : • 
 here is fashioned the tone of the public mind, and the deep- 
 rooted ideas of the people. Now the group is joined by some 
 light -hearted traveller singing blithely: no fear has he of 
 robbers, or a strange country, for in his girdle is nothing : 
 many a league has he traversed depending, and not in vain, on 
 that hospitality, which prevails all over India, the cup of water, 
 the cake baked on the hearth, and the corner in the shed to lie 
 down : grateful for such favours, in return he charms the long- 
 lived night with tales of distant climes, of facts blended with 
 fiction, perils by land, perils by water ; of temples and shrines, 
 long heard of, now at last visited : fanciful and varied is his tale : 
 perhaps rumours of wars and descriptions of battles and armies, 
 for the sword is never sheathed in India. 
 
 Fired by the sound speaks up one of a party, which had 
 hitherto sat silent and sequestered from the rest, whose military 
 bearing and haughty carriage bespeak them to be the Sepoys of 
 the foreign Ruler. Returning are they from their leave of 
 absence ; after a seven years' service they have revisited their 
 Native village, their parents, and their little ones ; but the quiet 
 life ill-suited them, and they now not unwillingly reseek the 
 fortress and the cantonment. Who can talk of War in their 
 presence and not rouse their martial ardour ? Out they speak, 
 and tell of sieges and fights in far Kabul, and on the plains of 
 the Panjab ; how they have seen the banner of their Legion 
 triumphant in many a hard day; of the guns, which they had 
 captured ; of what their Captains said, and did, on the day of 
 action. Credulously the gaping crowd listens to such tales, sup- 
 ported by wounds which are proudly shown, and medals which 
 are vauntingly handed round : the speakers are those who have 
 seen service, but with them are lads ready to enlist, sprung of 
 a race of soldiers : nor is the present sufficient, for past History 
 is also drawn upon, and justly so, for one of the party has but 
 a few days ago left an old grey-haired father, who is calmly re- 
 posing after his toils, in his Native village, under his mangoe-tree, 
 
( 404 ) 
 
 upon the bounty of a paternal Government : he, in acknow- 
 ledgment, has sent his whole race under the banners, which he 
 himself has followed ' ever to Victory over the waters of the 
 Ocean, to Egypt, to Java, and the Mauritius, and in many a wild 
 Maratha battle under Lake and Wellington, those selfsame 
 banners, which his sons had seen waving at Ghazni, bearing 
 which they had opposed numbers with discipline under Napier 
 at Miani, and supported the gallant Gough in his mishaps at 
 Chilianwala, and his crowning triumph at Gujarat. Vain after 
 such boasting are the weak remarks of some worshippers of the 
 past, some mourners of the fallen dynasties ; vain is the account 
 of the armies and the splendour of Aurungzeb and the Mogul, 
 •for they have passed away like a dream and are not. 
 
 Thus pass the hours of the night, till one by one the villagers 
 steal off to their homes, and their couches, and the busy hive is 
 at rest. The traveller sleeps by the side of his horse, or his 
 tethered oxen. All is still, save where the barking of the dogs, 
 or the yelling of the jackal, break upon the ear, rendering the 
 silence which- follows more profound. Soundly they sleep, 
 careless and thoughtless of the Future, sufficient for them that 
 they have lived the. day: no feelings of patriotism, no high 
 notions of liberty, no thoughts that .ennoble, no cares that waste 
 away, find entrance to their Bosoms : thus let them sleep, and as 
 we slowly and pensively return to our resting-place, let us ponder 
 well, why the Almighty has placed this vast Kingdom in our 
 hands, for what good purpose has He elevated our race in power 
 and in reasoning above these our fellow-creatures-, by what means 
 will the dark cloud be raised up, that nqw shrouds the intellect 
 and conscience of the Indian. 
 
 Banda, North India, 1853-1895. 
 
 5. The National Festival. 
 
 It was in the evening in the month of October, that season 
 of the year, when Nature puts on her most beauteous dress, 
 tricked out in the deepest verdure, the gift of the departed rains, 
 the slanting rays of the sun illumed the landscape, shedding 
 a wondrous brightness over each tower and each pinnacle,, when 
 I found myself standing, the solitary European, amidst a crowd 
 of our subjects, celebrating in pomp and joyousness the national 
 festival of India at Banaras. 
 
 The whole of the great city had poured itself out in numbers 
 
( 405 ) 
 
 numberless ; the streets were thronged with gaily-clad thousands ; 
 the houses and walls were lined with expectants of the coming 
 procession. Bright drapery hung in festoons from the roof-tops, 
 or was stretched across from balcony to balcony ; streamers 
 floated in the breeze, and the cheerful hum of busy voices, 
 blended with strains of barbaric music, sounded gratefully in 
 my ears. 
 
 Seated under an ancient tree, whose branches had witnessed 
 many such a festival, on a rural throne, sat the Heroes of the 
 Pageant, the representatives of those, whom the crowds had 
 assembled to honour. In the centre the royal youth, who gladly 
 sacrificed a throne to meet the wishes of a parent, and on each 
 side of him the brother, and the wife, the faithful companions 
 of his exile. Dressed was Rama in that fanciful costume, to 
 which antiquity has given its sanction : in his hand, like the 
 Apollo of the Belvidere, was the unerring bow, and on his 
 shoulders was bound a plaything quiver of now-useless arrows. 
 Flowers, the gay offerings of Nature, were heaped on the steps 
 of the throne, garlands hung round the necks of him and his 
 companions. Each subject, as he approached to do homage to 
 the mimic monarch, brought tribute of flowers and fruits. Each 
 felt pleased and rewarded by a garland from the royal hand ; 
 even that young sick child smiles, as its anxious parent holds it 
 up aloft, to receive as a charm some token of the Hero. 
 
 I sauntered down the crowd, which opened of itself to let me 
 pass, and closed behind on my steps. What heart does not 
 gladden at beholding the signs of cheerfulness' and rejoicing 
 around, the smiling face, the glistening eye, the open salutation, 
 the shout of Victory, coupled with the name of the Hero, which 
 was the watchword of the day ? All classes and all ranks were 
 there. Sober merchants and money - changers had this day 
 closed the thumbed ledger, and relaxed the griping hand, 
 and wound on their heads a bright new turban, and stepped 
 forth for once free from care ; the wealthy nobleman passes by, 
 borne by his servants, or mounted on high on the turreted 
 Elephant. Struts by with firm and martial tread the erect 
 Sepoy, with beads round his n'eck and staff in his hand ; after 
 him follows a band of young men in the pride of their opening 
 years, with girdles wound proudly, and all the coxcombry of 
 their age ; there, too, are the draped figures and half-veiled 
 faces of women, the smiles and laughter of unimprisoned women, 
 for this one day released from their tall, jealous walls, and from 
 the thraldom of their still more jealous customs, wondering, 
 gentle creatures, on this their day of liberty, how beauteous the 
 outward world could appear, perhaps murmuring at the hard 
 fate, which had shut them up in houses, or insensibly contrasting 
 the happiness of being the chosen companion of some one of 
 
( 406 ) 
 
 the graceful and slender passers-by, with being the slave of the 
 obese lord, at whose altar they had been too early sacrificed. 
 
 Ranged on one side in places of honour and repose are the 
 old men chanting aloud the melodious rhythms of the great 
 Ballad of the Ramayana, their broken notes accompanied by 
 the stringed instruments and the pipe : loud sound their voices, 
 and cheeringly the passers-by join' in the chorus : thus once 
 sounded the Psalms of David, when sung with Tabret and Pipe 
 on the hill of Sion ! and, as the interest of the story varies, their 
 excited feelings overpower them, and the sound of weeping is 
 blended with that of laughter, the laugh of triumph at the great 
 heroic glory, of which the drama is enacting before them, the 
 weeping at the recollection of the so-called good old days. So 
 imaginary are the evils, for which poor mortals weep, so un- 
 certain the joys, for which they triumph ! Some toothless grey- 
 beards sit looking on, silent, of mumbling to each other tales of 
 ancient shows, which bring back to them the features of long- 
 forgotten friends, or boasting of feats of agility, and splendour 
 of spectacles, to which this degenerate age cannot approach. 
 
 But the procession is now advancing amidst the shouting and 
 clapping crowds : uncouth and fanciful figures of Giants and 
 Demons, such as we have heard of in fairy tale, but never seen 
 in broad daylight till now, waving swords in mimic defiance, 
 and threatening the royal youth, who from his rural throne sits 
 gazing on unmoved. After them follow groups disguised as 
 monkeys and savages, the denizens of untrodden forests ; and 
 then a long and gorgeous procession of fantastic figures borne 
 upon thrones, and overshadowed by canopies, equalling in 
 strange and barbaric splendour the pomp of an Asiatic Pro- 
 consul, as he swept down the sacred way in his triumphal car 
 to the capital, bringing home plunder and victory from the far 
 east to imperial Rome. Among them were many of the chief 
 citizens, some reclining in state, smoking their pipes in Asiatic 
 repose, with that calm and dignified want of thought depicted 
 on their countenances, which is unknown in the busy cities of 
 Europe : others with strange masks and antique dresses, girt 
 with sword and shield, seated upon thrones, bowing to the 
 applauding bystanders: behind them, on a moving platform 
 embowered with the broad leaves of the plantain, a group of 
 ash-coloured Fakirs, half-clad according to the old tradi- 
 tionary manner, and yellow Muni, playing on shapeless harps, 
 and chanting unintelligible songs : they are part and parcel 
 of the drama, which is enacting, and without them all would be 
 incomplete, but they give but a faint idea of those wondrous 
 residents of the wilderness in bygone days, whose profound 
 sayings, chronicled in their god-like Language, still astound, as 
 they anticipated the discoveries of, the moderns ;' whose thoughts, 
 
( 407 ) 
 
 disentangled from their ascetic bodies, darted upwards to the 
 stars, and brought back the wildest tissue of fable resembling 
 Truth, the skein of which Modern Philosophy still struggles in 
 vain to unravel, showing, alas ! how near the greatest Wisdom, 
 unassisted by Revelation, is to folly ! 
 
 But the combatants having arrived, the Hero descends from 
 his throne to wage war against these Demons, and to re-enact 
 before eager eyes the oft-repeated triumph. In the regular 
 profile of his face, in his long flowing tresses, bound by the 
 chaplet, in the stiff motion of his limbs, as he discharges his 
 arrows, and presses on the discomfited foe, we recognize a 
 dignity indescribable, a classic grace, such as speaks to us from 
 the excavated tombs of Egypt, such as Assyrian kings wrote with 
 enduring pencils on the rocks of Mesopotamia ; but the deepest 
 and most absorbing interest is reserved for the last scene, when, 
 his exile over, the labour entrusted to him having been performed, 
 the self-devoted redeemer returns to his home and his Kingdom, 
 and surrounded by his brethren seats himself on the throne, 
 which is raised from the ground, and' borne along the streets 
 amidst the shouts of the applauding citizens, who in the phrensy 
 of the moment believe, that it is Rama indeed whom they are 
 welcoming, and that they are the people of Ayodya. 
 
 Who is this Rama ? In what bygone ages did he live ? What 
 great achievements did he perform, that the whole of this vast 
 Peninsula of India, from Kashmir to Cape K6morin, should, 
 with one mind, thus render to him annual homage, and at the 
 same season of the year carry out to his glory this national 
 pageant ? A man, he was of royal blood, and blameless 
 character, who, at a period enveloped in the mist of tradition, 
 sat upon the throne of the Rajput dynasty of Ayodya, and thence 
 led a force across the Vyndya range, over mountain, river, and 
 arm of the sea, against the capital of Ceylon, which he con- 
 quered, and returned in triumph to continue a line, which still 
 boasts of its antiquity. Thus speaks History, and the path of 
 the conqueror can be traced by many a stately fane, many a 
 sacred shrine, with unerring fidelity for hundreds of miles, 
 religiously preserved by the oral legends of many tribes, and 
 a far-divided people. But tradition has woven a brighter 
 garland round her favourite's head, and, aided by the inspira- 
 tion of the poet, and the daring invention of the Priest, has 
 in this blameless mortal brought into Human conception the 
 dim, shadowy idea of a Redeemer, an Incarnation of the Creator, 
 sent down from on high to be born of woman, to redeem 
 mankind from the evils, that surrounded them. But the gross 
 ideas of unassisted mortals could but clothe their incarnate 
 god in the transitory dignity of Human sovereignty, could 
 make him to triumph only over earthly enemies, the Giants and 
 
( 408 ) 
 
 the Demons of the forest. After ages saw what they dreamed 
 not of, other Nations have learned to worship what is still beyond 
 their comprehension, a Sovereign greater than him, clothed in 
 the purple, a Saviour, who has redeemed from greater evils than 
 earthly, a conqueror who has triumphed over more potent 
 adversaries. Still, the name of Rama has woven itself into the 
 inmost recesses of every heart : his name is entwined with what 
 the natives value most, the early history of their country, the 
 legends of their hills and valleys ; for in this country no moun- 
 tain raises its head unsung, every river flows in verse, Religion 
 and fiction have lent their aid, and so charm-working is the 
 spell, so vividly do the annual festivals bring back every event 
 of the life of the Hero before the gaping crowd, that naught 
 is taught earlier in infancy, naught is remembered so faithfully 
 in age, as the story of Rama. Mark that old withered crone, 
 •who has so little of enjoyment in this life, who in her hard 
 struggle of widowed existence, has little time for romance or 
 for poetry ; yet so strong is the spirit of nationality and Religion 
 within her, so wondrous the power of oral tradition, that she, 
 too, has relaxed her grim features this day, and as. she points 
 her lank arm towards the Hero, is giving that little black-eyed 
 boy beside her the first ideas of the wondrous tale of the 
 Ram ay an a. 
 
 Read, those who care for the fresh annals of a great people, 
 read the grandest epic in the loftiest and most godlike- strains, 
 that the world ever knew. Happy Hero, who has escaped the 
 Leth6 of Forgetfulness by the influence of the sacred Bard ! 
 Happy poet, who has selected for his strain so pure and blame- 
 less a character ! We dare not believe, that he was a Redeemer 
 incarnate: we can see through the dim mist of early History 
 the origin of the legends, connected with the wild armies, which 
 he commanded, and the wilder foes which he conquered. All 
 Nations have fallen into the same errors, have peopled the 
 forests with Giants, and placed hill and valley under the pro- 
 tection of fairies. The annals of all Nations commence in the 
 same mythic strains, until Civilization clears away the forest, 
 which encumbered the soil, and the strange crude notions, 
 which perplexed the brains of the early inhabitants ; and we 
 wonder then whither are departed the Giants of our Nation's 
 childhood. Men in those days were the like manner of creatures, 
 which they are now, and no evidence has been produced of 
 any change in their physical power, or duration of their lives. 
 
 Still the poet, while he tells of wild tales, and perpetuates 
 charming fictions, is true to himself and his country. Though 
 thirty Centuries have elapsed since he pricked on his reed- 
 tablets the stately lines and measured couplets, still the people 
 are before us now as the poet described them ; and well deserved 
 
( 409 ) 
 
 he, that his tale should live in the memory of posterity, for purer 
 Morality was never recorded : no men were more self-controlled, 
 no women more virtuous than those painted by him ; vice of all 
 kinds never appeared more revolting-, and the virtues, the gentler 
 virtues of forgiveness, of humility, chastity, and filial obedience, 
 never appeared so charming as when standing forth from the 
 magic canvas of Valmiki. 
 
 And what History so endurable, as that graven on the living 
 tablets of a Nation's fancy ? What homage to virtue and great- 
 ness so exalted, as that conceded by the applause of untutored 
 Millions ? Ask those weary, footsore pilgrims, what took them 
 on their long and painful journey to Lanka and the Southern 
 Ocean ? What leads the countless hundreds to the solitary 
 hermitage at Chitrakdt ? There is naught to admire in the hill 
 but its wild verdure, but to them it teems with strange interest. 
 With us in our lofty cathedrals we have storied urns and marble 
 tombs to recall the memory of the good and wise, whose bones 
 are laid in the cemetery ; but here the ashes of each, as he 
 shakes off his mortal coil, are scattered to the four winds, or 
 committed to the sacred waters ; but the mountain, and the 
 stream, preserve the name of the mighty dead. Nature has 
 carved out the lofty Mausoleum of the departed : the ballads of 
 the country, transmitted from mouth to mouth, have worked 
 more enduringly than the sculptured epitaph. 
 
 In what place now can we rank, when compared to those 
 ancient and widely-spread Legends, still living in the feelings, 
 still openly acted in the streets before the eyes of Millions, the 
 puny tale of beleaguered and plundered Troy ? The rape of 
 Helen aroused a few rude chieftains, the lords of petty, though 
 romantic, islands, and carried across the narrow seas, that inter- 
 vened betwixt them and the heights of Ida, a fleet of light 
 vessels to besiege an insignificant town : and the story of the 
 Ten Years' siege, the quarrels of the bandit -warriors, would 
 have perished, as has been the fate of many such a foray, had 
 not the genius of the blind Ionian possessed itself of the tale, 
 and just as the intellect of the Greek people was dawning, sent 
 it forth clothed in such marvellous diction, and depicted in all 
 the simple majesty of an undebased Dialect, that future ages can 
 never cease to admire, or hope to imitate without falling short 
 of, the all but Divine original.' Thence from the charm of the 
 verse, from the genius of the Poet, came it that the story became 
 vested with such strange interest for the Athenian people : thus 
 centuries afterwards listening thousands hung on the honied 
 words of Euripides, refashioning the old Homeric ballads, and, 
 as seated in the theatre of Bacchus beneath their own Parthenic 
 Temple, they looked out on the island of Salamis, the scene of 
 dearer victories, as the breezes of the JEgean fanned their 
 
( 410 ) 
 
 flushed cheeks, and swept back their long hair : if iri the excite- 
 ment of the moment they shouted, it was but that the sympathy 
 with the triumphs of their kindred in former days was blended 
 with exultation, arising from the contemplation of their own. 
 
 But this is the great triumph of a whole Nation, the inhabi- 
 tants of'a vast Peninsula, not the denizens of one petty Province, 
 the few thousands using the same Dialect, and clinging round 
 one Acropolis ; but of Millions, separated by every obstacle of 
 Nature, by vast mountain-ranges, by conquering rivers ; cut off 
 from each other by distinct Languages, and dissociating habits, 
 ruled over by hostile Sovereigns, partitioned into separate princi- 
 palities : but all look back to a dim era of traditional History, 
 since which long centuries of years have flown by, when 
 certain events took place, which they gladly unite, forgetful of 
 the present, to commemorate and perpetuate ; and, knowing how 
 much nearer the eye speaks to the senses than the ear, in every 
 town, in every hamlet, lead forth and play out a festive drama. 
 Who talks of the short-lived, triumphs of the victor in the 
 Olympic arena ? Of what esteem is the parsley -wreath of the 
 panting wrestler, when compared with this undying laurel ? All 
 has passed away : the Greek Nation exists, but the people have 
 no longer a thought for the Palaestrum ; the ballad of Troy is to 
 them but an old woman's tale : but the Indian, generation after 
 generation, sees enacted before him the same historic pageant, 
 which his forefathers saw, before Alexander penetrated to the 
 banks of the Hydaspes, while Achilles in his spleen was still pacing 
 up and down on the shores of the sounding Hellespont. More 
 wondrous is it, when we consider that it is a people who have 
 naught of real nationality ; that know not even the name of 
 patriotism ; that have bowed for centuries abjectly to con- 
 querors, anyone whom chance might place over them ; that 
 are incapable of unity for their own advantage ; yet on this one 
 occasion they raise the cry of victory though submissive to 
 alien Rulers, display unity of action though hopelessly dissevered, 
 and might pass for patriots, did we not" know that they had been 
 subjects for centuries. We search History in vain for a parallel, 
 and we find it not, save on that one day, when the many Nations 
 and tribes of disunited Christendom kneel in humble recollection 
 of the sufferings of a crucified Saviour. 
 
 But the procession and crowds have now departed ; the place, 
 where I stand, is now empty ; the noise of the shouting is still 
 resounding, when a new sight displays itself, and, accompanied 
 by strains of plaintive music and lamentation, a long train of 
 men and women pass' by, urged by similar feelings of Religion, 
 supported by similar instinct of duty, yet between them and 
 those, who stood here a few moments before, sojourners of the 
 same city, clothed in the same habiliments, is a vast chasm of 
 
( 411 ) 
 
 ideas, a boundless dissociation of sympathies and traditions. 
 This year they celebrate on the same day, the anniversary of 
 the slaughter of the grandson of their Prophet : with drawn 
 swords and tears they convey to the place of interment a 
 fanciful burden, and fondly deem, that they, the residents of 
 India, mourn in sincerity for the untimely end of these two 
 youths of Arabia. But in their acting there is no deep pathos, 
 in their annual celebration there is no unity of action, and it 
 is not even all the followers of Mahomet that join in the 
 Moharram ; even those that do so, scarcely know why, for the 
 sons of Fatima fell not in their quarrel, their blood stained 
 not the soil of India, and so their grief is but an empty show, 
 and their mourning but illusory. 
 
 Amidst all the din, and all the clamour, din of the triumphant 
 Hindu, glorying in triumphs, the extent and nature of which are 
 forgotten ; clamour of the Mahometans, mourning they know 
 not why, over two murdered strangers, the sound of bells (for it 
 was the Sabbath-eve) fell on my ears from the Ghurch of the 
 Mission, whose solemn tower looked mournfully down on these 
 sad vagaries of poor Human Intellect, these wild fantasies of 
 erring mortals. From within came the voices of children, and 
 men born again even as a little child, who at this hour of 
 evening were pouring forth prayers of thanksgiving and repent- 
 ance for sins, which they had but lately discovered ; and simple- 
 minded devout Ministers were chanting songs of triumph over 
 the enemy whom their arms had defeated, the cause of their 
 mourning, and the reason of their rejoicing, being well known. 
 
 Play on, gentle people ! Do not forget your national festivals; 
 transmit from mouth to mouth your ancient and time-honoured 
 ballads, and year by year carry out beyond the city-walls your 
 gay pageant ; and in the Lord's own fixed time may a brighter 
 ray dawn on your now obscured Intellects ! May my eye never 
 weary in contemplating your peaceful sports ! May my pen never 
 flag in defending your immemorial customs ! 
 
 Bandras, 1852-1895. 
 
( 412 ) 
 
 C. The Trials, to which Converts are Exposed. 
 
 Missionary Warning for the Twentieth Century. 
 
 There is no doubt that, as long as the world lasts, a change 
 made in the ancestral Religion will be prejudicial to the social 
 status, the means of livelihood, and the domestic relations, of 
 the person,, whom his new friends hail, as a convert, and his 
 old associates anathematize, and excommunicate, as a pervert. 
 An American Bishop told us in one of the Sectional Meetings of 
 the Missionary-Conference of 1894, that the Mormonite Polyga- 
 mists of Utah get their extra wives in great number from 
 Christian England and Wales. No doubt the daughter of an 
 English Clergyman, or a pious Layman, who was talked over 
 to join the Mormonite Sect, would leave her home, and neigh- 
 bourhood, as»an object of scorn, hate, and deprivation of her 
 share of the parental inheritance. The same would be the 
 fate of an English youth, who became a Mahometan, or an 
 English woman who married a Mahometan. We can only 
 realize the exact merits of a. case by bringing home analogous 
 circumstances to our mind. The Christian Religion in England 
 is comparatively modern, compared with the antiquity of the 
 Zoroastrian, Brahminical, Buddhist, and Confucianist, Religious 
 beliefs in different parts of Asia. 
 
 Let us inquire what the Master says : 
 
 " In the world ye shall have tribulation," etc. John, xvi, 33, 
 
 " He that loveth Father or Mother more than me," etc. Matthew, x, 37. 
 
 ' ' Everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren . . .or children, or lands, 
 
 for My Name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting 
 
 life." Matthew, xix, 29. 
 
 The same sentiment appears throughout the Gospels, and the 
 Epistles. 
 
 The professors of the Ancient national quietist Religions, 
 and also the great worldwide Propagandist "Noble Way" of 
 Buddha, were ever tolerant: if left alone, they would leave 
 others alone. A renegade Jew would have received no quarter, 
 no pity, no inheritance, from his own relations and country- 
 men : the Stoning of Stephen in the Christian era evidences 
 this. The Greek, and Roman, were ever tolerant. Christianity 
 began the practice in Europe of Intolerance, Confiscation, and 
 Disabilities. Islam followed her example in Asia and Africa.. 
 Our position is singular in claiming for converts to our own 
 Religion immunities, which until a very late period the Church 
 of England never allowed to the Jew, the Nonconformist, the 
 Romanist, or the convert from Christianity to Mahometanism. 
 
( 413 ) 
 
 It is a great pity, that people cannot in matters of Religious 
 belief leave each other alone. The policy of the Governments 
 of England up to the time of the abolition of the Test-Acts, 
 the Roman Catholic Emancipation, and the admission of 
 Jews to Parliament, all of which events happened in my life- 
 time, has been atrocious. What has the State to do with the 
 Religious convictions in a free country ? Socially, of course, 
 a man or woman, who change their views on a very important 
 social subject, must face the consequences : as long as the 
 world lasts, this must be the case. 
 
 In Turkey, or Persia, or any independent Mahometan country, 
 Death, and Confiscation of goods, have always been the recog- 
 nized consequence of 'change of Faith. This severity is 
 •gradually passing away, as far as the Executive Government, 
 and the Courts of Law, are concerned, but, as outbreaks of 
 popular fury and an enraged Priesthood have to be reckoned 
 with, successors of Stephen are still stoned, and successors of 
 James are still killed by the sword. 
 
 In British India, on the occupation of the different Provinces, 
 not only absolute Toleration of all forms of Religious con- 
 ceptions was guaranteed, but the Hindu and Mahometan Law, 
 and customs having the force of Law, as regards Matrimony, 
 and Inheritance, were declared to be the personal Law of every 
 inhabitant of the country, so long as the paramount Laws of 
 the Human race were not violated : that is to say, the burning 
 of widows, and slaying of daughters, both of which customs 
 were part of the Law relating to Matrimony, and such like were 
 forbidden, as being Murder. It has taken half a century to 
 tread down these customs. 
 
 Just before the Mutinies of 1857 a Law was passed, declaring, 
 that the succession to ancestral property was not forfeited by 
 change of Religion : this was a very strong departure from 
 the original guarantees : it is notorious, however, that in past 
 centuries a Hindu, who became Mahometan, did not forfeit his 
 estate ; it so happens, that Christian converts generally belong 
 to the poorest classes, and claims to landed property, or valuable 
 chattels, are rare. 
 
 About the same time a Law was passed, declaring the issue of 
 a Hindu widow, who remarried, to be legitimate : the Law has 
 been practically inoperative : I never heard of a case. 
 
 These Laws affected property and status, but the real trouble 
 of a convert in the Nineteenth century is to retain possession 
 of his wife and children, and this trouble existed in the time of 
 our Lord, as evidenced by His Words quoted above. Can 
 modern Christian Legislation remove the difficulty ? is it wise 
 to do so ? will true Christianity gain by it ? 
 
 The state of British India is not satisfactory at. the .present 
 
( 414 ) 
 
 moment. The air is full of rumours : a period of unrest, if not of 
 open disturbance, seems to be near at hand. The Population of 
 the country during the half-century of Pax Britannicahas increased 
 at the rate of three Millions annually, and the general poverty 
 has increased also : War has ceased : Pestilence and Famine are 
 kept under control. Twenty-two Millions of Widows are the 
 result of the Law abolishing Widow-burning: a large number 
 of unmarried females is the result of forbidding the practice of 
 killing daughters in high-caste families : the land is overrun with 
 lepers, as the result of forbidding the burying alive of lepers ; 
 and lepers have families of. young children. There can be no 
 doubt, that we were right in doing what we did, but we have 
 to cope with the consequences. Well-intentioned benevolent 
 people in Great Britain have commenced a system of worrying 
 the people of India about their Marriage-customs, their use of 
 stimulants, and sedatives. The Native Press is active, unbridled, 
 and outspoken. Up to this time there has been no breach of 
 the absolute enforcement of Religious Toleration, and of the 
 respect to the customs having the force of Law. 
 
 Now it is clear, that nothing but Legislation can remove 
 the disabilities, or such portion of them, as come within the 
 scope of Legislation. This implies, that a pressure is desired 
 to be brought upon the India Office, and the Viceroy, to move 
 them to "do something": what? To get up an Association, 
 analogous to the Anti - Opium - Society, would be the worst 
 possible policy : it would exasperate both the Government, and 
 the people governed : who should bring the pressure to bear ? 
 The Missionaries of the Church of England are inconsiderable 
 in number, when brought into comparison with those of the 
 Church of Rome, the Nonconformist Churches of England, the 
 Churches of Continental Europe, Scotland, and America ; and 
 it would be impossible to act in concert with the Church of 
 Rome, and very difficult to act in unison with the other 
 Protestant Churches, who might suggest methods and remedies, 
 which the Church of England could not approve of. To my 
 knowledge one Nonconformist Church insists upon converts 
 breaking all previous Marriage-Contracts, and starting fresh 
 in life with a new Christian wife. Such was, in fact, the practice 
 of Jewish converts in London, when admitted into the Church 
 of England, until only a- few years ago, when I helped to stop 
 the practice. 
 
 Nor would the difficulty end here. We base our claim to 
 Justice on the highest grounds, that a man or woman should 
 not be deprived of their consorts and children on account of 
 a change of their Religious conceptions : this would apply 
 equally to the Hindu, who became a Mahometan, or a Brahmo- 
 Somajist, or an Aria-Somajist, or a Theosophist, or a Mormon, 
 
( 415 ) 
 
 or a Unitarian, or the Professor of any new form of Faith. The 
 Mahometans settle the matter absolutely by declaring the 
 Marriage-Contract made between Mahometans void, if one or. 
 other of the contracting parties cease to be Mahometan ; and 
 that condition is a matter of general notoriety. The Hindu 
 Contract of Marriage is indissoluble, but the Christian convert 
 is deprived of the society of his wife, and care of his children : 
 this circumstance is also a matter of general notoriety. There 
 is no legal process available for restitution of Conjugal Rights, 
 nor would the Government dare to order the Police to 
 seek for the wife, as for an offender, and make her over to 
 her husband : such a course would be illegal now, and such 
 Legislation is impossible. I put the question to the Laity and 
 Clergy of England : if any of you had a daughter married to 
 a man, who suddenly became a Mormonite, or a Mahometan, 
 or joined one of the Sects, which deny the Divinity and Atone- 
 ment of Christ, would not the Parents and Relatives of the wife 
 do their best fairly, or foully, to save the wife and the little 
 children from what appeared to them a frightful contamination ? 
 Now to my certain knowledge such is the feeling of the Hindu, 
 and Mahometan, Parents and Relatives, when the man, to whom 
 one of their family is married, becomes a Christian. 
 
 The alternative is to set the man free from the Marriage- 
 Contract, and enable him to marry somebody else. As regards 
 the conversion to Christianity of a Hindu, this has been done. 
 In 1864-5 a Law to this effect was passed, while I was a 
 Member of the Legislative Council of the Viceroy, and in 
 spite of my strenuous opposition. The Hindu convert to 
 Christianity can cite his wife to appear before the Magistrate 
 in camera, and to express her individual feelings on the subject, 
 and to listen to the conciliatory advice of the Magistrate : if 
 she does not return to her husband within a year, he is at 
 liberty to remarry. This presupposes, that the Magistrate is 
 a Christian : this was the case in 1864-5 : it is not likely, that 
 a- Hindu, or Mahometan, Magistrate would give advice in the 
 sense desired by the Christian convert. 
 
 As regards converts to Christianity from Mahometanism, no 
 analogous Law has been passed : I have consulted my friend 
 Sir William Muir, who is an authority on such matters, and he 
 agrees with me, that the converts from Mahometanism should 
 have the same privileges as the converts from Hinduism. The 
 Mahometan Law has already set the wife free: the Municipal 
 Law of India should set the husband free also. 
 
 So much for the Ma'rriage-Contract : if the wife herself elects, 
 or is compelled by her relatives, to abandon the society of her 
 husband, the Marriage-Contract must be declared cancelled. 
 Personally I am, and was always, opposed to this Law : in the 
 
( 416 ) 
 
 Missionary-Conference at Lahore in 1861, -I opposed any inter- 
 ference; in the Legislative Council of the Viceroy in 1864 I • • 
 opposed the Law ; but it has been thirty years in force for the 
 Hindu, and ought to be extended to the Mahometan. 
 
 As regards the custody of the children of tender years, we may 
 safely leave that question to the Courts of Law : the principles 
 of Jus paternum are thoroughly understood. Protestant Mis- 
 sionaries should not condescend to enter into Lawsuits with 
 non-Christians only for the sake of getting an influence over 
 young children, and making them Christians. This is the well- 
 known policy of the Church of Rome, which will spend hundreds 
 of Pounds to get a child out of the clutches of Dr. Barnardo : 
 if a man wants the custody of his children, let him sue for it; 
 the question of their Religion will depend on themselves, when 
 they arrive at a certain age. 
 
 An independent grievance is, that the Christian convert, 
 having become an outcast, is deprived of the use of the wells of 
 the village. It must be recollected, that the water is drawn 
 out of the well by letting down a brass vessel with a rope into 
 the well ; and this is a difficulty, for obviously the vessel of an 
 outcast defiles the water from the point of view of ceremonial 
 purity. But in most villages there are members of the sweeper, 
 and other helot, classes, who are outcasts, -and they must have 
 some means of getting their water, which the neo-Christian 
 should not be too proud to share. At any rate, no Legislation 
 in this question is possible. The wells were made by the Hindu, 
 or Mahometan, proprietors, and are kept in repair by them, and 
 the lawful custom- of the majority of the inhabitants must be 
 respected. The Christian converts must seek another dwelling- 
 place. The Master has spoken distinctly on this subject also. 
 
 In Southern India tyrannical rules in Native States are put 
 forward, compelling so-called outcasts to wear such-and-such 
 a kind of dress, or abstain from wearing it ; to give way to a 
 caste-man in the Public Road : such customs must die out : the 
 Christian convert is quite able to vindicate his rights on such 
 matters in the Courts of Justice. 
 
 A great lesson is being taught to the whole population by 
 the entire absence of any distinction of individuals, one from 
 another, in the State-Railways, Ferries, Schools, Hospitals, and 
 Courts of Justice. 
 
 A strong Christian Government of the Nineteenth century 
 will not itself persecute, nor allow others to do so : the ordinary 
 principles of Criminal and Civil Law cannot be departed from 
 in favour of, or against, the holders of any particular Religious 
 Faith : if there are any loopholes, by which Persecution finds 
 its way, they must be stopped by Legislation. There must be 
 no opportunity for Martyrdom : no Crucifixions by order of the 
 
( 417 ) 
 
 Sovereign, no auto-da-fe" by the Authorities of any Church, no 
 stoning by the mob. The State is so far responsible, but no 
 further. The best legacy, that a convert can leave to his friends, 
 is the example of a holy and faithful death : there are no Mort- 
 main-Laws to deprive them of that. 
 
 It is impossible for a European to realize, what is the con- 
 sequence of change of Religious belief in an Asiatic country. 
 Imagine the feelings of a son driven from his father's house, 
 a workman turned out of the manufactory, a young man out of 
 his club, and all the shops closed against him. 
 
 Missionaries talk grandly of a convert becoming- a new man ; 
 and, if Death followed his conversion it would be well for him. 
 So far as regards the outer world ; but the lowest worm among 
 mankind has an inner world also : to be converted in any true 
 sense of that word, he must have been serious, his Soul stirred, his 
 thoughts looking back and forward : there arise before him the 
 superstitions, which have become part of his life, the prejudices, 
 the customs, which are a second nature, the traditions, which 
 have gathered weight through many generations : his conver- 
 sation, his salutation in the street, must be altered : he may not 
 have much Religious idea, but certain formulae cling round 
 his heart, which he had learned from his parents, and the old 
 men, on whose knees he had sat as a child : as for a Soul, he 
 never knew till now that he had one ; he knew little, cared 
 for little, he had no Past, and took no thought of the Future ; 
 but he had a certain amount of affection to his Parents, and 
 a certain amount of Love for his wife and his children. Of 
 course, from the point of view of Christian fanatics, everything 
 in the life, and sacred books, of the Hindu, Buddhist, and 
 Mahometan, is abominable and ungodly ; but some of us, who 
 have witnessed their simple lives, and read their magnificent 
 books, think differently: the ignorant convert has to leap 
 into the dark: he does not know much of his old Religion, 
 or much more of his new; he is changing Temple or 
 Mosque for Chapel; Brahmin or Pesh-namaz for a foreigner; 
 Ram-Ram and Bismillah for Pater Noster, if it be a Papist 
 Mission, and " Hamare Bap," if it be a Protestant. Starva- 
 tion, being sent to Coventry, unkind treatment (not of a 
 penal character), separation from his family, are often the 
 concomitants. "Think not that I am come to bring Peace, 
 but a sword." 
 
 The Native Churches in India are quite strong enough, if 
 they have a grievance, to state it by petition to the Governors 
 of their Province, or to the Legislative Council, and to ventilate 
 the matter in their own Public Press, or in Public Meetings 
 called for the purpose. It is utterly impossible to concede any- 
 thing to a Christian convert, which is not conceded to any other 
 
 27 
 
( 418 ) 
 
 Native of India, who changes his Religious belief. Such a 
 policy would be unworthy of the character of the Government, 
 and the settled convictions of the Nineteenth century. As 
 stated above, Hindu tribes during the Mahometan Empire 
 accepted Mahometanism, and are still in possession of their 
 ancestral lands. Large numbers have in times past seceded 
 from their Ancestral Religion, and practices, and have become 
 Sectarians, such as the Sikhs of the Panjab, and many others 
 less well known : they have kept their ancestral lands. There 
 is now a new crop of Religious beliefs, entirely non-Christian, 
 such as the Brahmo-Somaj, Aria-Somaj, neo-Buddhist, Theo- 
 sophist, Mormonite, Unitarian : they have all a right to the 
 same civil privileges : before long, or even while I write, we 
 shall have Christian converts, of whom the Missionaries have 
 made much account, passing into one of the new beliefs : ' if the 
 English Christian Official, either by legislative authority, or 
 executive power, tears away the children of Christian converts 
 from the homes of their non-Christian relatives, what will the 
 feelings of the Christian Church be, when the families of 
 Christian converts are torn away from the Christian village, and 
 handed over to Mormonites and Theosophists ? In the pro- 
 clamation of the Queen, 1858, when taking over India from the 
 East India Company, it is distinctly stated, that we must do 
 unto others, as we should wish men to do unto us. We are in 
 an Epoch of Intellectual, and Religious, change : when a Native 
 Christian wishes to marry the sister of his deceased wife, and 
 his own Pastor will not marry them, he merely joins another 
 flock of neo-Christians, where this license is allowed, and gets 
 married. 
 
 It does not follow, that the power of Christian Europe will 
 continue very much longer in India. It would be a fatal error 
 to leave Christianity in a "White Man" guise. Of all Reli- 
 gions in the World, Christianity is allowed by those, who study 
 Religion scientifically, to be the one, which has the greatest 
 power of adapting itself to the Religious wants of individuals, 
 Nations, and successive generations of mankind, or in other 
 words to be the most elastic and comprehensive : it has no 
 " Kaaba-stone," like Mahometanism, to tie it to Arabia ; no 
 Hindu illusions, which it cannot get rid of, like Buddhism. 
 The Government of India has always acted as the benevolent, 
 and impartial, Ruler of its subjects, and it may be depended 
 upon, as willing to give relief to all those, who can themselves 
 show cause. Nothing could be so fatal to the permanence of 
 Christianity amidst the Millions of non-Christians, as the idea, 
 that Christianity had powerful friends, and advocates, in Europe, 
 that it was the " White Man's " Religion : if that idea gained 
 ground, it would fade away with the decay of European Secular 
 
( 419 ) 
 
 Power, instead of flourishing for ever with indigenous vitality, 
 as the Church of Christ. 
 
 June izth, 1894, 1895. 
 
 Since the publication of the above, the matter has advanced. 
 The Board of Missions of the two Provinces in August, 1895, 
 distributed to all the Bishops of India and Ceylon, and to the 
 great Missionary Societies of all denominations in Great Britain 
 which have Missions in these countries, a copy of a Provisional 
 Report on the Disabilities of Native Christians under existing 
 Laws, and the expediency of pressing on the Government certain 
 remedial measures. The Bishops are invited to consult all who 
 are interested, whether of the Church of England or Protestant 
 Nonconformists, in the field, and to report, and the Board of 
 Missions proposes to reconsider the matter next Session. The 
 advice of the Missionary Societies is also solicited. 
 
 The subject has its difficulties. The road to conversion must 
 not be made too easy by the Arm of the Flesh. The Master 
 predicts trials and sufferings as a necessary accompaniment of 
 entering into His Kingdom. Christianity is prepared to exist 
 without the aid of secular authorities. The man, who bought 
 the precious pearl, sold all that he possessed to enable him to 
 buy it. In British India and Ceylon there is no fear of violent 
 persecution or martyrdom. Social estrangement, and family- 
 troubles, are distinctly predicted and must be borne patiently. 
 On the other hand, a Christian Government is bound to 
 consider and, if possible, to relieve any disability, under which 
 any one of her Majesty's subjects has fallen, owing to the 
 exercise of his undoubted and guaranteed right of freedom of 
 Religious convictions. A man may lose the companionship of 
 his wife if she, having had an opportunity of expressing her 
 own opinion, declines to consort with him, but the right to his 
 children of tender years is not forfeited. Indian Law already 
 declares, that change of Religion does not affect succession to 
 land or chattels by ordinary devolution. No disability to public 
 employment, or the use of the conveniences belonging to the 
 general public, is tolerated. If a convert is put out of the 
 Synagogue, denied entry into his father's house, cut dead by his 
 friends in the streets, turned out of his club, that is no affair of 
 the State. The convert must count the cost. Another reason 
 suggests caution. Religious thought in British India is in a 
 state of flux. Education and contact with other Nations are 
 leading on to the break-up of the silence of centuries. 
 Christianity is not the only factor at work in this great change. 
 The people of British India are the heirs of centuries of 
 Civilization, and in competition the young Indian often takes 
 
( 420 ) 
 
 place above the European. Something more of an Asiatic type 
 than the Christianity presented in an European capsule is 
 required. Brahmoism, Theosophism, Arianism, neo-Buddhism, 
 Unitarianism, and other Asiatic forms of Religious conceptions, 
 based on Monotheism and High Morality, are in the germ. 
 The concessions made in favour of the Christian convert must 
 pari materia be conceded to the other Religious swarms, and 
 converts may pass from Christian villages into some other 
 category, and exert the right of freedom of Religious conviction 
 with all its consequences ; so perhaps it is safer to do nothing. 
 
 The paper now circulated was prepared by a Sub-Committee 
 consisting of Sir Charles Turner, K.C.I.E., late Chief Justice of 
 Madras, the Rev. H. Perkins, late member of Her Majesty's 
 Indian Civil Service, and now Missionary of the C.M.S., and 
 Dr. R. N. Cust, Hon. Secretary of the Board of Missions. 
 
 1896. 
 
( 421 ) 
 
 D. The Home-Organization of Missions. 
 
 i. The Committee-Room. 
 
 2. The Parting with the Outgoing and Welcome 
 
 back of Returning Agents. 
 
 3. Exeter-Hall, May 1, 1888. 
 
 1. The Committee-Room. 
 
 In the sketches in previous Chapters, I have brought before 
 my Readers scenes in India, Africa, and Oceania, with a view of 
 giving life, and a sense of reality, to the subject. Very few of 
 the supporters of a Mission have ever seen the workers at their 
 work, and the conventional mode of description in the Periodicals 
 gives but a faint conception of the reality. Still fewer of the 
 supporters have been present in the Missionary committee- 
 Room. It is very audacious, but in my desire to attract 
 sympathy to the great work of Evangelization, I venture to 
 draw a picture of that also. It is not the only Council-Chamber, 
 the only committee- Room, in which during the last forty years 
 I have had a seat, and I have, therefore, a capacity for com- 
 parison. I have passed, during the last twenty years, daily and 
 weekly from the Municipal Boards to the Magisterial Bench, the 
 Hall of the Scientist, the workroom of the Sempstress, the 
 Workhouse, the Lunatic Asylum, and the Prison. There earnest 
 men meet with their earnest fellows, learn the science of debate, 
 and the control of the temper. 
 
 Perhaps in no Secular committee a letter resembling the one, 
 which I now quote, could have been written. A Secretary was 
 starting literally round the world to inspect our Mission-Stations, 
 and fifty-six members of the committee signed it as drafted 
 by myself: it will serve to throw a light on the working of 
 a committee, and the spirit which pervades its members. 
 
 Church Mission-House, 
 August, 1886. 
 Dear and honoured Friend, 
 
 We do not like, that you should leave us on your long 
 
 journey without a word of loving farewell. The committee is 
 
 , composed of annually changing members, and we cannot hope, 
 
 that all of us will again meet in the room so well known to us, 
 
 and which has been so blessed to each one of us, where we' 
 
( 422 ) 
 
 have laboured so often and so earnestly together. The pictures 
 on the walls will be the same, when you return, but some of 
 the chairs will be empty, and you may perhaps miss some well- 
 remembered face, and some voice, which will be silent for ever. 
 
 That during the last five years you have had Grace and 
 strength given to you to dedicate your time, talents, and 
 resources, to your Master's Service, with a single eye to His 
 Glory, must ever be a subject of joy and gratitude to yourself. 
 But it is so to us also ; for we feel, that of all the blessings, 
 which the Almighty can bestow on His faithful children, the 
 greatest is to have Grace to consecrate their talents, what- 
 soever they may be, to Him. Other Missionaries have, during 
 that period, at your selection, gone out to labour among the 
 Heathen : you have served Him with equal fidelity at home, 
 and have proved yourself to be a true Missionary at heart. 
 
 Those among us, who have experience of such things, have 
 noted with gratitude and delight the ability, and Christian Love, 
 which have characterized your mode of transacting business. 
 You have lost no friends, but on the contrary have made many 
 new ones. Those, who have disagreed with you in details, 
 have recognized your high motives, and single-mindedness of 
 purpose. In your occasional tenacity of opinion you have 
 taught us, that it is well to be in earnest in a great matter. In 
 your readiness to surrender your own views you have taught us, 
 that it is better still to be humble-minded, distrustful of one's 
 own judgment, and ready to give way. 
 
 We shall remain revolving in our restricted orbit of committee, 
 and prayer-meeting, while you are circumnavigating the Globe. 
 We shall read and speak of Mission-work done in distant fields, 
 while you are privileged to inspect it. When on our usual days 
 of meeting we assemble in your absence, we shall think of you, 
 and remember you in our prayers ; and we doubt not that, 
 wherever you may be, your heart will, like a magnet, turn to 
 us ; that in the cabin of the ship, in the carriage of the railway, 
 in the solitary traveller's resting-house, and still more in our 
 Mission-Schools and Mission-Chapels, with your face, sometimes 
 directed to the rising sun, and sometimes to the setting sun, 
 you will pray for us, and the great united work, to which our 
 best faculties are dedicated, and ask for the special blessing 
 to be allowed to come back to us, in which request the hearts 
 of all of us are united. We shall miss you much each day of 
 your absence, and welcome you on your return. 
 
 May the Almighty take you into His special keeping ! may 
 His rod and staff support you in your Pilgrimage ! Should sick- 
 ness come upon you, may you find perfect Peace in the hollow 
 of His Hand ; for He careth for you ! One lesson, at least, we 
 have learned in our committee-room is, that God encompasses 
 
( 423 ) 
 
 His servants, wheresoever they go, and knows best what manner 
 of Service He thinks good to require of them. 
 
 We subscribe ourselves your loving friends. 
 
 So much for the Secretary: my remarks now turn to such 
 Members- of the committee, as have passed the flower of their 
 lives in the East. I have strong views on the subject : it appears 
 to me that a retired Anglo-Indian ought not to be allowed to 
 live, if he did not consecrate his leisure, means, and talents, 
 to some work for his fellow-creatures. Why otherwise has his 
 life been so marvellously spared, when so many of his con- 
 temporaries have fallen victims to the climate, or to the assassin, 
 or to the bullet of the enemy, in some pitched battle ? On each 
 side of the road, which he has trod, are the graves of those 
 with whom he began life, in my case 53 years ago. 
 
 Committees can be secular or Religious : in the one category 
 come the Geographical Society, the Asiatic, the Prison- 
 committees, the Anti- Slavery' committee, the Hospitals, the 
 Poor Law, and the numerous secular Associations. In the other 
 category come the Missionary committees, the Bible Society, 
 S.P.C.K., R.T.S., and others : it is well to attend both categories, 
 and the danger of clinging to one only, especially if that be a 
 Religious committee, is the certainty of narrowing the vision, and 
 contracting the experience : anybody more narrow-minded than 
 the one- Religious committee-man can hardly be imagined. There 
 can be no doubt that the Secular committee is infinitely superior 
 in business-habits, and common-sense, to the Religious com- 
 mittee ; and yet in spite of that my heart goes out to the latter : 
 the members of both are high-minded, unpaid, and incapable of 
 a dirty job : earnestness, and a tendency to quarrel about trifles, 
 are features of both : the Secular committees are elected by a 
 free constituency ; the Religious committees by a system of 
 co-option, which practically is the choice of one of the 
 Secretaries, who prefer to have a body of dummies, respectable, 
 docile, but ignorant. The secretaries in a Secular committee 
 preserve a grave silence, and record the decisions of the com- 
 mittee; the same officials in a Religious committee in many 
 cases, though not in all, exert an undue influence in the 
 proceedings, and insist on carrying out the views of what they 
 call "the Secretariat." 
 
 Nothing surprises an Anglo-Indian more, who for the last 
 twenty years has had to go to his office, and in a certain number 
 of hours to dispose of a multiplicity of matters, than the dreamy 
 and uncertain way, in which a body of Clergy, or untravelled 
 Englishmen, dispose of work in a Religious committee. In the 
 one case, rapidity of perception of the issue, fearless issue of 
 the order, passing on to another matter, has become a necessity 
 
( 424 ) 
 
 of his existence : the order may be wrong, but it is rapid, 
 capable of execution, and clears the file : in the latter, the debate 
 is weak, illogical, and loquacious ; the order is often vacillating, 
 a kind of compromise, or a plea for delay. 
 
 I will now dwell further on the composition of a Missionary 
 Society committee : it is an odd sight, and must not be taken 
 too seriously: the affairs of no kingdom, or secular adminis- 
 tration, could be carried on under such conditions : the number 
 of members is too great, the attendance irregular : some stop to 
 lunch, and disappear ; some look on it as an Ecclesiastical club, 
 a place of weekly rendezvous ; many of the members are pious 
 enthusiasts, but lacking in experience : the work must, indeed, 
 be for God, as it prospers under such very inadequate Human 
 ' conditions. If the committee-system, and association-autonomy, 
 are to last on into the next century, the example of Banking and 
 Mercantile committees must be adopted, and paid Directors 
 appointed, supported by a limited number of honorary unpaid 
 Missionary experts as councillors: the present forty-parson- 
 power, and congress of emotional dummies, Will not be sufficient 
 to carry on such a vast and complicated enterprize. As in a 
 Chinese Parliament, so in a Missionary committee-room, there 
 are abundant expressions of Moral and Religious sentiments, 
 but an absence of administrative experience and consultative 
 wisdom. 
 
 Yet to have been fifteen years a member of such a Religious 
 Club, or a Missionary committee, is a great privilege : I look 
 back upon sweet friendships formed, only ending in death ; of 
 information gathered in private conversation ; of spirituality 
 exhibited not in words only but in conduct : I will not allude to 
 the living, though I have many dear friends, whose acquaintance 
 was formed in committee : let me mention some of the dead : 
 the Earl of Chichester, the Hon. F. Maude, Joseph Hoare 
 the Banker, Edward Hoare the Archdeacon, Sir William Hill 
 the General, Bishop Perry, dear Alexander Beattie, Canon Aurioll, 
 dear Sir Harry Verney, Canon Miller, William Gray ; old friends 
 were met also, Colonel Channer, dear Robert Maclagan, good 
 Arthur Lang, and old James Long the Missionary. The dis- 
 tinction between a Religious and Secular committee, is that the 
 one begins and ends with prayer: this may, perhaps, have 
 degenerated into a mere form, and many members arrive too late 
 to share in it ; in very deed all our talents, whether for things 
 Religious or things Secular, come from the same God, and those 
 who are entrusted with those talents, and blessed with those 
 opportunities, should feel prayer rising from the inmost Soul 
 in return for the Grace conferred of seeing Him anywhere, 
 anyhow. Sometimes in a Secular committee I seem to wonder 
 why there is no prayer for guidance. 
 
(425 ) 
 
 The pictures on the walls remind those who are present of 
 the continuousness of the work from the beginning of the 
 century. Boasting is indeed excluded, for, if as little wisdom 
 had been evinced in the conduct of a human enterprize, the 
 concern would have long ago collapsed. In all other enter- 
 prizes there is the final check of the Shareholder in annual 
 meetings, or the Local Government Board, or the Home 
 Secretary of State : here there is none. Vast sums are collected 
 in pennies and shillings, and there is absolutely no control over 
 the nature of the expenditure, or the amount spent on any 
 object : under no other circumstances can it be imagined that 
 ten thousand pounds, annually collected from little children in 
 boxes, should be devoted to the maintenance of children of the 
 agents, who ought never to have come into existence. Only 
 imagine any portion of Parochial or County Rates, or sums voted 
 by Parliament for a specific purpose, being diverted from their 
 object to be spent on the maintenance of the children of the 
 employes. Let proper stipends be provided for those, who wish 
 to undertake the Lord's Service, and let them provide themselves 
 for the families which the Lord may give them. 
 
 Idiosyncrasy of character comes out in such gatherings with 
 startling clearness : perhaps a retired solicitor, favoured with 
 restless leisure, and a clear utterance, will be up and speak at 
 length on any or every subject, for all are equally unknown to 
 him. Perhaps a recording Secretary, who ought to sit quietly 
 and listen, will force himself into constant notice, and give a 
 lecture as from a Professor's desk. No one likes to stop such 
 men, if their own self-distrust and innate modesty have not 
 prevented their intrusion. 
 
 " Satis Eloquentiae, Sapientise parum." 
 
 In secular bodies a talkative man is soon put down ; in a Re- 
 ligious committee, as in a Church, there is no Presidential bell, 
 or the popular discipline of discordant noises. I have in such 
 committees witnessed a stand-up fight between two Secretaries, 
 or members of uncontrolled tempers or tongues. Where the 
 Secretaries are all of one mind, and the dummy-members are 
 under control, there is no proper discussion of important sub- 
 jects. After the hours of lunch, when the committee is 
 thinned, anything can be passed. Now, in a secular body, 
 such subjects would be thrashed out ; in a Religious committee, 
 many doubt, but the sanctity attached to the subject and the 
 place holds them back from expressing their opinion, and 
 entering into a discussion. Thoughtful men are in consequence 
 compelled to withdraw from such a committee. The Archbishop 
 of Canterbury (Dr. Benson), at the Missionary Conference of 
 
( 426 ) 
 
 London, in 1894, remarked that "it was not possible for Societies 
 " to deal with a genius on their committee : that this effect 
 " must take place, either the Society must repress the genius, 
 " or the genius will make the Society very uncomfortable." It 
 is, in fact, a disqualification to a member of such committees 
 to have much Knowledge, to have studied the subject too 
 closely, and to have formed any opinion based on Knowledge, 
 or study of the near and remote Future of the great Missionary 
 Movement ; and it may with justice be allowed, that a very large 
 majority of members, lay and clerical, can plead, that they are 
 not to be charged with that disqualification. 
 
 No one description covers all committees. Some are at- 
 tended by more than one hundred, some by four or five at the 
 most ; some exclude clergy, some have too large a gathering 
 of them, and of an inferior sort as regards Mission-work. Let 
 me repeat again, that the conduct of Missions is a Science, 
 and that the ignorant should not intermeddle, as if they were 
 in a Debating Society, where each member contributes his own 
 miserable opinion. Some committees have a large majority of 
 old men, grave, serious old fogies, hard of hearing and limited 
 in vision : they are helped into their seats, and smile benig- 
 nantly, like the old men, who looked on while the foundations 
 of the Temple were being laid after the return from the Cap- 
 tivity. In some all the real power has been seized by a Venetian 
 Council, or a Transvaal Volkraad : all other members of the 
 Association are treated as Uitlanders, though in fact the supply 
 of men and money came from them. I confess to a sense of 
 intellectual degradation, when I am present at such meetings. 
 Sometimes the Committee practically shrinks to the " one 
 Man," a pushing Secretary. Such a man should be salaried, 
 and made a Director: his position and responsibilities would 
 be understood then. 
 
 February, 1896. 
 
 2. The Parting with the Outgoing and Welcome, back 
 of Returning Agents. 
 
 In some future enlarged edition of Green's " History of the 
 English People" some notice will be taken of ceremonies 
 peculiar to the Nineteenth century. In an obscure, and 
 unknown, room, in the heart of the great Metropolis, not far 
 from the busy hum of merchants, yet lying out of the orbit 
 of attraction of the general Community, there is a gathering of 
 
( 427 ) 
 
 men and women on some solemn occasion, and the meeting 
 commences with prayer. What are they doing ? 
 
 When our great ships leave the harbour for foreign countries, 
 when our soldiers go on board their transports for foreign 
 service, when Governors of great Provinces leave these shores 
 to rule over subject Millions in Her Majesty's Dominions in 
 Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania, some form of Farewell 
 greeting takes place, and a toast proposed of " Health to 
 the outward bound." So when Missionaries, male or female, 
 start upon their life-Duty, the Society which sends them, gives 
 its final instructions, hears the voice of each one, and commits 
 them to God in prayer. I say final instructions advisedly, 
 because their " marching orders " they have long ago received 
 from their Master on the Mount of Olives at the time of His 
 Ascension. 
 
 Such ceremonies, quiet, serious, unpretentious, make those, 
 who are present, feel, that it is good for them to. be here, and 
 to many are more grateful than the crowded mass meetings in 
 Public Halls for self-glorification and personal exaltation. Each 
 Missionary in his turn stands up in his place, and makes a 
 gallant delivery of the circumstances, under which he received 
 God's call, of hopes as yet unfulfilled, visions yet unrealized, self- 
 consecration still untested by experience : those may be esteemed 
 most high, who on such occasions speak the least, for they have 
 nothing to describe. The Lord accepts the Will : whether they 
 will render good Service, or none at all, falling even as they 
 enter the Vineyard, is known to Him only : as far as they are 
 concerned, the result is the same. The faithful observer, whose 
 eye falls on them, cannot but look upon them with that look of 
 Love, with which the Master honoured the young man in the 
 Gospel, though He that knew all that was in the heart of man, 
 knew that that particular young man would not give up the world, 
 and follow Him. So those, who are advanced in life, may look 
 on these young aspirants partly with Love, and a wish that they 
 were young again, and could share the new venture, and partly 
 with Pity, knowing from experience, spread over long years and 
 many countries, the trials which await them. 
 
 The initials by which the great Society is known, by whose 
 aid they enter on their career, should represent the motto 
 engraved on their hearts : 
 
 C. M. S. 
 
 " Christ My Saviour." 
 
 " Carry My Salvation." 
 
 " Christ-Magnifying Society." 
 
 They have not only to preach Christ, but to live Christ. In the 
 
( 428 ) 
 
 presence of a non-Christian population both the Divine and 
 Human Persons must be illustrated, for 
 
 Christianity is Christ. 
 
 Some will fall on the voyage out, or on landing in their new 
 home, before they have stretched out their hands to glean the 
 grapes, or even acquired the power of communicating with 
 their new brethren. Some will be disabled by the break-down 
 of their constitutions, or the chastening hand of God on their 
 faculties. Some will forget their first Love, and under earthly 
 influence, prospect of brief domestic happiness, and home 
 comforts, withdraw their hands from the plough. Some will 
 fall into sin, and prove unworthy of their high vocation. Of 
 some, the race will be run in middle life. Some, the greatly 
 blessed ones, will labour on till old age, and die amidst their 
 flocks. 
 
 In their ranks are not many wise, as men count Wisdom ; not 
 many great in Gifts, in character, in acquired Knowledge, as 
 men count greatness. They will not leave names to live after 
 them in the annals of their country, unless, indeed, they live in 
 the hearts of their converts, and the traditions of the descendants 
 of those converts, as " the holy men who brought our fore- 
 fathers, and us, to Christ." 
 
 They do not choose their field of employment : it is chosen 
 for them by those, who can gauge their different fitness of body, 
 as regards medical 1 , and of mind, as regards intellectual, require- 
 ments. " Send us wherever we are most wanted, where we can 
 do the best work," is their cry, whether among the barbarians of 
 America, Africa, and Oceania, or the polished and civilized 
 Nations of Asia : they know not, in what form of Human Speech 
 they are predestinated to preach and teach the Gospel, and some 
 may, alas ! find that they lack the linguistic Gifts to acquire 
 any, and are denied the greatest of Human privileges, the power 
 of Preaching the Gospel. 
 
 What is their work ? . . Evangelization. 
 What is their armour ? . The Helmet and Shield of 
 
 Faith, the Sword of the 
 Spirit. 
 What is their great 
 
 weapon of attack ? . The Holy Scriptures in the 
 
 Language of the people. 
 What is their great in- 
 strument of con- 
 version ? .... Love of Christ, and of all their 
 
 fellow - creatures, whether 
 converted or not. 
 
( 429 ) 
 
 It may seem to some humble Souls, that the work is beyond 
 their strength, and as regards their own strength it is so : " But 
 His strength is made perfect in their weakness " (II Cor., xii, 9). 
 They must recollect the last words of their Great Commission, 
 the last words of the First Gospel : " Lo ! I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the world " (Matthew, xxviii, 20) ; and the 
 exclamation of Paul to the Philippians (iv, 13): "I can do all 
 things through Christ, which strengtheneth me." 
 
 The very room of meeting seems to be illumed and conse- 
 crated by the presence of the Great Master Himself and His 
 poor servants, as I pass on to another occasion and the cere- 
 mony accompanying the welcome back to Missionaries on their 
 return from the field after faithful service. The pictures of 
 departed friends look down upon us from the walls, but an 
 innumerable throng of those who are absent, or have passed to 
 their rest, crowd upon our memories. We still recollect the 
 smile on their faces, when we saw them on a former similar 
 occasion ; we remember the seats, which they occupied, the 
 sound of their voices, and the words which they uttered. No 
 spot in the world is so fragrant of blessed memories, so blessed 
 in itself, and so rich in blessings to our Souls. In spite of our 
 manifold shortcomings, our foolish acts of omission or com- 
 mission, our abundant errors, the fruit of pride, and undue 
 self-esteem, and our wayward will, we still humbly believe, that 
 our Lord is verily and indeed fulfilling His Promise, and is in 
 our midst. 
 
 Some one asked a wise man in the East in what form of words 
 he would express the greatest possible " difference " that could 
 exist : he answered : " The difference betwixt the intentions of 
 a man in his youth, and the record, which he can show in middle 
 life or old age." This covers the essential features, in which the 
 second scene which we are describing differs from the first. 
 
 Each returner from the field rises up and tells his own story : 
 the truer-hearted the Missionary the simpler the story : it may 
 be very prosaic, the simple round, the common task, of chapel- 
 Services, Schools, village itineration, street-preaching. To some 
 the Lord has granted no visible success, and the success, if any, 
 comes not from the words of the Missionary, but from the life 
 given by the Holy Spirit to those words on the hearts of those, 
 who are elected to be converted. Some have a tale of adventure, 
 of disappointment, of suffering, for in very deed the lot ordained 
 to the Lord's servants differ. Some pass away in their youth ; 
 some in their full usefulness and experience. They differ in 
 antecedents, training, origin, and social environment : there is 
 a diversity of Gifts, but the same spirit, the same life-object to 
 communicate the new idea, and, in a Spiritual sense, to turn the 
 world upside down. Some will be buried where they have spent 
 
( 430 ) 
 
 long happy years, the centres of awakened affection, the rousers 
 of torpid conscience, the exemplars of holy lives. Christ from 
 the Cross will look down on them there : generations of men 
 and women spiritually born again will humbly and piously visit 
 the grave of him, who taught them so to live, as not to be 
 afraid to die. To some a harder lot is allotted : the solitary 
 rest-house by the roadside, the cabin on board ship, the tent 
 in the Indian jungle : their dying hours will be consoled by 
 the feeling, that they are filling up what remained unfulfilled of 
 the sufferings of their Master. 
 
 As we gaze on the scene, as we listen to the voice of the 
 speakers, a great change comes over us ; the walls of the room 
 seem to fall down, and, mounting a tower in our minds, we look 
 over the scene of Spiritual battles now being fought, and battles 
 to be fought in years still to come all over the world. We see 
 the various tribes seated for countless centuries in darkness, we 
 hear the Babel of their different Languages, we hear the blind, 
 spiritually blind, calling for help ; and yet the world has been 
 governed since the Creation by an all-wise, and all-powerful, 
 and all-benevolent, Ruler, and by the slightest expression of His 
 Sovereign Will all mankind might centuries ago have become 
 believing Christians : yet History tells us that it is not so. We 
 bow our heads in silence. Can the Ruler of the world fail in 
 doing right ? 
 
 And sometimes in a gathering such as this there comes, as 
 it were, a breeze from a far country, laden with the memories of 
 a great name, and my old friend at Jerusalem in 1852, Bishop 
 Gobat, walks in, and the company rises to welcome him, or good 
 Bishop Sargent of South India, or the bearer of an honoured 
 name in the Churches of Canada, or the lost and lamented 
 Negro Bishop Samuel Crowther. May the Twentieth century 
 be as fortunate as the one now closing ! The Lord's Treasury 
 is never emptied, but the enervating influence of a luxurious and 
 self-seeking and self-indulgent age has to be contended with. . 
 
 January, 1896. 
 
( 431 ) 
 
 3 . EXETER HALL, MAY i, 1888. 
 C.M.S., or " Christ My Salvation." 
 
 Through the high windows flows a flood of light, 
 
 Telling of coming Spring, and present May; 
 Before the doors rolls on both day and night 
 
 Laborious London's pitiless array : 
 
 Withdrawn from worldly work for one brief day, 
 The spacious Hall can scarcely room afford 
 
 (While on the sounding organ loud they play), 
 For men and women met with one accord 
 On this their annual feast to praise their Lord. 
 
 Each feels a portion of the holy flame : 
 
 Why was our Country made so great and strong ? 
 Why does our genius Savage races tame ? 
 
 Why do the ends of earth to us belong ? 
 
 Why do all Nations to this city throng ? 
 Why does the great Controller bless our store, 
 
 And deign our worldwide Empire to prolong, 
 But to enforce our Duty more and more, 
 To spread our Saviour's rule from shore to shore ? 
 
 Up to the ceiling rise the hymns of praise : 
 A holy text is read : in prayer we kneel : 
 
 Upstanding one by one with artless phrase 
 In turn the speakers our attention steal 
 With thrilling tones, and words, that make us feel 
 
 The grandeur of the subject : our hearts glow 
 With Love and Pity in their varying phase : 
 
 In sweet alternatings of Joy and Woe 
 
 Our thoughts fly " Up on high," and " Down below.' 
 
 "Down Below." 
 
 "Down below" we see the brave men toiling, 
 Bearing th' unsuffered sufferings of their Lord : 
 
 From no hard trial in weak fear recoiling, 
 Trusting to no flesh-arm, or Human sword, 
 But to th' Eternal changeless Promise- Word : 
 
 Some have come home our sympathies to share, 
 Their plain, unvarnished story to record ; 
 
 Some have remained for ever, where they were : 
 
 Christ on the Cross looked down upon them there. 
 
( 432 ) 
 
 Round them new germs of Christian life are springing, 
 
 New possibilities of Human Love : 
 In humble Chapels Sabbath-bells are ringing, 
 
 And swarthy white-robed Pastors gently move 
 
 Amidst their flocks to tell of Christ above : 
 Its giant fronds still waves the Palm on high ; 
 
 The glorious Sunsets still illume the grove : 
 All is unchanged in Nature's sea and sky ; 
 The hearts of Man have changed mysteriously. 
 
 Upraised on high the ensign of the Cross, 
 
 While the stone-idol from its shrine is thrown : 
 
 The Savage man for Christ counts all things loss : 
 No longer hideous rites and crimes are known, 
 Since to his heart the holier path is shown : 
 
 By his side walk his children and his. wife, 
 Who meekly shares his labours, his alone : 
 
 Joys of the present, hopes of future life, 
 
 Blot out the memory of forgotten, strife. 
 
 " Up Above." 
 
 " Up above " the roof and walls seem falling, 
 
 And Christ's great promise to us is fulfilling : 
 He will be with His children at their calling : 
 
 His presence now this crowded Hall is filling ; 
 
 Jesus is here, all fear and doublings stilling : 
 His power supports, His mercies never fail : 
 
 He sees His servants gathered here are willing 
 Humbly to do His work, though weak and frail : 
 Rise up, rise up, the Risen Lord to hail ! 
 
 As the scene clears for Human eye to view, 
 
 We see the Saints and Angels round His throne : 
 
 The Holy Martyrs, and Confessors too ; 
 We recognize some dear ones, as our own, 
 Our. own lost friends, not lost, before us gone : 
 
 Our brothers, and our sisters, firm and bold, 
 Who counted life dear but to lay it down, 
 
 His Service and His Honour to uphold, 
 
 And bring back erring sinners to His fold. 
 
 And they look down on us with solemn greeting, 
 Bidding us cleave to the same Gospel true, 
 
 And looking forward to a heavenly meeting, 
 To be with Christ, when all is made anew. 
 Oh ! come, ye doubting ones with me, and view 
 
( 433 ) 
 
 The low straw-hut, where Saints their labours close 
 
 Midst tears and prayers of men of dusky hue, 
 For whom Christ died, for whom again He rose : 
 Let the kind Shepherd's arms His wandering lambs enclose! 
 
 Words uttered here fall on the page below, 
 
 And are recorded by a faithful hand : 
 Then through the trumpet-sounding Press they blow 
 
 Over the length and breadth of British Land, 
 
 Telling the triumphs of ImmanuePs band, 
 Making the hearts of faithful men to. glow : 
 
 The morn is breaking at His high command, 
 And streaks of blessed light begin to show 
 The coming of the reign of Christ below. 
 
 Is not this day the sweetest of the year ? 
 
 Spared are we still to see another May. 
 Is it not well for us to gather here, 
 
 And, counting up our failings, homage pay 
 
 To Him, who has accepted us this day 
 According to our will, not to our powers ? 
 
 For what have we to offer, but what may 
 Spring from His Gift, wealth, talents, labouring hours ? 
 Thine be the glory, Lord ! the blessing still be ours ! 
 
 Exeter Hall, May i, 1888. 
 (In my old seat: vacated 1891, setat 70.) 
 
 28 
 
( 434 ) 
 
 E. Prospects of the Future. 
 Missionary Warnings of the Twentieth century. 
 
 i . The Philosophy of Missions. 
 
 2. An all-round View of the Movement at the Close of the 
 
 Nineteenth century. 
 
 3. Certainty of Progress of Christianity,^ it be real. 
 
 4. Agencies and Methods at work. 
 
 5. (a) Gradual dying out of Animistic conceptions in races 
 
 of low culture, and of the ancient Book-Religions. 
 (b) Substitution of new forms of Religious conceptions 
 in races of higher culture, Moral, Spiritual, but non- 
 Christian. 
 
 6. Enlarged capacity of non-Christian races to understand 
 
 a Religious conception, which affects their Morals 
 in this life, and their Souls hereafter. 
 
 7. Christian Truth and practice exposed to new tests. 
 
 8. Expulsion of Missionaries from certain countries, under 
 
 certain circumstances, justifiable and necessary. 
 
 9. Form and doctrine of Native Independent Churches. 
 
 1. The Philosophy of Missions. 
 
 The great mass of mankind live for the present hour, and their 
 thoughts are bounded by their immediate environment: it is 
 well, that it should be so : the world's work is done by single- 
 minded, blindfolded workers, and not by the wild vagaries 
 of speculators : still, it is well for some few to dip into the 
 Future, not the dim and remote, but that Future, which the 
 phenomena of the present are creating. Evangelization, and 
 Civilization, are the two great phenomena of the Nineteenth 
 century, the result of a long and blessed Peace, and a cautious 
 forecast can be made of the immediate Future, the next 
 generation of men. Some men are habitually in their thoughts 
 ten years in advance of their contemporaries, and if their lives be 
 spared, they are allowed to see, whether their speculations were 
 sound or unsound. When in 1846, according to the orders of 
 the Supreme Government of India, I forbade the residents of 
 my newly conquered Panjab District to burn their widows, kill 
 their daughters, or bury alive their lepers, an old Sikh asked me 
 confidentially, whether I had thought out the consequences of my 
 order. I had not done so. This set me thinking : I have lived 
 to see, that there were twenty-two Millions of widows in India 
 
( 435 ) 
 
 in 1 89 1, tens of thousands of unmarried young women, and 
 armies of lepers traversing the country: still the order was 
 right, whatever may have been the consequences. 
 
 In the same way we ought to reflect what will be the con- 
 sequences of our Missionary labours, say in 1930 a.d. We 
 must throw our eyes forward, and try to imagine what will 
 be the result in British India of the wild, multiform, hap- 
 hazard, Methods of Evangelization during the last fifty years. 
 The only advantage of studying the Past is, that we obtain a 
 firmer grasp on the Future. Experience is not a stern-light, 
 but a prow-light. 
 
 In our Future there are essential fundamental differences 
 from our Past. In the early centuries of the Christian era old 
 Religious conceptions were breaking up : there was little, or no 
 Education ; no Printing-press, no Public Press, no means of 
 locomotion. Mankind was segregated into absolutely separate 
 islands of Civilization or savagery. In each area there was only 
 room for one development of the new idea. The Greek or 
 Roman Churches killed down all, who differed from their 
 accepted form. 
 
 In our Future we must expect to see a Hydra-headed, 
 multiform, Christianity: all the European and American Churches 
 are represented : some secretly, some actively, hostile to each 
 other. New forms of non-Christian, or pseudo-Christian, con- 
 ceptions are springing into existence, characterized by high 
 Morality and universal adaptability. 
 
 The ordinary Christian Communities present in themselves 
 very indifferent object-lessons of the purifying influences of 
 Christianity, viz., the being' born again as a new man, whose 
 one object is Holiness. Add to this an infidel literature. The 
 following question may well be asked by the educated non- 
 Christian. " The Hebrew Covenant lasted Nineteen centuries, 
 " and entirely failed in its object, which was to keep the 
 " Hebrews faithful to their Covenant-God, and Holy. Can 
 " it be, that the Christian Covenant is failing also at the close 
 " of its Nineteenth century ? " 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Benson, in his thoughtful 
 address to the C.M.S. Younger Clergy Union, February, 1896, 
 drew attention to the necessity of attaining not only a general 
 knowledge of the thing itself, but a real knowledge of its 
 principles ; that it was beginning to be known, that there is 
 a Philosophy of Missions, as indeed there is of History : those, 
 who knew nothing of the Philosophy of Missions, knew nothing 
 of Missions. He remarked further, that Westerns would never 
 produce effect upon Mahometans : they must be approached by 
 Oriental Missionaries : the Apostles themselves were Orientals. 
 As long as we keep to white Bishops and white Clergy, it is not 
 
( 436 ) 
 
 a Native Church, but a School. He added, that there are great 
 Phenomena to be known about Nations, and about the appli- 
 cability of Christianity to those Nations, before the work of 
 Evangelization can be done effectually. 
 
 The Essay, which I now submit upon this solemn subject, 
 was reduced to its present form on paper before His Grace's 1 
 remarks fell under my eye in the C.M.S. Intelligencer of March, 
 1896, p. 229. I feel grateful. The great Spiritual movement of the 
 Nineteenth century is indeed a great, the greatest of, Philosophies. 
 
 What is the Philosophy of Missions ? Those know it not, 
 who limit their interest to an annual subscription, an occasional 
 Meeting, or the lower Duties in the Mission-field ; but those, 
 who study the subject, who are distressed by the failures, and 
 have the Grace to cast their eyes forward into the dim and 
 unknown, though not remote, Future, feel, that there is a Science 
 required to conduct the enterprize, a something to exercise 
 Human Reason, and arrive at certain conclusions based on 
 ascertained facts. It is the same in other Human Phenomena : 
 to the ignorant many Language is merely a mode of expressing 
 thought, or absence of thought : the Art has come somehow : 
 to the teacher in Languages it is merely the machinery for 
 gathering a miserable pittance from the attempt to convey 
 Knowledge to ignorant boys and girls : to the linguist Language 
 represents one of the two marvellous intellectual faculties, with 
 which it has pleased the great Creator to endow His poor 
 creatures, as a differentiation from the brute beasts. So as 
 regards the Philosophy of Religion : to the common herd it is 
 nothing : their conception of their own hereditary Faith is hazy : 
 as to anything beyond, it is blank. To the narrow-minded 
 Pietist, everything outside his own Shibboleth, which, indeed, he 
 cannot explain, is a mere device of Satan, and only fit for 
 unqualified and ignorant abuse. To the student of Comparative 
 Religion all over the world from the earliest ages, Religion 
 appears as the second of the great intellectual faculties conceded 
 to the Human race, a subject for reverential study, as the facts 
 discovered justify the ways of God with man, with man in his 
 entirety. 
 
 The Philosophy of Missions comprehends the Science of 
 conveying an exalted form of Religion by the use of Language, 
 and discusses the Methods, points out the stumbling-blocks, 
 shows the reason why, rebuts the objections, builds up ex- 
 perience and Wisdom on the foundation both of past successes, 
 and past failures. 
 
 It is impossible to go on in the Twentieth century in the 
 haphazard mode of the early decades of the Nineteenth century : 
 we must set our faces against Faith-Missions, Arm of the Flesh 
 Missions, untrained, and therefore ignorant, Missionaries, 
 
( 437 ) 
 
 Chauvinistic Missions, where the nationality of the Agents is 
 thought more of than Christ, half-hearted and renegade Mis- 
 sionaries, who desert their colours, as Demas deserted Paul, 
 to suit their domestic conveniences. All our talents, Gifts, and 
 opportunities, must be consecrated to this one object: our 
 study of Languages will promote the increased circulation of 
 the Scriptures ; our study of the Ancient Religions will enable 
 us to see in what particulars they fell short of our high Ideal, 
 and the amount of their remnants, which still cling to our Ritual 
 and Doctrine ; our study of the new Religious conceptions will 
 show the danger of sensational, carnal, and perverted, uses of 
 the Gospel, as revealed to us. 
 
 In carrying on the work of Evangelization it is not the His- 
 torical National Church of some country in Europe, that we 
 should have in our thoughts, but the Universal Church of 
 Christ, free from the degradation and pollutions of the centuries, 
 which separated the early Church from the time of the Reforma- 
 tion. The Gospel-Message was for all ages, and all times, for 
 all stages of Human culture, for all varieties of the Human 
 family, for all degrees of Human Knowledge. We should not 
 be always pushing to the front the Anglican Church, as if it 
 were the sole and best representation to all mankind of the 
 Church of Christ : to us in England it may appear so, but 
 neither in Scotland or Ireland, nor in the rest of Europe, is 
 any real value placed upon it ; yet an attempt is made to force 
 it upon India, and China, and Africa. What should we have 
 said, if the Dutch had had the power and will to make the non- 
 Christian world Dutch Lutheran ? 
 
 A Missionary from East Equatorial Africa, in an address in 
 March, 1896, remarks: "Up till now we are playing with 
 " Missions : if the Railways were made at only one inch per annum, 
 " we should not be satisfied ; yet that must be what the work must 
 " appear to God." Further on he tells us that his converts, the 
 Ba-Ganda, are above all other Africans "stamped with God's 
 approval " : this last is a bold assertion to be made by a young 
 man, who has been in no other part of Africa ; and the use of 
 the Divine Name is to be deplored : the Missionaries of some 
 Societies employ the sacred Name too freely. How can the 
 limited reason of man pronounce an opinion as to how the work 
 of His poor creatures appears to the Creator ? By His gracious 
 permission the Indian and Chinese Nations in their Millions 
 have flourished > and multiplied, and grown rich and wise in 
 things of this world uninterruptedly in the same Region since 
 the time of Moses : no thunderbolts have destroyed their 
 magnificent and ancient Temples ; no fanatical Elijah has 
 killed their Priests ; no Prophet or Evangelist came to them, 
 and told them of the Good Tidings : as Paul describes it, " God 
 
( 438 ) 
 
 winked at their Ignorance, and suffered all Nations to walk in 
 their own way." The annual inch of U-Ganda conversions, except 
 in the eyes of the Agents themselves, does not count for much 
 in the great work of the world of the Nineteenth century, and 
 in the sum-total of the History of Mankind, as absolutely nil. 
 What is to be deplored in the statements of Missionaries, and 
 the compilers of reports, are the rash assertion of knowledge of 
 God's plans, and unwarranted exaltation of their own work. This 
 is contrary to the first principles of a true Philosophy of Missions. 
 
 2. An All-round View of the Movement at the Close 
 of the Nineteenth century. 
 
 " Watchman, what of the night ? " 
 
 " There are heavy clouds on the horizon." 
 
 In dealing with the affairs of the whole world, it would seem 
 a limitation of the Power of the great Ruler to restrict it in 
 modern times to one Nation: why, then, should we do so 
 in ancient times to the petty tribes of the Hebrews ? God 
 spake by men, who were not Hebrews, by Balaam, by Job, by 
 Rabshakeh, by Cyrus, by Buddha, by Plato. He hated nothing 
 that He had made, nor did He forget His poor creatures during 
 those long silent centuries before Anno Domini, and only care 
 for the one graceless, disobedient, faithless tribe, who, owing to 
 the absence of communication with the East, got possession 
 of the ears of Europe as regards Ancient History. When the 
 Fulness of Time came, we read, that " God so loved the world, 
 that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
 in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John, iii, 16). 
 This scarcely implies, that He only then began to love the 
 world, the whole world of white, black, brown, yellow, red, 
 populations, all made in His own image. 
 
 Some degree of progress during the Nineteenth century can 
 be traced : 
 
 (i) The idea, that all the non-Christian world are doomed 
 to everlasting torture, is exploded. 
 
 (2) There is a better acquaintance with non-Christian 
 
 beliefs. 
 
 (3) There is a greater experience of the character of the 
 
 lives of non-Christian people. 
 
 (4) It is admitted, that the object-lessons presented by the 
 
 lives of nominal Christians is a serious impediment 
 to Evangelization. 
 
( 439 ) 
 
 (5) The influence of Christian Government, Civilization, 
 
 and Education, is felt everywhere, like the under- 
 ground percolation of canal-water. 
 
 (6) Missionary reports are beginning to be more real, and 
 
 less emotional, and gradually it will be found out, 
 that impartiality is necessary to secure Truth, and 
 that Euphemism does not answer. 
 
 (7) Missionary experiences supply valuable testimony to 
 
 the fundamental principles of Christianity. 
 
 In the early centuries of the Christian era the Graeco-Roman 
 world had fallen so low, that, though Christianity was accepted 
 by them, it was necessary, that a new birth should take place of 
 hardier, and. more unsophisticated, races, the Kelt, the Teuton, 
 and the Slavonic, to hand on the Truth : perhaps this same 
 phenomenon may reappear. Christianity in its purity is out of 
 possession of many parts of Europe, and the time may be at 
 hand,, when the centres of the pure and unadulterated Faith 
 will slowly drift back to Africa and' Asia. 
 
 We must recollect, that every age, and generation of men, 
 do, and ought to, shed new light on Truth : we look on the 
 subject from a different aspect than that of our Fathers. To 
 refuse to admit this is to forfeit the power of seeing things as 
 they are, to lose the vigour of a youthful Faith, and gradually 
 to limit our conception of Religion to the conventional use of 
 hard, misunderstood, formulae and ceremonial Worship. 
 
 The mode of communicating the Truth must vary with the 
 requirements of each race, and the degree of their culture. It 
 seems impossible, that we can continue to present to the Negro, 
 the South Sea Islander, the Chinese, the Indian, the terrible 
 Old Testament stories of Balaam, and Elijah, Jael, and Jehu, 
 the sad profligacies of David and Solomon, the cruel damnatory 
 Psalms : they are out of harmony with the feelings of Europeans 
 of the Nineteenth century ; how much more with Oriental races 
 in a low culture ? 
 
 We must not be surprised, if the influence of the Brahmanized 
 form of Worship, and even the conception of Divine things, 
 imperceptibly, but still essentially, introduces among the neo- 
 converts new phases of Ritual, new shades of Religious thought. 
 It has been found impossible to hold the populations of Europe 
 together, though they derived their social culture from the com- 
 bined centres of Athens and Rome, and their doctrines and Ritual 
 from Rome alone. How impossible it will be to suppose, that 
 the people of Japan, China, North Asia, India in its largest 
 sense, West Asia, Africa, Oceania, and North America, will not in 
 process of time, under the influence of new environments, make 
 new departures ? Prophets and teachers will from century to 
 
( 440 ) 
 
 century rise up in their midst : there were many points of 
 Theology settled in past centuries by the sword, and they will 
 surely be reopened, as the foundation of the doubts of the 
 so-called heretics lies deep in the hearts of thoughtful men 
 seeking after God's Truth. 
 
 Moreover, the whole conception of Christian Worship of the 
 early centuries was affected by the influence and example of the 
 contemporary Worship of the Mysteries of Eleusis, and the cults 
 of Isis, andMithra. Notably, the Christian Church took over 
 much of the local Worship of Pagan Deities, substituting Saints 
 for Gods ; and many terms of the Christian Ritual are borrowed 
 from contemporary Pagan Ritual. Why should not the same 
 phenomena occur again, when the weak Christian Native 
 Churches come into contact ' with the ancient systematized 
 Brahmanioal cult, supported by the influence and wealth of the 
 Hindu Priesthood ? 
 
 Nor is doctrine safe. To European minds the orthodox view 
 of certain mysteries of the Trinity, and the Incarnation, may 
 hold : those, who disagree with these points, generally throw 
 over Christianity and Dogma altogether : but the Hindu mind 
 is subtil, dreamy, and ingenious, and will be tempted, like 
 Servetus and others, to open out questions settled by force, and 
 chicane, at the Four Councils, and accepted without question 
 by later generations. 
 
 More than that : the Hindu has behind him vast libraries of 
 accumulated speculation on the very foundation of Human 
 existence. If any Hindu were to read Origen's " De principiis," 
 he would recognize his own familiar doctrine of transmigration. 
 I could quote many Sanskrit passages to support this doctrine, 
 as the only way to explain the mystery of the suffering of the 
 good, and the great worldly prosperity of the evil. Punishment 
 and Reward come in the next life. None (in Europe) have 
 admitted into the recognized body of their teaching Origen's 
 sublime conception of an infinite stairway of worlds, with its 
 perpetual ascent and descent of Souls, ending at last with the 
 union of all Souls with God ; but to the Indian mind this con- 
 ception is as familiar as pleasing. — Hatch's Hibbert Lecture, 
 1892, p. 237. 
 
 In his work on the " Contemporary Evolution of Religious 
 Thought," 1885, Professor Goblet d'Alviella, of Brussels, 
 remarks, p. 302 : " When the Missionaries begin to teach the 
 " Hindu the infallibility of their Scriptures, the Divinity of 
 " Christ, or the mystery of the Trinity, they either have to 
 " address themselves to the orthodox, who possess analogous 
 " dogmas in their own Theology, and see no reason for 
 " exchanging them for beliefs, which are more unfamiliar to 
 " their race without being more in harmony with their reason; 
 
( 441 ) 
 
 " or else they have to deal with Rationalists, who, having out- 
 " grown the traditions of Hinduism by means of free inquiry, 
 " are anything but disposed to subject themselves to the yoke 
 " of a new Revelation. Thus, Rajah Rammohun Roy said, that 
 " after giving up the belief in a plurality of gods or divine persons, 
 " which is held by several sections of Hinduism, he could not 
 " conscientiously adopt an analogous system, however purified 
 " it might be." 
 
 Then follows the entanglement of old-world customs. It will 
 take a long time before the Hindu will give up his Caste, and 
 the Chinaman his Ancestral Worship, the precepts of Kong- 
 Fu-Tsee, and the opium-pipe. If these are made conditions 
 precedent to Baptism, it will be an undue limitation of Christian 
 liberty of thought, study, and practice. Our Churches and 
 private dwellings testify to our respect to our Ancestors, at least 
 of those, who have Ancestors whom they care to acknowledge. 
 Commensality and Matrimony are fenced round in Great Britain 
 as well as in India. Many worthy Christians meet in Church, 
 who do not associate at table, or intermarry. As to Caste 
 having any practical effect upon professions, or employments, 
 it is a delusion ; you will find Brahmins in every grade of life, as 
 Soldiers, Police, Messengers, Clerks, and Cooks. The Railway, 
 Schools, Hospitals, and Courts, are great levellers : the Christian 
 Church will be open to all, and will apply Moral tests only. 
 The Ritualism and Statuary of the Roman Catholics are mere 
 relapses into Hinduism : the same sculptor supplies statues of 
 the Virgin and Child, and D6vaki and Krishna, with slight 
 decorative variations, to suit the details of the Romish, or 
 Sanskrit, legends. 
 
 How did the early Hebrews, scattered in their villages in 
 Palestine, acquire any knowledge of the Law, as conveyed to 
 them in the Pentateuch ? Scarcely any could read : there were 
 no synagogues, and no facilities to obtain copies of writings : 
 the Priests were as ignorant as the people. So in the early 
 ages of Christianity there must have been a blind belief, not 
 based on reason and conviction. But in the modern propa- 
 gation of the Christian idea in India there is the Press, the 
 wide distribution of printed matter to a population, which can 
 read and understand : there is a weekly teaching of young and 
 old : Criticism has to be met ; ideas, if entertained, have to be 
 defended ; Superstitions can be exposed, immoralities held up 
 to scorn : all the conditions of the problems have been changed, 
 yet not all to the advantage of sound doctrine. 
 
 And sometimes the convert is angry with God, because He 
 has called away his loved ones. I remember the case of a pious 
 officer in the Army throwing to the winds his Religious belief 
 on the occasion of the death of his wife and children. We read 
 
( 442 ) 
 
 of a similar story among the Red Indians of North America : 
 " I was deeply touched to see the tears and sorrow of one poor 
 " squaw, when she saw her husband not remain for the Sacrament, 
 " after being a regular attendant. Nothing would please her, till 
 " she had brought him to me after the Service, and his reason 
 " explained. It was this: death had again visited his happy 
 " circle of children, taking away his oldest and only grown-up 
 " son, causing him to question, why God had dealt so hard with 
 " him. With guidance from above I spoke for some time to him 
 " of the Love of God, to be seen shining through the dark clouds 
 " of affliction even. Glad was I to see him remain the next 
 " time with his wife, and hear him say before the Service, that 
 " ' I feel fine now in my Soul, and not heavy.' " 
 
 Here is a distinct danger. The Old Testament tells us how 
 long life, abundance of children, success in battle, good seasons, 
 corn and wine, conquest of enemies, were the sure reward of 
 those who trusted in God : if these blessings failed, they 
 had recourse to a more influential or more beneficent Power. 
 The same problem exists now. 
 
 3. Certainty of Progress of Christianity, if it be real. 
 
 Hear Mr. W. E. Gladstone, Nineteenth Century, May, 1888: 
 " Christianity, in the really Christian sense, is the presentation 
 " to man of not an abstract dogma, but of a Divine and Loving 
 " Person, to whom the Dogma is to be united by a vital in- 
 " corporation : it is the reunion to God of a Nature, severed by 
 " Sin from God ; and the process is one, not of teaching lessons, 
 " but of imparting a new life, with its ordained equipment of 
 " Gifts and Power." 
 
 A very different Authority, John Williams, the Missionary, who 
 was killed at Erromanga, writes : " Christianity has triumphed, 
 " not by Human Authority, but by its own moral Power, by 
 " the net, which it spreads abroad, by the benevolent spirit, 
 "which it disseminates, for kindness is the key to the Human 
 " heart, whether of the Savage or Civilized man." 
 
 An Authority remote from both, Cardinal Wiseman (" Cal- 
 lista," p. 227), writes: "The instinctive notion of Religion is 
 the Soul's response to God, who has taken notice of the Soul : 
 it is either a living intercourse, or a mere name." 
 
 It is only those, who have studied the stream of History of 
 the Human race, and informed themselves of the principles 
 of the great Religious conceptions before Anno Domini, and 
 those which have come into existence since that great epoch, 
 who can realize the mighty change in the whole frame and 
 
( 443 ) 
 
 attitude of the mind in respect of Divine Things, which 
 is produced by the conception of a Kingdom of Heaven, 
 or Kingdom of God, a Divine Society ; the individuality of the 
 Christian belief in comparison with the nationality of old beliefs, 
 and' the universality of the belief in comparison with the ethnic, 
 and geographical, limits of old beliefs; the extreme necessity 
 to all, the exclusion of none, the reasonableness, the simplicity, 
 and the impossibility of Human wit suggesting any other all- 
 sufficient scheme of Salvation. 
 
 During the period, which has elapsed betwixt the promul- 
 gation of the Gospel by the Apostles, and the present time, the 
 Nations of the world have passed through various stages of 
 Political existence, oscillating from the Tyranny to the Re- 
 public, from well-ordered administration to the absence of all 
 control, from peace and prosperity to the awful contrary. 
 During that stage the Human mind has passed and repassed 
 through every stage of intellectual variation, from deep degra- 
 dation to high enlightenment. The Christian idea, as expressed 
 in the New Testament, after the removal of the Pagan, Jewish, 
 and Mediaeval accretions, has remained always the same, in 
 conflict with Human weaknesses, adapting itself to every form 
 of Human culture, prosperity, enlightenment, or the contrary, 
 of Nations, or individuals. For it has in itself the essence of 
 Divine and Human Power ; it is able to subdue, in times past 
 and present, all the sad vicissitudes of Human life: like the 
 Rainbow, it, and it alone, can span the awful chaos of Human 
 weaknesses, miseries, and wickedness. Society gradually tends 
 to disintegration : the broken materials are re-formed into a new 
 polity, and remoulded; a new life is breathed into a dead or 
 slumbering Soul. 
 
 Let us consider, whether there is any other possible Religious 
 conception but this : we can look onward by the help of 
 accumulated experience, and back with Knowledge. The fire 
 cannot burn out the Christian idea, the water cannot quench it : 
 it may assume other external forms, but the same principle is 
 there, for it is implanted in the Human heart to love the Creator 
 and Preserver, and love the fellow-creature : darkness cannot 
 hide it, nor Light impair the brilliancy of the conception of 
 "God with us, Creator, Saviour, Sanctifier": is there anything 
 more that man could ask for, and could he dispense with any 
 portion of what he has received ? Can any ancient Book- 
 Religion, or modern benevelent conception, such as the Religion 
 of Humanity, supply its place ? 
 
 Consider the wonderful patience of the Creator : if we "can 
 believe the carefully deduced calculations of the Egyptian, and 
 Mesopotamian, archaeologists, based on the discoveries of the 
 traces of the Human hand, the world and the Human race must 
 
( 444 ) 
 
 have existed upwards of Ten thousand years. He has waited so 
 long to be Gracious : here a little, there a little : He might 
 have made mankind Christian by the mere expression of the 
 Divine volition ; but, as in the material world, as in the world 
 of Human thought and Knowledge He allowed time, space, 
 and power, for a gradual development, so in matters relating 
 to the manifestation of His Will in things Spiritual. The 
 Human race must have its childhood, adolescence, and man- 
 hood : He speaks to the Universe, and to the Individual : 
 His wheels grind very slowly, but they grind very fine. 
 The Divine Presence at no period of Human existence has 
 been far off God's poor creatures. Infinite Love has ever cared 
 for them : they were as little children holding the hand of an 
 unknown father : if it should stumble, the father would not let 
 it go. Let the young Missionary remember, that the tale of 
 Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips, that were not felt 
 by the listener to be moved by Human Pity. 
 
 Hear the following words : " In the realm of Grace conversions 
 " were veryseldom sudden; they had usually been prepared for 
 " by long antecedent convictions. It was so with Saul of 
 " Tarsus ; but certainly, as with him, there might ultimately 
 " come a point, at which one definitely stepped out of darkness 
 " into light, just as there was a time, when the perfectly ripe fruit 
 " would drop from the tree. God has His own time for sending 
 " down blessings on His work. It took three centuries to 
 " convert the Roman Empire to a numerical Christianity, and 
 " the time might well have seemed long to those, who were 
 " watching and waiting for the event. But man's duties were 
 " altogether apart from God's purposes ; and it was clear, that 
 " they must be performed with zealous activity, whether the 
 " blessing were to come or not. For if the Philippians had 
 " not carefully prepared the soil, how were they to profit by the 
 " early and latter rains, when at length they came ? Duties were 
 " with men : results were for God, and for Him alone." 
 
 What was the advice of Augustine of Hippo in one of his 
 Sermons ? "We must first endeavour to break the Idols in their 
 " hearts. When they themselves become Christians, they will 
 " either invite us to the good work of destroying their Idols, 
 " or they will be beforehand with us in doing it. And in the 
 " meanwhile we must pray for them, not be angry with them? 
 ■ — Robertson, " Sketches of Church History," p. 77, S.P.C.K. 
 
 The belief in Christ has for 1,900 years lived under a Criticism 
 the most searching and scientific, that ever assailed the History 
 of any event, or any idea conceived by man ; yet this Criticism 
 has made the belief more certain, on account of the intrinsic 
 Truth of the story, and the reasonableness of the conception. 
 This is not the case with regard to the tenets of any other 
 
( 445 ) 
 
 Faith : any Mahometan, who denied the tenets of his Religion, 
 would be made short work of, even if he had the critical 
 apparatus and acumen : it would never occur to a Hindu 
 to raise the fundamental question. Ancient customs persist, 
 although the dominant Religion is changed : the old Roman 
 rural cults may have been contemptible, but . they clung to 
 the Christian conception. Still more persistent is the old 
 intellectual tendency of a Nation : the spread of Christianity 
 in the decaying Roman Empire evidences this. Neo-Platonism 
 was strong in Augustine : we may expect the same phenomenon 
 in the new Indian Church. Aristotle may be said to have been 
 the seedplot of the mediaeval scholasticism : will not the Indian 
 mind be influenced by its old philosophical Schools, although 
 nominally Christian ? The idea of a " new man " Spiritually 
 does not necessarily imply new environment of ideas, new 
 trained habits of argument, new intellectual prejudices, new 
 mental character. 
 
 Am I overbold in stating, that the converted Hindu would be 
 right in drawing upon his reservoir of Human Knowledge ? the 
 accumulation of the past, of intellects gone before, were not in 
 vain : there is no. waste in God's Treasure-House. The Philo- 
 sophy of the Greek is admitted to have had a Divine function in 
 developing the new doctrines given to the world in Galilee. 
 Paganism is not, as the Missionary says, the work of Satan : as 
 the precious ore, itself Asiatic, gets free of its European mould, 
 it may develop itself into new forms in the Asiatic mould, and 
 still be the Truth. Every good and perfect gift is from above : 
 how can we state, that words actually good, and lives un- 
 mistakably holy, are worthless, because they did not harmonize 
 with the conventional surroundings of Jewish and Christian 
 story ? The life in Christ, and Faith in Christ, may have been 
 exhibited outside the Christian Church, perhaps even in nobler 
 forms : we only see in part up to the present time. We can 
 see how essentially the Christian Church itself has differed in 
 different countries, and at different Epochs. All cannot have 
 been right, exclusive of other developments. 
 
 The Hindu inquirers are essentially at a different standpoint 
 from the Jews at the time of the Apostles : they know absolutely 
 nothing of Old and New Testament ; Paul's Epistles can scarcely 
 be intelligible to them, as they are neither Jew, nor Hellenist. 
 Like the Gentile Greek they can only envisage the new doctrine 
 on its merits, and argue it out by the help of the philosophic 
 and political ideas of their own environment. 
 
 Sir C. Elliot, Governor of Bangal, seems to go too far in his 
 speech quoted below. Had Lord Ripon, a Roman Catholic, 
 or a free-thinker Governor, allowed himself the same liberty of 
 words, he would have been censured : " I will venture, in a very 
 
( 446 ) 
 
 " few words, to lay before you the views, which I hold as to the 
 " position of Missionary enterprize in this great Empire. The 
 " point, that I would insist on to-day, is this, that, whether 
 " successful or not, the work of offering Christianity to the 
 " people is one, that ought to be persevered in, since without it 
 " we should fail to utilize one large section of the influence, 
 " which the European ought to have on the Asiatic mind. I 
 " hold, that it is the part of Missions to carry on and complete 
 " the work, which England is placed here by Providence to 
 " effect, and which would be imperfect without them. The 
 " Government of India can do much ; if it could not, we, who 
 " are its servants, could not feel the pride and enthusiasm, with 
 " which we serve it ; if we did not believe, that it is following 
 " the course which the ringer of God has marked out for it, in 
 " this country, we would not serve it at all. The civil and 
 " military Government can do much : it can ensure internal 
 " peace and security of life and property ; it can provide good 
 "Laws, and good Courts to administer them,; it can remove 
 " many hindrances in the way of material progress, and to a 
 " great extent can protect the country from famine ; it can 
 " give opportunities for honour and distinction to the worthiest 
 " of our Native fellow-subjects; it can bestow Education on the 
 " masses ; and can even offer, with a doubtful and hesitating 
 " hand, a maimed and cold code of Morals. But it can go no 
 " further, and there its influence stops. Consider for a moment 
 " what a vast hiatus this stoppage implies. Government cannot 
 " bestow on the people that, which gives to life its colour, and 
 "to love of Duty its noblest incentive: it cannot offer the 
 " highest Morality, fortified by the example of the Divinely 
 " perfect Life. It is here that the Missionary steps in to 
 " supplement the work of the Official. If we look back on our 
 " own life and consider what a difference it would have made 
 " to us, if those influences, which surrounded our childhood and 
 " moulded our character, had been removed, we shall easily 
 " see" how important a supplement that is. And it is for this 
 " reason, that I make bold to say that, if Missions did not exist, 
 " it would be our duty to invent them. This is what was said 
 " by the famous men, who built up the administration of the 
 " Panjab, and who, when it was annexed in 1849, among their 
 " first requirements, along with courts, and codes, and roads, 
 " and police, wrote home to the Church Missionary Society 
 "for a supply of Missionaries. But we are not now in their 
 " position. Missionaries do exist : nay more, they progress 
 " and prosper ; they are numbered now by thousands, and their 
 " converts by hundreds of thousands. All that is left for us to 
 " do is to aid and support them with our money, with our 
 " friendly counsel, and sympathy, and co-operation. 
 
( 447 ) 
 
 " I go further, and say that I gladly support this School on 
 the ground, that it teaches Religion, and the Christian 
 Religion. By my position I am bound to be impartial 
 towards the Creed of all Her Majesty's Subjects, and I can 
 favour none. But were I the most philosophic unbeliever, I 
 should still as a Government Officer rejoice in seeing a pure 
 Religion taught. For History teaches us, that after the 
 abandonment of one Religion, if no other is adopted, or if 
 at any period the men, who are the most educated and the 
 leaders of thought in a State, practically abandon all Faith, the 
 result is blind degradation and crime. It is a source of great 
 anxiety to the thinking men, and I know it is to the most 
 thoughtful and cultured of the races of this country, who 
 have been forced to disbelieve in their ancestral Religion, that 
 so many of the educated in India should be believers in no 
 Religion at all. Some of the best of them in Sindh, 
 recognizing this, have with infinite trouble and self-denial, 
 and at great personal expense, started a school, where Religion 
 is taught, and a belief inculcated in a God, who loves mankind 
 and hates sin. All honour to them. The School is largely 
 attended, and its influence is, I know, for the very best. But 
 I am bound to say, that so far as I read History the experiment 
 will ultimately fail. All earnest-thinking men, like my friends 
 at Hyderabad, have the fullest sympathy of us Christians, but 
 on an occasion like this, at a professedly Christian School, 
 I cannot but express the pleasure of myself and other 
 Christians, that this School not only teaches secular Education, 
 but teaches the Morality of the Bible as well, and also teaches 
 the Christian Religion." 
 
 4. Agencies and Methods at Work. 
 
 In casting my eyes forward into the Twentieth century, I 
 cannot but reflect on this branch of the subject : I have written 
 so much about it elsewhere, that I can be brief. The whole 
 subject of the supply, training, and control of the Agents, and 
 the controlling authority in the Parent Country of the Mission, 
 ought to be considered by a Council of experts, and not left to 
 haphazard as it is now. An earthly Kingdom could not be 
 supported by an army recruited, trained, and controlled, in such 
 a manner. The whole system of the Platform requires reform ; 
 the occupiers of the Pulpit should be better instructed. And 
 those, who are sent out from Europe and America must 
 recollect that, if they love the Lord, and wish to build up 
 
( 448 ) 
 
 a Church, which is to last, they must be ready to give way to 
 their Native brethren. I know, that this policy is distasteful to 
 busybody Secretaries of Home-committees, and the Chauvinist 
 section of the supporters. 
 
 Hear what Mr. Lefroy, of Dehli, says, in 1895 : "At the same 
 time, I do think, that we can see one good, and that not 
 a little one, which God is bringing out of the evil : it is 
 causing us, in the absence of English aid, to turn our thoughts 
 more tp the possibility of being reinforced by young Native 
 fellow-workers ; it is making us more ready to appreciate 
 them adequately and more anxious to secure them, and remove 
 any misunderstandings or undue inequalities of position, which 
 would tend to check in a wrong way, a possible supply. 
 That the ultimate Evangelization of the country must be done 
 through their means, is a truism we are all ready to recognize ; 
 but perhaps we have been too slow to give it practical weight 
 in determining our attitude towards them, and to show our 
 hearty appreciation of their help. There are in any case 
 plenty of difficulties in the way, and difficulties not only on 
 our side ; and I do not in the least want to see them ignored, 
 or undue haste shown in moving in this direction, however 
 desirable it may be to keep in view the end, which I have 
 indicated. We ought, I think, to be more, rather than less, 
 careful to scrutinize thoroughly the character, abilities, and 
 motives of all, who offer for this high work. Better one good 
 man than fifty inferior ones. But, given the good one, we 
 ought to be very careful, more so than I fear in too many cases 
 we are, to show our true appreciation of him, and give him 
 a really satisfactory position." 
 I quote from the Liverpool Missionary Conference, i860, 
 p. 3 1 2 : "A Missionary in commencing the organization of a 
 " Church naturally begins with the system, which he and his 
 " supporters at home conscientiously follow; but let him not 
 " think, that this is the only possible system, under which Souls 
 " can be saved : let him apply it to a new country and a new 
 " people with considerable latitude, retaining only the essential 
 " features, getting rid of mere technicalities, and those historical 
 " elements which all systems, Political and Religious, absorb 
 " into themselves in the course of years." Oh ! that we were 
 wise, and considered these words ! 
 
 Hear a cry from Yariba-land, in West Africa, 1892: " It is 
 " now, I think, some twenty years since Mr. Hinderer finally 
 " left Ibadan, and since that time the work has been practically 
 " in the hands of a Native Pastor, together with Native 
 "'Catechists and teachers, and I think the work would do credit 
 " to any body of men. The work here is also, I think, a 
 " remarkable instance of what God can do in the course of a few 
 
( 449 ) 
 
 " years, through the feeble instrumentality of one man and 
 " woman. When Mr. Hinderer entered Ibadan in the year 
 " 1852 there was not, I suppose, one Christian amongst the 
 " whole mass of 100,000 or 150,000 heathen inhabitants, 
 " whereas now there is a Church of some 500 baptized members, 
 " which until last year was under the superintendence of 
 " a Pastor, who was formerly received by Mr. Hinderer as a 
 " heathen boy at Abeokuta, and was, I believe, altogether 
 " trained by him ; while two of the four Catechists in the work 
 " here were also received by Mr. Hinderer as Heathen boys 
 " from their parents at Ibadan, and were, I believe, almost 
 " entirely trained and educated by himself and Mrs. Hinderer, 
 " This may not perhaps seem very great progress to some, but 
 " to those, who know anything of the reluctance to leave deep- 
 " rooted Superstition and Idolatry, it will appear nothing less 
 " than a Miracle of Grace, more remarkable, perhaps, than many 
 " others, for which we have to thank and praise God. But on 
 " the other hand, when we look at these 500 Christians as the 
 " result of some forty years' work, and compare them with the 
 "•100,000 or more Heathen inhabitants, are we not constrained 
 "to ask, 'What are they among so many?' or when are the 
 " 2,000,000 Heathen computed to exist in the Yariba country 
 " going to be evangelized at this rate ? In answer to these 
 " questions, I would only say that the matter is with God." 
 
 No doubt it was slow work in the time of Paul, but he made 
 use of the material, which the Lord provided in each country, 
 which he visited. 
 
 It is recorded, that a Scholar in his old age regretted, that he 
 had not devoted his life to the study of the Dative Case. This 
 is but a miserable sample of the narrowing of the Ecclesiastical 
 vision to one, the Western European, aspect of the Christian 
 doctrine and practice. It is a distorted view of the Divine 
 Plan of the Evangelization of the whole world, to suppose, that 
 we must act upon the lines adopted by the Greek, or the Roman, 
 or the Anglican, Churches, however suitable they may be to 
 their own Province and nationality. The Word of God is not 
 bound : the Gospel of Galilee is not limited to one only funnel 
 of communication from Apostolic times. 
 
 Green, in his "English People," No. 14, p. 618, writes: 
 " Erasmus desired to set Christ Himself in the place that Tra- 
 " dition called the Church : he strove to recall men from the 
 " teaching of the Schoolmen to the teaching of Christ. The 
 " Gospel brought vividly home to the readers the personal 
 " impressions of Christ Himself: all the Superstitions of 
 " mediseval Worship fade away in the bright light of the 
 " personal Worship of Christ. Where so many have failed, 
 " Luther and Calvin failed : they drove out the errors of Rome, 
 
 • 29 
 
( 450 ) 
 
 " and tried to replace them by another Human system of 
 " doctrine just as elaborate, just as rigid, and equally claiming 
 "to be infallible and intolerant." The word "Church" in its 
 multiform meaning has become a snare in Europe : what must 
 it be, if forced on the Asiatic and African ? 
 
 In his Bampton Lecture, 1843, Dr. A. Grant gives us the idea 
 of his Epoch on the Mission-question. The date is interesting 
 to me, as in 184.4 Bishop Daniel Wilson of Calcutta gave me my 
 first lesson on the subject : we have indeed advanced since that 
 time: he makes remarks, which no one could possibly make now, 
 and quotes secular books now forgotten. ' Such will be the fate in 
 1950 a.d. of most of the books of our Epoch. It is a comfort 
 to think, that Dr. Grant' had grasped the central facts of the 
 Duty imposed on all of us, and the Power promised to enable 
 us to discharge that Duty ; but he was unable to disentangle 
 himself from the idea, that the Anglican Church, as established 
 by Parliament, and that corporate body alone, was entitled to 
 discharge the Duty of the English Nation, or could expect that 
 the Divine aid would be granted'. He excludes from his visible 
 Church the Greek and Roman bodies, and our Nonconformist 
 Christian fellow-subjects. In a worldwide problem he would 
 restrict the work to the Anglican Church in its corporate capacity, 
 not allowing the S.P.G. or any other Association, to exist. The 
 History of the Past had had no lesson for him : he either did 
 not see, or did not comprehend, his own environment : he was 
 not qualified to give advice, because he did not understand the 
 conditions of the problem. 
 
 One passage is worthy of quotation : " We have found by 
 " experience, that Christianity has no local boundary, is shut 
 "in by no peculiarity of climate, or Civil prerogative, but has 
 " a plastic Power, which can adapt itself to all races : it draws 
 " to itself all that is good in Human Nature, all the lingering 
 " principles of Truth, on which Error has been based, and 
 " represents that Unity, which still lives at the bottom of all 
 " diversities of Religion. It demands not Civilization as a con- 
 " comitant ; it is not limited by prescribed forms of civilized 
 " life, for it can appropriate to itself all that is good in men, 
 " and correct what is not good." Dr. Grant was unfamiliar 
 with the Sacred Books of the Ancient Religions, and the new 
 conceptions, that were coming into existence, and knew not, 
 that Mr. F. Harrison, Apostle of the Religion of Humanity, 
 would entirely accept the above quotation, as descriptive of his 
 own conception ; and so would many others. 
 
 History often repeats itself: similar environments produce ■ 
 similar phenomena : Cyprian of Carthage was not converted 
 till he was fifty years of age ; Tertullian of Carthage was not 
 converted till he had arrived at manhood ; Augustine of Hippo 
 
( 451 ) 
 
 was the son of a truly Christian Mother, and yet he passed the 
 flower of his youth in gross immorality, and embraced both 
 Manichaeism and neo-Platonism before he found Christ. 
 
 Dr. Handley Moule thus describes Augustine : " For seven- 
 " teen years from his entering Carthage until his conversion 
 " at Milan at the age of thirty-three, the conflicting currents 
 " of the speculative thought of his time drew Augustine hither 
 " and thither, always thinking, always seeking, often with 
 " profound insight, always conscious of unrest. Who could 
 " wonder that he wandered morally as well as mentally ? The 
 " professing Christendom of our own day is far from stainless 
 " as to the grosser forms of sin ; and what would the moral 
 " atmosphere be in the Roman Africa of the fourth century, 
 " in the singularly dissolute Roman Carthage ? We heard with 
 , " shame, distress, and surprise, that Augustine had a son born 
 " to him, that should not have been born, when he was but 
 " eighteen." 
 
 The phenomena of the early centuries in North Africa may 
 repeat themselves in Asia ; or, perhaps, studying in one of the 
 State-Colleges in British India is a lad, reserved to make a 
 mark in the Christian Church of India. 
 
 " Non sine Diis animosus infans." 
 Sanctified like Jeremiah to be a Prophet unto his Nation, he 
 will be learned in all the accumulated Wisdom of his Hindu 
 forefathers, their wealth of Ritual, dialectics, Philosophy, and 
 Poetry; their- feeling after God during the course of many 
 centuries, if haply they could find Him ; their tangled maze of 
 Divine Incarnations to save mankind ; their mystical Triad, 
 their doctrine of Judgment after death, and Salvation by the 
 power of a Saviour through the great instrument of Bhakti, 
 or Faith ; their sense of the great delusion, or Maya, which 
 obscured all Human affairs ; their mystery of Metempsychosis, 
 or Second Birth ; their aspirations after Holiness ; their dream 
 of a remote and dim Future, when all would be absorbed in one 
 great essence. 
 
 By the aid of those excellent Missionary Associations, 
 who send out qualified men to grapple with the educated 
 classes, as they leave the State-Colleges, this coming man 
 will have studied the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures in their 
 original Languages, and made them his own ; and have compared 
 with the originals the Translations into five or six Vernaculars 
 of British India, spoken by Millions, and into Sanskrit itself: 
 he would not in his studies have made use of the spectacles of 
 European mediaeval prescription, but he would have absorbed 
 into his intellect and conscience the ipsissima verba of Him, 
 who spake like no other man ; and he would have pored over 
 the wise, though Human, utterances of Paul, who knew nothing 
 
( 452 ) 
 
 personally of his Master's earthly pilgrimage, and of John the 
 beloved, who accompanied Him from Jordan to the Cross, and 
 Mount Olivet. 
 
 Reading a passage of the Scriptures in several Languages is 
 more helpful to arrive at the real meaning of the writer than 
 such commentaries as that of the good Bishop Wordsworth, of 
 Lincoln, and that known by the name of the Speaker of the 
 House of Commons : it may be assumed, that the translators 
 are truthful and well acquainted with the powers of the 
 Language which they handle ; and each form of speech, if deftly 
 handled, gives back a true representation of the thought con- 
 veyed in its own vocables, and according to the Laws of its own 
 structure. It is a wondrous and instructive pleasure thus to carry 
 a portion of the Scriptures through six Asiatic Languages, the 
 Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi, and Urdu, of the Arian Family, and 
 the Hebrew and Arabic, of the Semitic, and then through eight 
 European Languages, the Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portu- 
 guese, French, English, and German. India is essentially a 
 Polyglot country. 
 
 This youth will have heard nothing of all the folly and 
 wickedness of the Roman Church from Damasus to Leo X, 
 and would wipe gently off the slate of History, in sympathy 
 and pity, all the inconsistencies of German, Anglican, and 
 Swiss Reformers, who could not get clear of the meshes of 
 past ages, and who knew nothing of the world beyond the 
 limits of the Roman Empire, and its Teutonic Colonies. 
 The world is now opened geographically, intellectually, and 
 spiritually, and we know, that there were great men, through 
 whose mouths a Power beyond that of men had spoken in 
 sundry times and divers manners before Moses. The Father 
 of Mankind did not forget any of His poor children during 
 those dreary centuries : He would not, that anyone should 
 perish, for He so loved the world, the whole world, that in 
 the Fulness of Time He gave His Son to redeem them. Paul 
 unmistakably felt this in his addresses at Athens and Lystra; 
 but for him Buddha, and Kong-Fu-Tsee, and Zoroaster, and 
 Socrates, and Plato, had lived, and given forth their immortal 
 utterances, in vain, and had added nothing to his sum of Human 
 Knowledge, which was that of a Pharisee, and a Pharisee only. 
 
 But the youth, whom we figure to our eye as holding the 
 great fort of Divine and Human Knowledge in the Twentieth 
 century, will, in his armed intellectual strength, based on 
 Oriental as well as Occidental Knowledge, have passed beyond 
 the miserable limitations of the Schools of the Asiatic and 
 European Brahmins ; will have marked how the great lines of 
 Spiritual Thought, after wandering through those ages, had 
 converged and settled in the Christian conception, as given in 
 
( 453 ) 
 
 the Gospels, and illustrated in the Epistles. Unassisted Human 
 Wisdom could create nothing equal, or desire anything better 
 than what was there propounded. To his enlightened vision 
 the resemblance will be evident, though historically and in- 
 tellectually entirely independent, betwixt the Tablets of As6ka, 
 the Noble Way of Buddha, the precepts of Kong-Fu-Tsee, and 
 the Sermon on the Mount, inasmuch as they are all based 
 on Altruism as opposed to Egoism, and on unbounded Love 
 to our fellow-creatures, and to the Creator no longer unknown. 
 
 So also (I speak with reverence, and with bare feet standing 
 on holy ground), he will ask whether, and why, his own great 
 race, counting by millions, were left since the earliest centuries 
 out of touch with their Creator, Who hated nothing that He had 
 made. He will find a new meaning in the celebrated Hindu 
 book, the " Ocean of Love," or Prema Sagara, when he identifies 
 the word with the Greek word 'A^dirrj of Paul, and the " Ocean 
 of Love " of Keble. He will cease to wonder at the Sanskrit 
 myth of the Avatara, or Incarnation, of the Supreme Deity, 
 Krishna, becoming the object of Love to thousands, while each 
 individual imagined, that he or she was the sole beloved of the 
 Deity. In the wonderful Bhakti, or Faith, which was felt to 
 that person of the Triad called the Preserver, he will realize the 
 meaning given by Paul to ILVns, Faith in One Who could save 
 beyond the grave. 
 
 He, a Hindu, could proudly look back to countless centuries, 
 during which he had remained the same even to this day. More 
 than a thousand years ago pious Chinese Buddhists crossed the 
 frontier to visit India, and collect documents connected with 
 Buddha: even then the Hindu conception had given off a branch, 
 which developed into Buddhism, the most numerous in the world, 
 while the Hindu Temples and Worship remained unchanged. 
 Centuries later Islam had invaded India, and held- it in sub- 
 jection for centuries, but there was no change of the great Hindu 
 conception, into the folds of which thousands of the non-Arian 
 Pagans annually enter voluntarily, as a great step up in the world 
 of culture and Civilization. Can it be, he would ask himself, 
 that this mighty phenomenon of a Religious conception, lasting 
 ■ thousands of years, came into existence without the Divine 
 Will and Permission ? He finds in History, that the conceptions 
 of Zoroaster and Kong-Fu-Tsee go back to the same remote 
 period, and are still alive. But he hears, that the ancient 
 Egyptian conception, with its Isis and Osiris, had disappeared 
 two thousand years ago, and its Sacred Books had vanished 
 from Human handling, and contact with Human intellect. He 
 hears that the ancient conceptions of Mesopotamia had also 
 totally disappeared under the soil, while the great Brahmanical 
 conception, strengthened rather than weakened by its sects, still 
 
( 454 ) 
 
 numbered two hundred millions. He reads the burning lines 
 in the Bhagavad Gita, in which Krishna reveals to Arjuna great 
 mysteries in majestic and harmonious verse. He ponders over 
 . the contents of the wondrous Ramayana, which tells of a Prince, 
 who abandoned a throne to please his Father, and enable him 
 to keep his oath ; who went into the wilderness alone, except 
 with his faithful wife, to contend against the enemies of the 
 Human race, and save mankind. He reads in the famous 
 passage in that magnificent Epic, the rival of the Iliad and 
 ./Eneid, of the crowning offence, that led to the destruction of 
 the enemy of mankind, the rape of that faithful wife, while her 
 husband was absent : all Nature stood aghast ; the denizens of 
 Heaven shed tears : the great evil was being wrought. A darkness 
 overspread the heavens and the earth : it was the short-lived 
 triumph of evil over good. Even Brahma, the great Creator, 
 raised himself on his throne, and exclaimed solemnly, " Fate is 
 now working." It must needs be, that the offence should come, 
 that the Salvation of man should be wrought ; but the Universe 
 trembled at the outrage, though they admitted the necessity of 
 the Sacrifice. (Cust's " Linguistic and Oriental Essays," First 
 Series, p. 95, 1880.) The Divine Incarnation is described as 
 pure, holy, chaste, with the great gift of self-Sacrifice in the 
 cause of Duty ; and year by year the great story is enacted, 
 as an undying pageant, in every large Indian town, amidst 
 smiling and weeping crowds. 
 
 All these wonderful Sacred Books and Sacred- Poems have 
 survived the wreck of ages, and are available to us in our own 
 Language, and to the educated classes of India in their Ver- 
 naculars : they are dimly known now, but in the Twentieth 
 century, an Epoch of enlightenment, and Education, Public 
 Press, and meeting together of Nations,. they will be taught in 
 the Schools, and talked over in the market-place: it cannot be 
 but that a new Socrates, a new Paul, a new Hypatia, will appear, 
 and the humble and impartial observer will recognize the 
 presence of God in all the ages, at some periods unseen, at 
 others only dimly seen, or seen through false Human intellectual 
 lenses, but in these last days seen through His Son, when the 
 great Plan of Universal Salvation was worked out. 
 
 What will be his opinion of the Agents sent from Europe 
 to convert Oriental Nations ? The reply is given in a small 
 pamphlet sent to me by post, with no name of Author: "Does 
 " the Church of Christ sufficiently realize, that this is one of the 
 " main hindrances to the spread of Christianity in all parts of 
 " the world ? We have our great Missionary Societies, which 
 " are only necessary, because there is such a large proportion 
 " of its members, who are Christians only in name. The more 
 " need there is for Missionary Societies, the more shame to the 
 
( 455 ) 
 
 " Church : for her sons are going forth by the thousand con- 
 " tinually to all parts of the earth to fill various positions, but 
 " chiefly for purposes of trade ; and if but a tithe of them were 
 " consecrated to the Service of Christ, the need of Missionary 
 " Societies would speedily disappear. Let every young man, who 
 " goes forth to engage in Commerce, be impressed with the 
 " fact, that his whole conduct will either greatly help, or greatly 
 " hinder, the cause of Christ. Pious merchants are wanted far 
 " more than pious Missionaries. The adaptation of Christian 
 " teaching to common life, the exemplification of Christian virtues 
 " in common duties, is the greatest need. The man, whose daily 
 " necessities are supplied by a Society,- does not share the trials 
 " and the difficulties of the people, whom he seeks to benefit. 
 " The man, who comes amongst them for a few years of studious 
 " and perhaps celibate life, is a being, with whom the majority 
 " have next to nothing in common. His sympathy, and kindness, 
 " and patience, and self-denial may win the admiration of many, 
 " and the hearts of some ; but, nevertheless, he is a man apart, 
 " he really shares neither their sorrows nor their joys. What 
 " strikes them most forcibly perhaps is, that he lives by his 
 " Religion without agriculture and without trade ; and it seems 
 " to them an easy livelihood, and they would like to adopt it. 
 " His Religion is his Business ; his talk about God and Heaven, 
 " about Christ and Salvation, about the Book, which he always 
 " carries with him, is all Business ; Business, which has not to 
 " contend with competition, and which flourishes whether there 
 " are few or many customers, and which makes no bad debts. 
 " It is not possible for his hearers to become like him, because, 
 " if they do adopt his Religion, the Society, which maintains 
 " him, will not maintain them ; nay, they are told, that it is 
 " their duty to give of their substance to the Society, which has 
 " so kindly sent them a Teacher of the true Religion. The 
 " wonder is, that under such conditions, so many genuine con- 
 " versions result ; but the preaching of Christ Crucified is the 
 " Power of God unto Salvation to everyone that believeth, and 
 " its power overcomes even the greatest obstacles." 
 
 In a sermon on "The Religious Outlook in India," delivered 
 in the London Road Wesleyan Chapel, Derby, 1895, by Chowry 
 Muthu, M.D., occurs the following passage : " You are pursuing 
 " a wrong policy, if you think you can found a Western 
 " Christianity on Indian soil. India does not want your Creeds, 
 " your Theologies, your' sectarian differences, your denomina- 
 " tional prejudices. I say, keep them at home. Do you not 
 • " see the Wisdom of this ? Why do you quarrel in a battle- 
 " field? Is this right? Is Christ divided? The Missionary 
 " Societies have made a great mistake in taking sectarian and 
 " denominational differences, and planting them in a new soil 
 
( 456 ) 
 
 " like India. It is one of the greatest stumbling-blocks to the 
 "■ progress of Christianity there. If you want to impress the 
 " beauty, the grandeur, of your Religion upon the Brahmos and 
 " other seekers after Truth, if you would infuse new life and 
 " energy into the timid disciples of Jesus Christ, if you would 
 " strengthen and develop the tone of the Indian Churches in 
 " India, you must close up your ranks, unite your forces, and 
 " present a united front before the enemy. While you are 
 " teaching your denominational peculiarities, men are seeking 
 " after Christ in vain. By your party spirit, by your narrow- 
 " minded policy, you have done enough mischief. What is 
 " wanted is a National Indian Church, bringing together 
 " Christians of all denominations into common fellowship, and 
 " thus showing to the Hindu, that they are children of one God 
 " and Father. Missionary Societies should be wide awake, and 
 " understand the signs of the times." 
 
 5. (a) Gradual dying out of Animistic conceptions in 
 Races of Low culture, and of the Ancient Book- 
 Religions. 
 
 (b) Substitution of New Forms of Religious con- 
 ceptions in Races of Higher culture, Moral, 
 Spiritual, but non-Christian.- 
 
 The late Archbishop of York, Dr. Thomson, remarked, in a 
 great Meeting in London, that what he feared for the Future was, 
 that through the want of Christian diligence we should see new 
 Religious conceptions taking the place of the old ones, which 
 had had their day, and would not stand the electric light of 
 modern Civilization and intellectual expansion. I have long 
 feared this also. 
 
 In my Lecture on "The Religions of the Ancient World," 
 Part III, page 342, I set out the details of the First class 
 alluded to. In the seventh century of the Christian era one 
 new Religious conception came into existence, and assumed 
 a wide expansion, in some places uprooting Christianity : this 
 is the Religion of Islam, or Mahometan, represented by fifty 
 Millions in British India alone, Monotheistic, Propagandist, free 
 from Ritual, with only one Sacred Book, a holograph written by 
 one man, with no subsequent accretions, in a Language, still ' 
 one of the most magnificent and widespread in the world, with 
 .a vast Religious Literature. 
 
 In my Essay on "Clouds on the Horizon, or the Various 
 
( 457 )' 
 
 " Forms of Religious Error, which stand in the way of the 
 " acceptance of the Christian Faith by the Nations of Asia, 
 " Africa, America, and Oceania," I give the details of the 
 Second class, and I enumerate them here in order, that the 
 Reader may appreciate the extreme gravity of the position. 
 
 I. Old systems purified, refined, and adapted to the environ- 
 
 ment of a Civilized society, and spread of Education. 
 
 !(i) Neo-Islam. 
 (2) Neo-Judaism. 
 (3) Neo-Hinduism, Jain, Sikh, Satnami, Aria-Somaj. 
 (4) Neo-Zoroastrianism. 
 
 Atheist i ^ Ne °- Buddhis m. 
 
 ( (6) Neo-Confucianism. 
 
 II. Modern conceptions formed from the blending of the old 
 
 systems with Christian doctrine, either consciously or 
 unconsciously. 
 
 (OBrahmoismjA^ornai^. 
 
 (2) Theosophy. 
 
 (3) Hau Hau, Te Whiti, Te Kooti, of New Zealand. 
 
 (4) Mormonism. 
 
 (5 ) Positivism or Comtism, or the Religion of Humanity. 
 
 (6) Christian Buddhism. 
 
 (7) Scepticism, or Agnosticism. 
 
 (8) Unitarianism. 
 
 At a Diocesan Meeting in 1894, Archdeacon, Mitchell, who 
 had long experience in Ihdia, remarked: "Since he had 
 " been in England, he had found, that many people imagined, 
 " that Religion was a thing very little thought of in India. No 
 " greater mistake than this could be made. The Indian was by 
 " his very nature exceedingly Religious. He did not mean to 
 " say, that their thoughts of Religion bred anything of Morality, 
 " because they knew, that even in a Christian country Morality 
 " and Religion were divorced, and so it was in India. The 
 " Religious Hindu did not very often conform to their notions 
 " of Morality, nor did they very often reach what could be 
 "called Religious thought. Of course, the elaboration of 
 " any Religious system needed thought, but in Religions after 
 " a time there became a state of stagnation ; Religious thought 
 " became dormant until it was raised again by some mysterious 
 " circumstances. Now this was exactly what had happened in 
 " India. Fifty years ago the great waves of Hinduism had 
 " passed away, and there was no special thought of raising it, 
 
( 458 ) 
 
 " until there came the influx of Western ideas. . But at the 
 " present day it could not be said, that Religious thought was 
 " dormant amongst the thinking classes of India. On the 
 " contrary, it was extremely active, and the present was a time 
 " of great unrest. India felt the great change, which was coming 
 " over her, and more especially felt the great change, which had 
 " taken place- during the past few years. Men's opinions were 
 " undecided, and they did not know which way to turn. Many 
 " things presented themselves to their minds, and they were not 
 " able to choose ; therefore the position of Missions in India 
 " was of the utmost importance. He could not but think, that, 
 " God had sent them into the country, not to enrich themselves, 
 " but to direct the Religious thought of the- people. Therefore 
 " he thought the responsibility resting upon all of them was of 
 " the greatest." 
 
 That there is a Movement about to take place in the minds of" 
 men, is asserted by a Missionary Periodical not in the least 
 of a sensational character : " It is said, that we are on the eve 
 of, that is to say, we are within a few years of, the rising of 
 a great wave of Native feeling. This is said not by one nor 
 by two, but by many. Five years ago the Bishop of Calcutta 
 told the Society, that India is the land, where the future of 
 Mahometanism as well as Hinduism will be settled ; and that the 
 Hindu themselves know, that Christianity must have much to 
 do with the Future of their country. He added, that the time is 
 coming, when there will be a great breaking up of the Native 
 Religions, and that then the Christian opportunity will come. 
 Nor is it only Bishops, or Missionary priests, swayed by de- 
 votion to their work, who thus speak. An ex-Governor-General, 
 o'f calm and penetrating judgment, Lord Northbrook, at the 
 Society's Meeting at Winchester considered that he had 
 reason to justify him in making a very similar forecast. And 
 he went a step or two further. For he claimed to be only 
 expressing the opinion entertained by some of the wisest and 
 best men in India, when he said that he believed, that a time 
 was coming when, in God's Providence, there would be a 
 great wave of Christianity extending over the whole of the 
 Hindu Community. And he went on to speak of the way, in 
 which he expected it to come about. • Lord Northbrook does 
 not believe, that the wave of Christianity will come actually 
 and directly from the preaching of the English Missionaries, 
 but he believes, that it will come from the Hindu themselves, 
 led by some able, eloquent, and earnest Christian Hindu. 
 No mere increase of the rate of conversions is what is antici- 
 pated. It is not merely that, where a Missionary has baptized 
 ten persons in a year he may have a hundred to baptize in 
 twelve months. It is something more than that. There is 
 
( 459 ) 
 
 " a mass of opinion, of curiosity, of desire, of thought, working, 
 " yearning, inquiring, hoping. If this be a true forecast, how 
 " tremendously important is the preparation for the wave ! " 
 
 It does not, however, follow, that the Movement will be in 
 favour of an alien Religious conception and practice imported 
 from the West, clothed in the garments of European mediaeval 
 construction. It must be something fresh from the Sermon on 
 the Mount in Galilee, and the Cross at Jerusalem, undefiled by 
 the corruption of ignorant European centuries. 
 
 From the intellectual point of view of the Nineteenth century 
 it is clearly recognized, that the Pagan Deities were, and are, 
 nothing but the airy creations of the fancies and fears of the 
 Persians, the Indians, the Greeks, and the Romans, in their 
 barbarous state. We gather, however, from Paul's Epistles, 
 that the neo-Christians of his time still thought, that, though 
 not objects of Worship, still they were something, Demons, or 
 Spirits, or Powers invisible. Down to the time of St. Martin 
 de TourS, in the Fourth century A.D., this delusion obtained : 
 we read in the chronicles of his friend Sulpicius Severus 
 (Dial., ii, 13): " He drove the ancient gods from their temples, 
 and they clung to them" : these poor gods had become demons, 
 and, when driven from their temples, entered into the bodies of 
 maniacs. St. Martin hunted them down, abused them, and 
 made them recognize their own weakness. Mercury gave him 
 more trouble to conquer than Jupiter, who was a slothful 
 brute: "Jovem brutum atque hebetem esse dicebat." 
 
 Now, in India, in the midst of the ancient Hindu gods, 
 neither neo-Christians, nor the educated Community, beiieve 
 that Vishnu, or Siva, were ever anything but the creation of the 
 brain. In fact, Intellect and Common-sense have advanced, 
 and no doubt Buddha cleared the way. Still, for a long period 
 after conversion, a Hindu neo-Christian will still have a fear 
 come over him, when he passes by an Idol, though he knows 
 that it is only wood and stone, which he can upset and break : 
 the neo-Mahometan will still shudder at the idea of killing 
 animals, except in the old orthodox way, accompanied by a 
 prayer: blood will be an object of aversion to both. The 
 European Christian looks on these weaknesses with pitiless 
 surprise; but, if we turn to Acts, xv, 20, we find, that the same 
 process had to be gone through, in the process of the enfran- 
 chisement of the Human intellect from foolish, empty forms in 
 the name of Religion. 
 
( 460 ) 
 
 6. Enlarged Capacity of Non-Christian Races to under- 
 stand a Religious conception, which affects their 
 Morals in this Life, and their Souls hereafter. 
 
 We must not judge people harshly, because they do not' at 
 once accept, the Message of the Missionary. I should not 
 believe their sincerity, if they did : it is very difficult to burst 
 the hard rind of the material and intellectual environment. It 
 was only very gradually, that the mighty fact grew on the 
 Disciples in Galilee, that their friend and Teacher was the Lord 
 of all, the Divine Wisdom of the Proverbs, the Ao'iyos of the 
 Fourth Evangelist. Paul, as far as we are informed, had never 
 seen the Lord in His earthly Pilgrimage, or during His Passion ; 
 but he had seen the Risen Lord, and appreciated the Message at 
 once ; he had no stages of hesitation to pass through. 
 
 Bishop Patteson of Melanesia remarks (" Life," i, 340) : " We 
 " have not to contend with subtle and highly elaborated 
 " systems of false Religions. In some of the islands it is the 
 " 'Ignorantia purse negationis' ; yet generally there is a settled 
 " system of some kind." It is a fatal error to suppose the 
 European aspect of the Christian, social life necessarily adapted 
 to such races as these : it is entirely repugnant. 
 
 Sir Bartle Frere, in his " Indian Missions," p. 68, 1872, gives 
 a picture of the working of opinion : "In every village will be 
 " found some men of naturally devout minds, ill content with 
 "what their ancestral system offers them: their hearts have 
 "been stirred by misfortune and suffering; their consciences 
 " have been awakened, they scarcely know how. They have 
 " vainly sought rest for their Souls by penances, pilgrimages, 
 " and Sacrifices of what they love and value. In this state of 
 " feeling, they hear a word of our Lord, or a wise remark of 
 " Paul, which seems to promise them what they seek." This' is 
 the first stirring of the waters, and the birth of a new idea. 
 
 The intense Ignorance of. the people used to give an additional 
 piquancy: we are carried back to the Epoch of the Exodus, 
 when to the Hebrews the discovery by Copernicus of the 
 rotation of the globe was unknown, and the Sun and Moon, 
 and Heavenly Host, were supposed to exist to be of use to 
 man : not only were they in such matters ignorant fools, but 
 they were ignorant of their own Ignorance, and therefore 
 doubly fools : but all this has passed away. The man, who 
 comes as a Teacher, must himself have been well -taught. 
 Already there is general upheaval among the people : in India 
 the helots and outcastes feel, that they can no longer allow 
 themselves to be domineered over, or treated as a polluted 
 class. Old conservatives may shake their heads, but they will 
 have a battle to fight with their children, and" the generations 
 
( 461 ) 
 
 yet to be born. Still more striking is the effect of the Epoch 
 on the classes, who attend the State places of Education, and 
 who read the Native Papers and Books from Europe. 
 
 When we carefully read Deuteronomy, we recognize, that there 
 was a copy of the Law in the charge of the Priests, and that 
 portions were read out at intervals ; but how could the general 
 public keep themselves informed ? The unlearned classes in 
 those early days were utterly without the means of searching the 
 Scriptures : we know in what form the Gospels were presented 
 for centuries after the Christian era : uncial characters, words 
 running into each other, no punctuation ; copies not to be had 
 without difficulty ; the humbler classes unable to read, or under- 
 stand unless taught carefully : no School-books, Text-books, 
 Scripture-helps. Add to this, Superstitions, misconceptions of 
 natural phenomena, no guarantee of life or liberty, no certainty 
 of escape from the Intolerance of the Ruler or of the populace ; 
 nothing on their side but Divine Grace. 
 
 How different now is the British Indian Empire ? Tolerance, 
 Protection, sympathetic Rulers, places of Worship, Schools, 
 copies of the Scriptures, Books of Devotion, manuals of 
 Religious Teaching, in. each vernacular Language; Pastors, 
 Teachers, friendly advisers ; the right of private judgment. 
 This wonderful freedom must generate difference of opinion on 
 Divine Truths, and Human observances, on correctness of 
 Translations, and interpretation, on the Person of Christ, on the 
 genuineness and structure of Scripture, on Eschatology, on 
 the Laws of Marriage, on the disposal of the dead, on observance 
 of holidays, and, in fact, on every detail of Human life. 
 
 If the Missionary be wise, he will anticipate the misstatements 
 by good_ yet ignorant men of the Criticism of the New School, 
 and the assaults of the infidel, by teaching what the Old Testa- 
 ment in its material form really is : not one Book, but a Library 
 of Books, the earliest of which may have been committed to 
 writing 800 B.C., and the latest 200 B.C., compiled or written 
 by different authors, the names of some of whom are unknown, 
 in two Languages, Hebrew and Syriac : he will point out 
 that the writers were most certainly inspired, but that that word 
 should not be applied to the Books themselves ; that the Word 
 of God is contained in those Books, but that in their collective 
 form, they cannot with any degree of accuracy, be called the 
 Word of God. 
 
 The Hindu and Mahometan each claim for their Sacred 
 Books, that they were actually written by their Divinity, are in 
 very deed the Word of God, are free from all Human error in 
 transcription, and embrace all possible Human Knowledge. 
 Nothing of this kind is claimed for the Old Testament: it is 
 a priceless treasure in earthen vessels, liable to all the incidents 
 
( 462 ) 
 
 of transcription, the tricks of the Editor, and the snare of the 
 interpolator and corrector. It is possible that before the 
 introduction of Alphabetic 1 writing, which cannot as yet be 
 traced back to a date earlier than that of Ahab, King of Israel, 
 portions may have been transmitted orally from generation to 
 generation. We believe, ex animo, that they are truthful, and 
 were written by Holy men. The pious Hindu know that their 
 own wonderful Books were transmitted orally from the mouth of 
 Fathers to Sons for many generations, until Alphabetic writing 
 found its way to India from West Asia; that there are in their 
 midst men, who, out of pure Love and Holy reverence, can 
 repeat with accuracy the Texts of ancient volumes. The pious 
 Mahometan knows, that amongst them are scores in old age and 
 middle life, who can repeat the whole Koran from memory, 
 though this book was written in an advanced Literary age, 
 and committed to writing by the hand of Mahomet himself. 
 
 The educated Indian knows well that those, who repeat the 
 Sacred Hindu and Mahometan Books from memory, do not 
 understand the meaning of a single word ; and they know, that 
 those of their countrymen, who listen to the Latin prayers of 
 the Romish Priests, are in the same intellectual position. If 
 they do not know it, they may accept the fact, that the Sacred 
 Books of all four Religious conceptions, the Brahmanical, 
 Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan (I place them in chrono- 
 logical order) have come down to us in the same wonderful 
 Phenician Alphabetic system, and that no manuscript of the 
 Hindu or Jewish Books has survived of an earlier date than 
 that of the English Heptarchy. 
 
 The Rev. S. John estimates, that there are five or six thousand 
 English-speaking Hindu in Madras, and it is among th.ese that 
 his work lies. He thus describes the attitude of their minds 
 towards Religion : " It is a stern fact, beyond all disputation, 
 " that the mind of the educated Hindu, not unlike the dove of 
 " Noah's ark, finds no rest whatever in any system of Religion. 
 " They are going through all phases of thought : Atheism, 
 " Materialism, Scepticism, Theosophy, etc. . With some Hindu, 
 " Rationalism and Utilitarianism form the only criteria for 
 " judging the excellency of any Religion. Hence the why and 
 " the wherefore are asked for every Biblical statement. Faith 
 " should form no part of Religion ; Reason alone should be 
 " enthroned, and all the dogmas, teachings, and precepts should 
 " be tested by Reason. Also, if any Religion is to be accepted, 
 " it must necessarily be productive of substantial good to the 
 " recipient. The good or benefit looked for is one of a material, 
 " and not a Spiritual, character." 
 
 Mr. Wood relates the following conversation regarding the 
 Future state, which was held in one village, some ten miles from 
 
( 463 ) 
 
 Mamboia, between a Native Christian and an exceptionally 
 intelligent chief: "I began by asking him regarding the Future 
 " state, and his belief concerning it, if any. He said that as far 
 " as he knew he would be eaten by hyaena. (The Wa-Humba do 
 " not bury, but leave their dead in a forest in an upright position, 
 " fastened to a tree, to be taken away by hyaena or eaten by 
 " birds of prey.) Mugimbwa told him about the Future life and 
 " our teaching concerning it and the Resurrection of the body., 
 " Sekanana replied : ' The idea of you, a young lad only born 
 " yesterday, telling me such a thing : look at my grey hairs, and 
 " then can you think I should believe it ? Don't mention it.' 
 " Mugimbwa spoke about the seed-grain dying, yet rising again, 
 " the same but new. Sekanana replied : ' Yes, the parable is 
 " fine ; but it won't do. The life is in the seed, and, when put 
 "into the damp ground, begins to swell and grow; but dead 
 " men, or blood once spilt, or life once out of the body, cannot 
 " be restored.' Mugimbwa then spoke about the mystery of 
 " regeneration as showing wonderful power, meaning thereby, 
 " that the same power could cause the body to live again as 
 " once caused it to be formed ; but Sekanana at once said the 
 " same thing would hold good regarding oxen, hens, serpents, 
 " etc. Mr. Wood then said a few words regarding the belief in 
 " the Omnipotence of God. He replied : ' If God be almighty, 
 " of course this thing would not conquer Him.' " 
 
 Another time, when a festival in honour of the goddess 
 Rajin was to be observed for several days at a tank some twenty- 
 five miles from Srinagar, the Principal of a Mission-School went 
 with his pupils : " All present, many hundreds who were gathered 
 " round this tank and its golden umbrella, fell down and 
 " worshipped the goddess, who was supposed to be under the 
 " golden umbrella, which umbrella His Highness the Maharaja 
 " of Kashmir had set up. But not one of the boys with me or 
 " those, on whom I had my eyes, and" who were with their 
 " relations at the tank, bowed down with the hundreds of 
 " Idolators around them. I was as much surprised as I was 
 " pleased. But at the same time it brought before me the 
 " great responsibility of teaching these boys Christianity, and 
 " therefore taking away their ancient Religion. A man with no 
 " Religion is far worse off than a man with one ; and in taking 
 " away their Hinduism one puts these boys in a very dangerous 
 " position, unless one can induce them to face persecution and 
 " accept Christianity, in which they profess their belief. But 
 " this dangerous step none yet dare to take." 
 
 That is the real danger: there is more chance of converting 
 the followers of a false Religion than one, from whose intellect 
 the conception of the Supernatural has by hard Reason been 
 swept out. 
 
( 464 ) 
 
 Mr. Lefroy, of Dehli, reports a conversation with an intelli- 
 gent Hindu: "I indicated some of the difficulties, which I felt 
 " on the subject of Idolatry. He did not make much defence of 
 " it. He began by saying, that of course it was not necessary 
 " for persons of superior intellect like myself and himself, but 
 " that for the common herd it was a helpful practice. He said 
 " he viewed it something as though a man had fallen into a 
 " well, and to save himself from drowning, grasped at a root 
 " growing out of the wall ; and, while unable to get out of the 
 " well by its help, was just able to keep. his head' above water. 
 
 " I replied, that that was one possible illustration, but asked 
 " whether another, and perhaps more appropriate one, might 
 " not be that it was like a drowning man clutching at a straw, 
 " which would sink with him. He admitted that he was not 
 " prepared to say but that this might be another not wholly 
 " incorrect view. He then suggested that the interview had 
 " been long enough, and we parted with profuse expressions of 
 " civility and mutual regard." 
 
 This anecdote is worthy of perusal: "In Jaffna there is an 
 " ' Anti-Christ Society,' which, amongst other things, occupies 
 " itself in writing, printing, and distributing anti- Christian 
 " Tracts ; many of which, however, are, it is said, couched in too 
 " pedantic Language to be understood by ' the man in the street.' 
 " A Mission agent not long since told me that,' happening to 
 " call at a house, he found a number of young men of this 
 " Society with Bibles and a Concordance, studying the Biblical 
 " plan of Salvation, as presented in the words of the Bible 
 " itself, with a view to its refutation. The incident is suggestive, 
 " and by no means to be lightly regarded." 
 
 I quote the following from a thoughtful writer : " It is 
 " asserted, that the effect of Missionary Schools and Colleges 
 " upon the Religion of their pupils is little or nothing, and 
 "that of Government - Institutions simply destructive of all 
 " Religion. Neither statement is accepted by those, who have 
 " had the best opportunities of forming an opinion. As to the 
 " State, it cannot be denied, however much it may be regretted, 
 " that absolute Religious neutrality is inevitable. Any attempt, 
 " or suspicion of an attempt, to waver in this policy would be 
 " disastrous. In the Religious riots of latest occurrence 
 " nothing has aroused more disaffection than the charge, or 
 " more often the insinuation, utterly false, that Government 
 " has shown a tendency to deal more gently with Mahometan 
 " than with Hindu rioters. Neutrality as to Religion must be 
 " a matter of course in Government -Institutions in India, but 
 "it is not necessary, that the masters and professors in State 
 " Colleges' and Schools should teach Agnosticism or deny, that 
 " Morality is more than Opportunism. It betrays a strange 
 
( 465 ) 
 
 " want of confidence in - the eternal verity of Christianity to 
 " assume, that increase of Knowledge must be fatal to con- 
 " version from other Religions, and the assumption is not in 
 " accordance with experience. One of the most far-sighted 
 " of the great 'Indian Rulers left on record seventy years ago 
 " that, if there be a wish to contribute ultimately to the destruc- 
 " tion of Superstition in India, the only means of success lies 
 " in the diffusion of Knowledge. In Missionary Schools there 
 " is a great diversity of practice, but allowance should be made 
 " for the difficult position, in which many Protestant Mis- 
 " sionaries find themselves. Their 'Home-subscribers are apt 
 " to regard conversion of the Heathen to be the main work of 
 " the Missionary whom they support, and any educational efforts 
 " are incidental and having this work for its object. The 
 " Missionaries themselves may find this to' be altogether an 
 " inversion of the truth, and that all but a fraction, and it may 
 " be a small fraction, of their work is purely educational ; and 
 " it may, and does happen, that the highly educated Hindu, 
 " instead of embracing Christianity in any form, concludes 
 " from his reading, that the mass of his countrymen are sunk 
 " in - Superstition, but that a more philosophical apprehension 
 " of the ancient Sanskrit Sacred Books will lead to a Faith not 
 " less sublime and soul-satisfying than that pure and divine 
 " Religion of the primitive Christians, of which he conceives 
 " all existing Churches and sects to be more or less corruptions. 
 " That this is true of many of the most cultivated and 
 " thoughtful Hindu, there can be no doubt, and year by year 
 " the number of these men increases, and new generations 
 " are born in homes, where about one parent at least the 
 " atmosphere, moral and intellectual, is purer and clearer than 
 " that which enfolds and darkens the mass of his countrymen. 
 "We say one parent, since a very small fraction of the people 
 " is touched by high Education, and a minute fraction of that 
 " fraction is represented by females. The writer believes, that 
 " the effect of Education on the Indian Nation is already 
 " sensible, and may be expected to increase. Whether it will 
 " result in large conversions to Christianity, or in the appear- 
 " ance of some new form of Deism, no one, who apprehends 
 " the problem, would venture to submit." 
 
 However much we may hope and think that by making a man 
 a Christian we make him a "new man" and can mould his 
 Future life as we like, we shall find, that no permanent change 
 takes place in the Religious belief, or the usages of the new 
 Christian, which is not more or less rooted in the beliefs and 
 usages of his race (see Hatch : Hibbert Lectures, p. 4). We 
 cannot make a tabula rasa : the Italian, the Spanish, the Teutonic, 
 Christianity differs from each other essentially : still more will 
 
 3° 
 
( 466 ) 
 
 differ from each other the forms of Christianity, which are 
 . evolving from the Hindu, the African, and Oceanic convert. 
 The Missionary thinks, that he will mould his Hindu clay 
 according to his own English pattern, but he will find, that there 
 is a depth of indigenous material antipathetic' to the foreign 
 importation : there must be a recasting of the precious ore to 
 suit the new environment of antecedent habits of thought, . 
 prejudices, intellectual or spiritual, quagmires, in which his 
 Soul is plunged : he would not be Human, if he were not so. 
 I have, as it were, felt it in conversing. with an Indian convert: 
 he had indeed got to the root of the matter, that Christ wa.s 
 his Salvation ; but his mode of expression, his inductions, were 
 those of a man, to whom History, Geography, and the physical 
 conformation of the Globe, were non-existent : the intellectual 
 atmosphere, in which the great Bible-story, as it were, floated, 
 was different from my own views. He would talk of Jesus as 
 a Sahib, who had lived in Wilayat, a long way off, and a long 
 time ago, and his power of argument was limited by his Know- 
 ledge. His Faith was indeed better than mine, but his Reason 
 infinitely worse. No doubt there is something of the same 
 striking contrast, when a learned divine discusses divine things 
 with an old village-woman in England, whose thoughts had never 
 gone beyond the fields, where she had ,spent her life ; but in 
 spite of all this she had given her heart, without doubts or 
 conditions, or any effort of Reason, to Christ, and of such is the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 7. Christian Truth and Practice exposed to New Tests. 
 
 One certain result of the enlargement of the cords of the tents 
 of Christianity, and its ceasing to be an European and American 
 speciality, must tend to the reconsideration of many Dogmas 
 and Practices, which we have blindly inherited from the dark 
 ignorant Middle Ages. When we lay our Creeds and Rituals by 
 the side of the Gospels, we see how large a portion of what is- 
 called Christian Doctrine, and Usages, is in reality the weaving 
 of the Greek Intellect and Roman practice, in their essential 
 Pagan form, with an imported flavour of Judaism. Augustine 
 of Hippo admits his great debt to Plato and Cicero. It may 
 be urged, that this was part of the great plan of the Education 
 of the world, that the Greek Language and Philosophy were 
 divinely prepared just at the decay of the Hebrew Genius, to 
 be, as it were, the matrix, in which the Divine Precepts, pro- 
 mulgated in Syrian villages to uncultured peasants, were to be 
 developed so as to suit the requirements of Future Ages and 
 
( 467 ) 
 
 Nations still to be born, in a totally different Human environ- 
 ment, and at the highest hitherto known elevation of the Human 
 intellect. This may be so. 
 
 But the converted Hindu may argue with great reason, that 
 his Language and his School of Philosophy were far better 
 suited to be the envelope, in which the Precious Promises of 
 the Gospel should be presented to an Indian population. We 
 cannot lose sight of the fact, that to the very last the Roman 
 Education was Pagan, that Christians did not hesitate to avail 
 themselves . of the Pagan Education, and thus Christianity 
 became to the young mind a blending of Pagan and Christian 
 ideas : in our own period the Christians are the upper class in 
 this world, and the non-Christian the lower : the reverse was 
 the case in the early centuries. In India the neo-Christian will 
 go to the State-College without injury, if he has been taught a 
 large Christianity, but not so if he accepts his new Religion in 
 a European mould, not in the least warranted by the Gospel. 
 He may rather be inclined to strip away the Greek integuments, 
 and cut through the bark, which has hardened in Italian and 
 ' Teutonic gardens round the tender plant ; and just as the 
 European is compelled to adopt the Languages of India, the 
 necessity may be felt to convert the European Religion into an 
 Asiatic. I heard a Bishop of Japan urge in a Missionary Society 
 in London, that the only necessary links between the Japanese 
 arid Anglican Churches were: (i) the Bible, (2) the two 
 Sacraments, (3) the Nicene Creed, (4) Episcopacy: the 
 Articles of Faith, Book of Common Prayer, and Traditions, must 
 be thrown over the ship's side. The Church will be in all 
 externals Japanese. 
 
 Hear what Dr. Murdoch, one of the greatest authorities, says : 
 " The character of the people of India is largely moulded by 
 " their Literature. The Pantheism of the Upanishads has per- 
 " meated all classes ; the popular mythology is nourished by 
 " the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The main lesson of the 
 " Panchatantra, one of the most popular prose works, is how to 
 " overcome by deceit. The late Oxford Professor of Sanskrit said 
 " that the greater number of Hindu tales turn upon the wicked- 
 " ness of women, the luxury, profligacy, treachery, and craft, of 
 " the female sex. 
 
 " In addition to the old Hindu Literature, we have now to 
 " contend with numerous recent publications designed to oppose 
 " the progress of the Gospel. When last in North India I got 
 " a copy of a scurrilous and obscene tract against Christianity. 
 " Its frontispiece had a ghastly caricature of the Crucifixion, 
 " with a legend around it pointing out the inability of the 
 " Saviour to save Himself. Of this tract 20,000 copies were 
 " printed for free circulation." 
 
( 468 ) 
 
 In one of the Museums at Rome the traveller can still see 
 a picture in chalk, drawn by a Roman soldier to annoy a 
 Christian fellow-soldier, of Christ on the Cross with an ass's 
 head. It is a very old idea to insult the objects of Worship of 
 another Nation, and I am sorry to say that, in one case certainly, 
 the English Missionaries have published books exposing to 
 ridicule objects of veneration to the Hindu in a manner calcu- 
 lated to cause a breach of the peace. 
 
 Dr. Murdoch adds : " The Hindu Tract Society, of Madras, 
 " printed last year seventeen tracts and leaflets. Several were 
 " issued by ' A well-wisher to the Society' ; among them, 'The 
 " Bible-Dissector for the use of Mission-School-Students,' and 
 " ' One Hundred and Fifty Contradictions of the Bible : a Bible 
 " Handbook for Mission - School - Students and Inquiring 
 " Christians.' A Freethought Book Dep6t in Madras issues a 
 " list of one hundred and twenty-four separate works, including 
 " thirty-four publications by Bradlaugh, nineteen by Mrs. Besant, 
 " nine by Foote, sixteen by Ingersoll, with others by Paine, 
 " Voltaire, etc. Ingersoll's Lectures have the largest sale. 
 " Among books may be specially mentioned Mrs. Besant's 'My 
 " Path to Atheism,' and the ' Freethinker's Text-Book,' in two 
 " parts, by Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant. 
 
 " In the list there is a most demoralizing book under the 
 " apparently innocent title of ' Elements of Social Economy.' 
 " It advocates free thought and free love. Marriage is de- 
 " nounced on account of its ' innumerable evils and injustices.' 
 " It is said that ' Man stands at the head of the universe. Any 
 " human being, no matter however fallen or degraded, is an 
 " infinitely more glorious and adorable being than any god, that 
 " ever was or will be conceived.' If Education leads only 
 " to the perusal of superstitious, immoral, and anti-Christian 
 " works, it will be a curse instead of a blessing." 
 
 In the early days of Christianity it was impressed on the neo- 
 Christians, that they ought not to burn their dead, but bury 
 them. We are once more face to face with a people in India, 
 who for centuries have burned their dead, and common-sense 
 suggests, that this custom should not be disturbed. The questions 
 of Polygamy, Caste, Liquor, circumcision, and defilement of the 
 body, will all be raised : foreign vestments and architecture will 
 be totally out of place. 
 
 There is little doubt that, when the converts to the new Faith 
 have been settled for two generations in a large Region, and 
 count great numbers of the educated classes, the thoughts of 
 the thinkers will be turned inwards, and the subtle mind of the 
 Indian will be exercised by doubts and questionings, half-beliefs, 
 and rationalism : the person of the Saviour, the mystery of the 
 
( 469 ) 
 
 Trinity, the insoluble problems of Death, Pain, and Prosperity, 
 and all the questions, of which we read in the early days of 
 Christianity, will come up again. They were settled in the early 
 days by force and violence : vcb victis ! The books of so-called 
 heretics were burnt, and the people of Europe gave in; but 
 it does not follow, that the modern educated Hindu, accustomed 
 to protection by the Law, will be deterred from re-opening 
 sealed questions, as soon as they are s.ettled down as a Native 
 Church, independent of the white foreigner. 
 
 An ingenious writer in The Times, in 1895, tries to define the 
 Religion, taught in the Board Schools of London, as follows : 
 " First, there is a God. At the back of all material phenomena,. 
 " of things created there is the Creator. At the back of Law, 
 " of conscience, there is the supreme Lawgiver, the supreme 
 " World-Conscience, whom men call God. So far the Board 
 " School Religion is Theistic. It excludes only professed 
 " atheists, who as an insignificant minority may safely be 
 " neglected in legislating for the Nation. 
 
 " Secondly, an historical fact is affirmed. In the fulness of 
 " time, when things were ready for Him, a man was born, a life 
 " was let down as it were into the mid-stream of Human events, 
 " such as was never seen before or has been seen since, the 
 " Man Christ Jesus, who, as being incomparably the best of 
 " men, may serve for others as their example, as exhibiting in 
 " Human form, in His acts, His words, His life, His character, 
 " the moral character, the being of the supreme goodness, may 
 " be said to be, in Hebrew phraseology, "the brightness of His 
 " glory, the express image of His person," or God incarnate. 
 " So far this instruction is Christian. It excludes only those, 
 " who are professedly not Christians, who, again, being in this 
 " Christian country but a few, may justly not be taken into 
 ' " consideration in legislating for the many." 
 
 Of course the Denominational Churches would object, that this 
 is not enough, that a good deal has to be taught in addition ; 
 but there is a simplicity, and freedom from all the aggregations 
 of European Christianity, that may recommend it to the new 
 convert, who wishes to know what he is believing in. 
 
 The Word of God is not bound by Human definitions, least- 
 ways by those made in a less enlightened Epoch. The Truth 
 of God is greater than the limits of the intellects of men at any 
 given period. Statements of Truth essential to Europeans in 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a.d. may not prove to be 
 so to other races in the Twentieth century. Hear what Bishop 
 Westcott says: "We have still much to learn. The treasures- 
 " of the Son of Man are not yet exhausted. If we watch with 
 " reverent care how the old Message is received by men of 
 ■< childlike nature, and by men of ancient civilization, we shall 
 
( 470 ) 
 
 " be enriched by the thoughts, which it reveals out of many 
 " hearts, and the glory of God will be more fully known." 
 (C.M.S. Annual Sermon, 1895.) 
 
 8. Exclusion of Missionaries from certain Countries, 
 under certain circumstances justifiable and 
 necessary. 
 
 This 'seems inevitable, if the Missionary adopts the present 
 fashionable policy of being a general grievance-monger, a 
 denouncer of ancestral customs, a critic of the acts of the 
 Government : Russia, Austria, and France, have to a certain 
 extent adopted this policy. I quote the following telegram 
 from St. Petersburg, November, 1895: "The Turkestan Gazette 
 " hears from Viernoe, that the Minister of the Interior and the 
 " Minister for Foreign Affairs, have given permission for Ameri- 
 " can Missionaries to take refuge on Russian territory from the 
 " violence of the Chinese populace, on the express condition, 
 " however, that they are not to prosecute their Religious pro- 
 " paganda among Russian subjects, and not to interfere in any 
 " way in matters of Creed and Faith. The Turkestan Gazette 
 '•' remarks, that this reservation was evidently needed, for these 
 " foreign Missionaries carry on their Religious proselytism 
 " simply in the interests of the particular Church, to which they 
 " happen to belong, and not at all in a spirit of Love and 
 " peace, thus inoculating a feeling of hostility towards other 
 " Christian Communities." 
 
 It will be a sad day, when the Government of British India 
 is driven to adopt this policy, but the day is not far distant, if 
 Missionaries forget their proper peaceful duties. 
 
 The Governments of Oriental Kingdoms, British, French, 
 Dutch, and German, will in the first years of next century have 
 to consider the conditions, under which propagators of new 
 Religious conceptions can be admitted to sojourn and spread 
 the same in their territories. There will be : 
 
 I. Aliens from Europe : 
 
 (1) Trinitarian Christians. 
 
 (2) Mahometans. 
 
 (3) Theosophists. 
 
 (4) Unitarians. 
 
 (5) Mormonites. 
 
( 471 ) 
 II. Indigenous to Asia : 
 
 (i) Brahma-Somaj. 
 
 (2) Aria-Somaj. 
 
 (3) Neo-Buddhism. 
 
 (4) Other forms, which are in germ. 
 
 Toleration is the law of modern life, and except in moments of 
 Rebellion and Political disturbance such as in 1857-8, no pass- 
 ports ought to be demanded. The Propagators must have a fair 
 field, with no favour, no opposition ; but it must be understood, 
 that they for the time waive their rights as subjects of a friendly 
 Power : Planters, Merchants, Travellers, have them, but the 
 man, who enters a country deliberately to attack the Natives on 
 their tenderest side, their Religious convictions, must count the 
 cost, as Barnabas and Paul did : they need fear nothing from 
 the Officials of the State, but they must so behave as to stand 
 well with the people. Hitherto in British India they have done 
 so : not one perished by the violence of the populace during 
 the Mutinies. The true Missionary does not rest on the Arm 
 of the Flesh : not by Might nor Power, but by the Spirit. His 
 example is that of Paul and Barnabas, not of Boniface and 
 Xavier. 
 
 The Mission in U-Ginda was maintained by the Arm of the 
 Flesh. A Missjonary thus states, March, 1 896, at the C.M.S. : 
 " Political considerations threw many of the Chieftainships into 
 " the hands of Christians, and many became readers, because 
 " their Chiefs were so also, or because they thought it well to 
 " come under European, in this case English, influence : " a 
 little further off the same Political considerations made them 
 Roman Catholics. 
 
 We cannot jeopardize our Empire because of the foolish 
 conduct of the least wise of our population. Our thoughts go 
 out to those poor nine Chinese executed for the late troubles 
 in 1895. Were they the real men, or only chance men caught 
 up to make a show ? 
 
 9. Form and Doctrine of Native Independent Churches. 
 
 In the last Census of British India we have a statement of 
 the different Denominations of the Christian Religion, repre- 
 sented in that country: an attempt is made to reduce them 
 under intelligible headings : 
 
( 472 ) 
 
 I. Old Churches : 
 
 (i) Abyssinian. 
 
 (2) Armenian. 
 
 (3) Syrian. 
 
 (4) Romish. 
 
 (5) Greek. 
 
 II. Great Britain and Ireland : 
 
 (1) Episcopalian. 
 
 (2) Free Church (Episcopalian). 
 
 (3) Presbyterian. 
 
 (a) Established. 
 (6) Free Scotch. 
 
 (0 u.p. 
 
 (d) Reformed. 
 
 (e) Irish. 
 
 {/) Calvinist. 
 
 (4) Independent. 
 
 (5) Methodists. 
 
 (a) Wesleyan. 
 
 (b) Methodist Episcopalian. 
 
 (c) Primitive. 
 
 (6) Baptist. 
 
 (7) Plymouth Brethren. 
 
 (8) Bible Christian. 
 
 (9) Society of Friends. 
 
 (10) Catholic Apostolic or Irvinite. 
 
 (11) Salvation Army. 
 
 (12) Unitarian. 
 
 III. America : 
 
 (1) Episcopalian. 
 
 (2) Presbyterian. 
 
 IV. Continental : 
 
 (1) Lutheran. 
 
 (2) Swedish. 
 
 (3) Reformed Dutch. 
 
 This list indicates the fissures in the' Church of Christ, which 
 no time will close up, but which will rather widen. But there 
 is coming into existence another' cause of division of these 
 nominal Christians, viz., their race and ancestral Faith. The 
 Parsi represent a very small fraction of the Millions of India, 
 the last survival of the great Zoroastrian. conception, which once 
 
( 473 ) 
 
 dominated Central Asia. The Christian converts must be few, 
 but we read the following : " I think, that it may interest your 
 " readers to hear of the Parsi Christian Association, which has 
 " recently been formed, and which has its headquarters in 
 " Bombay. It has been felt by some of the Parsi converts 
 " residing here, that a bond of union among them is needed, and 
 " that if all Parsi Christians throughout the world will unite in 
 " one Association, it will be a source of strength to them, and an 
 " encouragement to others to join the Christian Church. With 
 " this object, as many as were able have met together in 
 " Bombay, and formed themselves into' an Association, of which . 
 " the Rev. Chanjibhai Nowroji, Minister of the Free Church of 
 " Scotland in Bombay, and the first Parsi Christian in India, has 
 " been elected President. They now wish to invite all Parsi 
 " Christians, of whatever Denomination, to join them. Members 
 " are requested to pray unitedly or separately for one another, to 
 " correspond with the Secretary, and to endeavour to influence 
 " other Parsi for good by every means in their power. As there 
 " is now a considerable Parsi Community'in England, and many 
 " of those, who are resident there, have been baptized, we hope 
 " for some accession to our members from among them. But 
 " in many cases their names and addresses are unknown to us. 
 " May I, then, beg that, if any Parsi Christian should read these 
 " lines, he will communicate with me, and if any of your readers 
 " should be acquainted with any Parsi Christian, that they will 
 " kindly draw his attention to the Association, which has been 
 " formed, and invite him to become a member. The rules and 
 " objects of the Association are herewith enclosed, which, I 
 " trust, you will print with this letter in. your next issue. Our 
 " numbers are at present small, but include- almost every one of 
 " the Parsi Christians in India. . Within the last six months five 
 *' new converts have been baptized in Bombay, and there are 
 " encouraging signs which point to the prospect of larger 
 " numbers entering the fold of Christ. Let us, then, stand to- 
 " gether and uphold one another in the- Faith. — R. S. Rustomjee 
 " Mistry, Hon. Secretary. 
 
 " Provisional Rules. — (i) That the Association should be called 
 " ' The Parsi Christian Association.' 
 
 " (2-) That Parsi Christians and Christian members of their 
 " families be members of the Association. 
 
 " (3) That the annual subscription be not less than one rupee 
 " for all members over sixteen years of age. 
 
 " (4) That Missionaries and other Christian friends become 
 " members, honorary or subscribing, at the invitation of the 
 " Association. 
 
 " (5) That a President, a Secretary, and a Treasurer be 
 " elected at the Annual Meeting of the Association. 
 
,( 474 ) 
 
 " Objects. — (i) To bind together all Parsi Christians socially 
 " and for spiritual edification. 
 
 " (2) To pray regularly for the speedy conversion of their 
 " countrymen. 
 
 " (3) To be witnesses for Christ (Acts, i, 8) in speaking, 
 " writing, meeting, or preaching to their countrymen. 
 
 " (4) To interest people in Christian countries in the Spiritual 
 " welfare of the Parsi. 
 
 "(5) To help all Parsi inquirers and converts in the best 
 " possible way. 
 
 " (6) To correspond with the Parsi Christians, who have 
 " settled down in different parts of the world, and to bring 
 " before them the solemn responsibility of making Christ 
 " known to their countrymen, either by personal service or by 
 " contributing towards the support of Parsi Evangelists." 
 
 If converts from the other numerous non-Christian con- 
 ceptions of British India act in the same way as the insignificant 
 Parsi Community, it is difficult to imagine what will be the 
 state of the Native Christian Church divided into innumerable 
 sections. 
 
 Another fissure will arise from the social position of the neo- 
 Christians : it is out of all reason to suppose, that the European 
 sojourners, the Eurasians, and those, who have adopted the 
 Language and customs of Europe, can worship together in the 
 same Church or Chapel with the Natives. The upper stratum 
 of Society would not submit to it, any more than they would 
 travel in the same railway-carriage, or send their children to 
 the same School. The Language, which must be used to make 
 the Services intelligible, forbids such an amalgamation. More 1 - 
 over, it would act prejudicially to the well-being of the Native 
 Church, for such a blending cuts at the root of a national and 
 spontaneous development of a Native Church in India for 
 Indians. It postpones indefinitely the union of Native Christians 
 of different Denominations in an Indian Church : it crystallizes 
 for ever the unwelcome features of foreign Anglicanism, or 
 Americanism : it is against the liberal spirit of the Church of 
 England Articles, and the plastic example of Apostolic precedent. 
 
 I quote the following, which has appeared in print : "A fourth 
 " suggestion is : 'That as the Native Church assumes a national 
 " character, it may ultimately supersede the denominational dis- 
 " Unctions, which are now introduced by Foreign Missionary 
 " Societies.' We of the Church of England are bound by our 
 " fundamental rules to train up every congregation gathered 
 " from the Heathen according to the discipline and Worship of 
 " the Church of England. But our own Prayer-Book has laid 
 " down the principle, that every national Church is at liberty to 
 " change its ceremonies, and adapt itself to the national taste, 
 
( 475 ) 
 
 " and therefore we look forward to the time, when the Native 
 " Churches shall have attained that magnitude and maturity, 
 "which will entitle them to worship' and perfect themselves 
 *' according to the standard of God's Holy Word. Then Foreign 
 " Missionary efforts will cease ; but inasmuch as we shall have 
 " infused Gospel Truth, and supplied well-trained witnesses for 
 " the Truth, our work will be found to praise and honour and 
 " glory through Jesus Christ." 
 
 Each Denomination thinks its own views the right ones, and 
 regards with pity the errors of its neighbours : of course, the 
 Church of Rome justifies every form of proselytism, and would 
 sooner leave the people in their native heathen state than allow 
 them to become Protestants. The Protestants lose no oppor- 
 tunity of saving the Soul of a poor deceived Romanist. This 
 is quite understood. Among Protestants there is a sort of 
 restraint in proselytizing from other Protestant Denominations, 
 but the subjoined extract will show how, in the Anglican 
 Church, this feeling is whittled away under the conviction, that the 
 Anglican Church is right and all others are wrong : "Proselytism. 
 " — This word has been used in various senses. It is, however, 
 " noticeable, that in the sense of 'systematic aggression' it 
 " was repudiated on both sides by those concerned in the 
 " recent controversy. And this is undoubtedly its true sense 
 " for us. In our case to proselytize would be deliberately to 
 " plan the organization and direct the efforts of a Mission with 
 " the view- of winning converts, not from unbelief, but from 
 " among persons already baptized. Such action is to be wholly 
 " condemned, however good the motive of the individual who 
 " engages in it. It is the desertion of the true function 
 " of a Missionary for a lower end. It inevitably impairs the 
 " ideal, and with it the inner life, of the, Mission, which so 
 " employs its resources. It diverts means and energy, which 
 " are already quite insufficient for the attainment of their proper 
 " object. But while this may be clear, still difficult questions 
 " arise from time to time, of which the mere assertion of, and 
 " agreement upon, the general principle does .not in itself afford 
 " a solution. To take our own case. A Mission like that of 
 " the Anglican Communion in Japan finds itself surrounded by 
 " Christian bodies, in the individual members of which over 
 " and above our common nature we find high qualities of the 
 " Christian life, but with whose system and teaching we have 
 " most serious differences on not a few very important subjects. 
 " Further, affectionate respect for individuals and a true regard 
 " for their work cannot allay reasonable fears of what may be 
 " the ■ ultimate issue in this land of the growing chaos of 
 " thought and teaching, which sectional Christia'nity is engen- 
 " dering. This is felt and candidly admitted by some of our 
 
( 476 ) 
 
 " separated brethren themselves. Indeed, the mistakes and 
 " deficiencies in the doctrine, which are being taught, and the 
 " organizations, which are being set up around us, cannot but, 
 " after a while, as history gives clear warning, weaken the hold 
 " of many on the fundamental Faith itself, even when this is at 
 " first received. It is evident, that this result is already fol- 
 " lowing, in some cases, with the rapidity which is characteristic 
 " of Japan. Under these circumstances, I cannot but conclude, 
 " that no blame attaches to the reception from time to time, of 
 " those who are attracted to us, not by special efforts directed 
 " against their several systems, but by the fact of the existence 
 " and development by their side of a Communion, which main- 
 " tains the Catholic Faith and Order alike in purity, proportion, 
 " and completeness. On this principle I from time to time assent 
 " to the confirmation of persons not baptized by ourselves." 
 
 Forty years ago, in the year 1856, when I was very familiar 
 with the working of Missions of several Denominations in the 
 field in India, I penned the following lines, and s I seem to agree 
 in their spirit still. I admit that men vary with their Epoch, 
 and their environment ; but still there are racial difficulties, and 
 radical difficulties, which do not change. 
 
 " Thinking reverently, yet practically, I am of opinion that, if 
 " ever it be intended to plant Christianity in India, we must strip 
 " off from the original tree the strange parasitical plants, which 
 " have clung round it in Occidental countries : we must re-seek 
 " the stream at its fountain-head before its pure waters had been 
 " disturbed by the curse of polemical discussion, by the vain 
 " quarrels of the 'Opoovamv and the '0/i.oiovmov, the Monothelites, 
 " the Monophysites, the two Persons, and the Qbotokos, the pro- 
 " cession of the Holy Ghost, the worship of Images, the power 
 " of absolution of the Church of Rome, and the predestination 
 " of the Calvinists. We must set aside at least for the Native 
 " Churches all these doctrines, and much Church-practice, and 
 " go back reverently to the words of Christ, of Paul and. Peter, 
 " and the simple economy of the Churches of the first three 
 " centuries. For the European agent I do not doubt that, educated 
 " as he is, he does not like to cut himself from his fellow-country- 
 " men, and sink (as it seems to him) to the level of a Native ; but 
 " there is nothing to show, that Paul ever dined at the table of the 
 " local Proconsul : though a Roman citizen, he had nothing to do 
 " with the governing classes ; he had no fixed salary, no com- 
 " fortable residence; he made no annual reports, but he lived 
 " among his people, and taught them, and so mightily grew the 
 " Word of God and prevailed under his teaching : it cannot 
 " be said that it does so now." — 1856. 
 
 London, February, 1896. 
 
( 477 ) 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I have come to the end of my fourth Chapter, and at the age 
 of seventy-five lay down my pen for ever. 
 
 Ej ko\u>s, u>s ij3ov\6fii]v' el 8e evSeectTepivs, (is ihvvawnv. 
 
 My original scheme was to have a fifth Chapter, consisting of 
 four Essays on certain great subjects connected with Religious 
 conceptions. As long as the Human race lasts, there will be 
 a fluctuation in the belief in things Spiritual and Unseen, 
 brought home to the believer by Faith, and not by sight. 
 
 (i) The dawn of a Religious conception evidenced in the 
 Books of Moses and the Veda. 
 
 (2) The decay of a Religious conception, when the period 
 
 assigned to it has been run, evidenced in the story 
 of the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Grseco-Roman, 
 Religions. 
 
 (3) The survival of a Religious conception, after the time 
 
 assigned to it has been run, evidenced in Modern 
 . Judaism. 
 
 (4) The vitality of a Religious conception,' evidenced by 
 
 the earnest endeavours for many centuries of the 
 believers to propagate it to others, because, in their 
 opinion it is the greatest and best, and only remedy 
 to Human Ills, evidenced in Christianity. 
 
 It has occurred to me at the close of my fourth Chapter, that 
 each and all of these subjects are beyond the comprehension of, 
 and power of usefulness to those, for whose special benefit my 
 book is written, viz., the sincere and devout friends of the 
 Evangelization of the World on the lines laid down in the 
 Teaching of the Master in Galilee and Judaea, and developed 
 in the Apostolic Epistles. Still, of course, these four aspects are 
 all included in the Philosophy of Missions. 
 
 The Abb6 Dubois, after thirty years' experience in South India, 
 in Maisur, published a book in 1823, "Letters on the State of 
 Christianity in India," in which the conversion of the Hindu 
 is deemed by him to be impracticable. He came to the con- 
 clusion, that the time for the conversion of India had passed 
 away ; that Christianity had done its work in the World; that the 
 .Millions of China, Japan, India, Africa, and Oceania, still in 
 Pagan darkness, were to be abandoned to the Almighty's irre- 
 vocable decree, which doomed them to perdition. (G. Smith's 
 
( 478 ) 
 
 " Conversion of India," p. 70.) Surely the goodness of God 
 endureth yet daily: He would not, that one of His poor children 
 should perish : He so loved the world, the whole world, not the 
 Jews only in Anno Domini, or the Anglo-Saxon race only 1900 
 years later. Still, the deadly, luxurious, worldly Civilization of 
 the end of the Nineteenth century is the greatest enemy of the 
 Lord's work : it enervates and renders effeminate the agents ; it 
 fills the convert with ideas of improving his status in this life 
 only ; it multiplies expenditure, and the process of getting in 
 the money ; it secularizes those, who control affairs at home ; 
 it generates fads and crazes, which have no relation to the one 
 sole object of the Movement, " bringing Souls to Christ." 
 
 Let us pass our thoughts on to the Methods, but very briefly. 
 Mixing up the bringing of a Soul to Christ with the training of 
 the intellect in the three R's in a School, with the teaching of the 
 hands to weave textile fabrics in a Manufactory, with improving 
 the breed of Ostriches, or the culture of exportable products 
 of the Soil, appears to me to be in a Missionary a serious error. 
 We do not find a trace of such things in the time of the Apostles, 
 or the early centuries before the Emperor Constantine. Later . 
 on the Keltic Missionary, and the Saxon Missionary, resting on 
 the Arm of the Flesh of such Kings as Charles Martel, did 
 indeed build Convents, open Schools, teach agriculture, and 
 segregated the converts from outward contact. The miserable 
 state of Political affairs might have justified this policy then, 
 but it cannot do so now under a Realm of Law: we must 
 hot rear. Christian converts, like cucumbers, under a glass 
 frame : they are the leaven sent in advance to leaven the whole 
 mass by personal social contact and exarnple. So also no 
 attempt should be made to arrest the freedom of discussion. 
 Some people object to individuals being allowed, such as 
 Atheists, Agnostics, Preachers of new doctrines, to air their 
 views v in the streets of towns and villages : they ought, according 
 to the opinion of champions of "my Doxy" against "your 
 Doxy," to be repressed, as subversive of Religion and good 
 Government. Is not this precisely what the. Pharisees and 
 Priests did as regards our Lord and the Apostles, what the 
 Roman Secular Government did to all Christians for the first 
 three centuries, until Constantine declared it to be a " Religio 
 h'cita," and what the Roman Ecclesiastical Hierarchy desires to 
 do whenever the Arm of the Flesh is on their side ? The 
 Truth, if it be in very deed the Truth, does not suffer from abuse, 
 or argument* At Cairo I was conversing with an American U.P. 
 Presbyterian Missionary (since deceased) about the rights won 
 by the Presbyterians in Scotland to be independent of Episcopal 
 bondage : he surprised me by desiring to uproot and destroy 
 the. evil Plymouth Brethren, who crept in and poisoned his 
 
( 479 ) 
 
 Presbyterian flock. In fact, he was just like the rest of mankind, 
 and wanted to make " his Doxy " prevail. The less in the British 
 Dominions that the nascent Christian Churches lean upon the 
 State, the better: the British Power in India may scarcely outlive 
 the Twentieth century ; the Native Christian Church is built 
 for ages yet to come. 
 
 The next fifty years must produce a might change in the 
 Nations outside of Europe and the United States. Great Pan 
 is dead, and there is no room in the soil of the Human Intellect ' 
 for the birth of new Animistic conceptions. The darkness and 
 deep sleep of centuries have ceased to exist. The Epoch of 
 Spirits, Ghosts of the departed, Theophanies, Angels ; of 
 Dreams, Heavenly Signs' from Heaven, Thunder in serene sky, 
 Auguries, Ephods, Oracles ; of Miracles, Prophecies, Charms, 
 Magical rites, Priesthoods, Medicine-men, Temples, Temple 
 Worship, Sacrifices, Processions, Liturgies in dead Languages, 
 Statues, Sacred places, Pilgrimages, Asceticism, and lastly 
 Circumcision, as an evidence of Spiritual belief, is passing away, 
 never likely to return, for such ideas belong to Juventus Mundi, 
 the infancy of the Human race, ignorant of the Laws of Nature, 
 each tribe deeming itself the sole object of God's favour. 
 
 The words of theMaster to the woman of Samaria (John, iv, 24) : 
 " God is a Spirit, and they, that worship Him, must worship Him 
 in Spirit and Truth." His words recorded by Mark (viii, 35-7) : 
 " For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it ; but whosoever 
 shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel's, the same shall 
 save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the 
 whole world, and lose his own Soul ? Or what shall a man 
 give in exchange for his Soul?" These words mark the 
 dividing-line between the Past, and the Future, and supply 
 a test, by which each of the ancient Religious conceptions 
 can be weighed ■ in the balance. Could any Egyptian, Baby- 
 lonian, or Hebrew have uttered them ? The hopes and Duties 
 of the latter were limited to the land, which the Lord his 
 God should give him. The Genius of such great races 
 as the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese is ready to develop 
 itself into new forms : there will surely be a birth of a new 
 Gautama Buddha, a new Socrates, and a new Pythagoras. The 
 old forms of Paganism are entirely gone, except those that cling 
 like lichen to degraded forms of the Christian Faith, such as 
 the Greek, Roman, and the Fallen Churches in Asia and Africa. 
 A new race of Thinkers has come into existence : every received 
 dogma and practice will have to be laid on the anvil ot 
 current Thought to be tested, whether it be really genuine, or 
 spurious : the question will be asked, and an answer insisted 
 upon, as to whether they were made for all times, all races, all 
 climates, all sorts and conditions of men, or were good only for the 
 
( 480 ) 
 
 Greek, Latin, Teutonic, and Semitic races, in the early centuries 
 of the Christian era. We have the great fact, that the Law of 
 Moses, admittedly promulgated by the Most High,, was from the 
 first limited to a small tribe among the hundreds of Millions of 
 the world, failed most entirely, as evidenced by the words of 
 the Prophets and of our Lord Himself, and developed into 
 something essentially different. 
 
 The sum of the matter is in this. Long before the time 
 when the great Arian races, the Indian, Persian, Grseco-Latin, 
 Kelt, Teuton, and Slavonic, are believed by some to have 
 migrated from their central Home ; before the races of China 
 had occupied the Middle Kingdom ; before the Egyptian had 
 descended from his mysterious Home on the shores of the Red 
 Sea, and the Babylonian had sprung into existence on the 
 shores of the Persian Gulf; before the dawn of Civilization, or 
 the commencement of Legendary History, or the birth of the 
 simplest Art, which conduces to the convenience of man, the 
 Lord looked down from Heaven, and beheld All the children 
 of men from the place of His habitation : He looked on all the 
 inhabitants of the Earth which he had made': He fashioned 
 the bodies and the hearts, and the understandings, of all: He 
 considered all their works. (Psalms, xxxiii, 13-45.) A thousand 
 years in His sight is but' as a watch in the night : the circum- 
 ference of the round world is but as the width of a straw. Men 
 walked on the surface of the globe, like emmets, in 'His sight : 
 and are not all the Millions of the world monuments of His 
 Mercy and Longsuffering ? Can it be. supposed that, after the 
 manner of a modern Missionary, He measures the advancement 
 of the Kingdom of His Son with an inch-rule ? The Nations,, 
 to whom I have alluded, were great in all Human Greatness, 
 Arms, Arts, and Science :' they have raised up Monuments, 
 which have lasted thousands of years, and may last thousands 
 more : they have left behind writings of imperishable and un- 
 surpassable Human Wisdom, and yet they knew not then, and, 
 where they have descendants, they know not now, Jehovah, or the 
 Saviour, or the Holy Spirit. God's ways are not our ways. 
 The miserable Ba-Ganda, who have in the Nineteenth century 
 not risen above the lowest round of the intellectual or spiritual 
 ladder, whose ancestors have left no material, or Spiritual, 
 legacies to Mankind, who, if sentiment be placed aside, with 
 the exception of their being the unconscious possessors of 
 immortal Souls, are little better than the beasts that perish ; 
 what are they in comparison with the men of ancient time, 
 who lived before the great Anno Domini, and on whom the 
 shadow of the Cross fell in the Past, as well as it fell on us in 
 the Future ? The Gospel- Message is the end, the desire, and 
 the great reward, of all who will receive it. 
 
( 481 ) 
 
 Uale. 
 
 Io ripenso sovente 
 
 Le amene piagge, O Nice, 
 Dov6 vivea felice, 
 
 Quando viv6a con Te. 
 
 Listen, my Heavenly Muse ; to thee I bring 
 My latest offering from thy sacred spring .: 
 In age's lateness cast me not away, 
 Thou, who hast lived with me for many a day ; 
 For more than sixty years, who on the throne 
 Of my poor heart hast sate, and sits alone. 
 Whether in Indian solitary rides 
 Far from my kinsfolk, and all friends besides ; 
 In midnight-musing by the moonlit sea, 
 When thoughts fly off from earth to Heaven and Thee ; 
 Whether midst strife of men, on bed of pain, 
 Thou hast to me been my unequalled gain. 
 For I have lived two lives, and do not know. 
 Which was the real, and which the outward show : 
 One striving to work out Heaven's wise decree 
 In this short life, and one alone with Thee. 
 To Thee alone my secrets have I told : 
 My aspirations I to Thee unfold : 
 Blessing my board, my desk, Thy presence seems 
 To shed a glory o'er my peaceful dreams. 
 As to Odysseus in his wanderings wide 
 Ath6ne" deigned to be his constant guide, 
 So in my wanderings, and all journeys past, 
 Thou wert my ancient friend from first to last : 
 Whether my thoughts go back to classic lore, 
 Or to my weary tasks on India's shore ; 
 Whether I gather gold in Orient mine, 
 Or chant aloud some Persian ode divine, 
 Or cull romantically in idle hour 
 Of every clime and every time the flower, 
 
 3' 
 
( 482 ) 
 
 Ope treasures of the past with daring hand, 
 
 Or raise the veil of future Fairy-Land. 
 
 With Thee I 've listened, while the Brahmins pray, 
 
 Or holy Buddha shows his " Noble Way " ; 
 
 Or where the proud Mahometans in line 
 
 Offer their daily prayers to Power Divine. 
 
 With Thee through History's Chart a line I 've drawn 
 
 Up to the dawning of Creation's morn ; 
 
 And Thou the centre of each joy hast been, 
 
 Charm of each place, and Genius of each scene, 
 
 Wakening the memory, opening wide the door 
 
 Of thoughts heaped up in Eton's sacred store, 
 
 When first I wooed Thee, and first found Thee kind, 
 
 Thoughtless of cares and woes, that shake mankind. 
 
 Thy sympathetic whisper in my dream 
 
 Recalls fresh garlands plucked by Ganges' stream. 
 
 In stately form thou hast stood by my chair, 
 
 Or in my Indian garden's cool parterre ; 
 
 Of city crowds amidst the ceaseless din 
 
 Thy still small voice has cheered my heart within. 
 
 Oh ! let the ignorant crowd in hope divine, 
 
 Light holy lamps before their favourite shrine ; 
 
 But let me be Thy faithful devotee, 
 
 My loving heart burn like a lamp to Thee. 
 
 Now at the age of three- score ten and five 
 Alone with Thee to live I hope, and strive : 
 Thee, whom I loved in boyhood's happy hours, 
 To Thee devoting my unfolding powers ; 
 Thee, whom I loved in manhood's full career, 
 Passing the love of wife, or children dear : 
 Words taught by Thee with heavenly hope still glow ; 
 Thou whispered comfort in the hour of woe : 
 While other powers decay, Thou dost not wane ; 
 Alone with Thee I feel quite young again. 
 When earthly honours like a shadow passed, 
 I clasped Thee to my breast, my own at last. 
 And as I older grew, my own dear Muse 
 Taught me new hopes, and new desires, to choose : 
 As by our works alone we shall be known, 
 We must not live to please ourselves alone : 
 For life's short span is lent for Toil, and then 
 Love to our God, Love to our Fellow-men. 
 When hundreds fell around on battle-field, 
 Thou o'er my head did'st spread thy gracious shield ; 
 And when in Peace the fell assassin's blow 
 My Chief, and my Subordinate, struck low, 
 I stood unharmed : and so it seems to me, 
 Serving my fellow-creatures I serve Thee. 
 
( 483 ) 
 
 The gusts of appetite, the clouds of care, 
 No longer now my thoughts with Thee shall share : 
 I feel Thee standing by me, Fairest Flower, 
 Blooming in sweetest Youth's eternal power : 
 I feel Thee guide my pen, while I rehearse 
 To Thee my efforts, now in prose, now verse. 
 Though fickle fortune never smiled on me, 
 What would my life have been, if 'reft of Thee ? 
 I know no change : Thou hast o'er me a spell ; 
 I cannot, dearest Muse, bid Thee Farewell. 
 
 Scarce had I written this : the echoes bring 
 The last vibration of a broken string ; 
 While in myself I feel a fibre part, 
 As if the wrench asunder of a heart. 
 With Thee in youth my earthly path I've trod ; 
 With Thee in age my soul mounts up to God, 
 Seeking my Saviour ; feeling in my heart 
 That Thou, my Muse, the Holy Spirit art. 
 Illuminate my vision : I can see 
 In every age no other Power but Thee : 
 In every clime through Thee good men adored 
 Brahma, or Baal, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord : 
 Inspired by Thee the Magi saw afar 
 In the East rising the Bethlehem Star : 
 Ages and generations still proclaim 
 The same great Father with a different name. 
 Thou o'er Creation's waters once did move, 
 Emblem of order, Providence, and Love : 
 Thou satest on men's heads in fiery tongue, 
 When the new Gospel into life outsprung : 
 My eyes now open, and I know full well 
 In hearts of man the Spirit deigns to dwell. 
 Poor Human Reason many roads may see, 
 Which lead to Heaven, but all verge in Thee. 
 When I look back on all my devious ways, 
 No thoughts I find but those of Thanks and Praise. 
 
 London, February 24, i8g6. 
 
( 485 ) 
 
 ALPHABETICAL ORDER OF CHAPTERS, 
 SECTIONS, AND SUB-SECTIONS. 
 
 Cap. 
 
 IV 
 
 II 
 
 III 
 
 IV 
 IV 
 
 IV 
 
 III 
 III 
 
 IV 
 
 II 
 
 Section, 
 
 A 
 E 
 H 
 E 
 
 E 
 
 Sub- 
 Section. 
 
 Headlines of Subject. 
 
 i Adolescence of a Native Church 
 
 — " Africa Redi viva" ... 
 
 2 African Missions, Difficulties of 
 
 4 Agencies and Methods 
 
 2 All-round view of the Movement at the close 
 the Nineteenth century 
 E 5« Animistic conceptions dying out 
 E — Arm of the Flesh 
 
 E 3 Barbarous Sovereigns, Relation to 
 
 E 5<z Book-Religions dying out 
 
 B — Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods 
 
 of 
 
 Page 
 
 357 
 129 
 
 336 
 
 447 
 
 438 
 456 
 218 
 
 247 
 
 456 
 
 82 
 
 III 
 IV 
 
 III 
 
 III 
 
 II 
 
 IV 
 
 I 
 
 IV 
 
 III 
 
 III 
 
 II 
 
 III 
 
 III 
 
 IV 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 II 
 
 IV 
 
 G t— Caste 
 
 E 7 Christian Truth and Practice exposed to new 
 
 tests ... ... ... ... 
 
 D 2 Civil Power, Extent of right to protection by... 
 
 A 3 Civilization without the Gospel is profitless ... 
 
 C 3 Committee, Admission of Women as members 
 
 of 
 
 D 1 Committee-room 
 
 C — Congress of London, 1888 
 
 C — Converts, their trials 
 
 H 1 Difficulties of Missions, General 
 
 D — Duties and Rights of the Evangelist 
 
 A 3 Duty in the hour of Peril 
 
 D i Duty of a Missionary Society 
 
 E 
 E 
 
 A 
 A 
 D 
 
 2 European Power, Relation to 
 8 Exclusion of Missionaries 
 
 Female Evangelist 
 
 2 Hero and Heroic Missionary Society 
 
 i Heroes of Africa 
 
 — Home-organization 
 
 291 
 
 466 
 216 
 174 
 
 106 
 421 
 
 3° 
 412 
 
 319 
 208 
 
 77 
 208 
 
 233 
 470 
 
 96 
 
 54 
 
 45 
 
 421 
 
( 486 ) 
 
 Sub- 
 Cap. Section. Section. Headlines of Subject. Page 
 
 II A — Ideal Missionary 45 
 
 III — — Incidents and Dangers ... 151 
 
 II C 6 India : work of Roman Catholic Sisters ... 112 
 
 I D — Language and Religious Ins.inct 39 
 
 II C 2 Ministry of Women ... ... 102 
 
 III C — Missions and Science 197 
 
 I — — Motives and Duty ... ... I 
 
 IV B 5 National Festival 404 
 
 IV A — Native Episcopate 3157 
 
 IV B 1 Native Place of Worship 384 
 
 II D — Native Teacher 114 
 
 IV E lb New Religious conceptions 456 
 
 IV E 6 Non-Christian races, Enlarged capacity of ... 460 
 
 III B 1 Non-Christian world, Absence of sympathy with 187 
 
 IV D 2 Parting of Missionaries 426 
 
 IV E 1 Philosophy of Missions 434 
 
 III B 2 Plea for the poor non-Christian world ... 194 
 
 III F — Polygamy 263 
 
 IV E 3 Progress of Christianity certain, if it be real... 442 
 IV E — Prospects of the Future 434 
 
 II I I — Religions of the Ancient World 342 
 
 IV — — Results 357 
 
 II C 5 Romish Church, Woman's work no 
 
 IV B 3 School, Mission 394 
 
 I A — Self-Sacrifice, Gift of 1 
 
 II — — Servants of the Lord 45 
 
 III E 1 Toleration, Religious ... ... 218 
 
 IV B 2 Village, Native Christian 391 
 
 IV B 4 Village, Native non-Christian 397 
 
 IV D 2 Welcome home of Missionaries 426 
 
 III A 1 Wish expressed too late 151 
 
 II C 4 Women, what they have received from the 
 
 Bible and what service they can render ... 108 
 
 II C — Women, Work of 96 
 
 III A 2 Word to those, who do not recognize the 
 
 Divinely inspired Duty of Evangelization ... 158 
 
 III A — Worldly obstructions ... 151 
 
 I B — Youth of Great Britain, Duty of 15 
 
{ W ) 
 
 ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF NAMES 
 AND SUBJECTS. 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 Detail of Points of View, xiii. 
 Features of the Enterprize, xii. 
 Greatest Enterprize in the world, xi. 
 Kingdom of Satan, a misapplied 
 
 term, xiii. 
 Message to convey, xvi. 
 Methods, Importance of, xiv. 
 Missionary Associations, Reform of, 
 
 ix. 
 New Religious conceptions, xv. 
 Nothing seen but Christ, x. 
 Philosophy of Missions, xvi. 
 Pity and Love for poor non-Christians, 
 
 x. 
 Religions, Ancient, of the world, xiv. 
 Religions, Common features of all, xv. 
 Religious and Secular Associations, 
 
 xvii. 
 Thanks received from unknown 
 
 persons, xi. 
 Translations of Holy Scripture, xv. 
 Women, Service of, xvii. 
 
 Abuse of non-Christians, 369, 468. 
 
 Abyssinian Church, 361. 
 
 Adam, 175. 
 
 Adrian, Emperor, 161. 
 
 Africa, 42, 43, 129, 193, 336. 
 
 Africa, Mission-difficulties, 33,7. 
 
 Africa, West, Churches, 367. 
 
 'Ayiirri, 453. 
 
 Age of the world, 330. 
 
 Agnostics, 184. 
 
 Ahmed AH, Sayid, 331. 
 
 Aidan, 13, 31, 65, 90. 
 
 Alban, Missionary, 79. 
 
 Albocracy, Evil of, 324, 363, 379. 
 
 Altruism, 2, 7, 453. 
 
 American Mission, 46, 48, 478. 
 
 Ancestral Property Law, 413, 418. 
 
 Anglican Church, 437, 450. 
 
 Anglo-Indian, Duty of, 423. 
 
 Animism, 339, 345, 456. 
 
 Animistic conceptions, 479. 
 
 Anna the Prophetess, 105. 
 
 Anti-Christ Society, 464. 
 
 Anti-Opium Society, 414. 
 
 Antoninus Pius, 161, 176. 
 
 Apollos, 328. 
 
 Arabic School-Inspector, 27. 
 
 Archaeology, 200. 
 
 Aria-Somaj, 414. 
 
 Aristotle, 445. 
 
 Aries, the Virgin Saint, 52. 
 
 Arm of the Flesh, 134, 232, 233, 330, 
 
 436, 478. 
 Arrhenius, 50. 
 Asiatic, 26. 
 
 Asoka, King, 160, 453. 
 Associated Evangelists, 93. 
 Assyria, 27. 
 Athens, 27, 288. 
 
 Augustine of Hippo, 79, 451, 466. 
 Augustus, Emperor, 171. 
 Australian Aborigines, 74, 116. 
 Avatara, 453. 
 
 B 
 
 Balliol Scholarship, 15. 
 
 Baptism at Amritsar, 228. 
 
 Baptism secret (Church of Rome), 112. 
 
 Baptist Society, 47. 
 
 Barnabas, 471. 
 
 Bethune, Missions Catholiques, 435. 
 
 Bhagavad Gita, 454. 
 
 Bhandarkar, 27. 
 
 Bible, 23, 185. 
 
 Bible-criticism, 461. 
 
 Bible taught in Schools, 228. 
 
( 488 ) 
 
 Bible-Women, 99, 109. 
 
 Bishop, Missionary, 361. 
 
 Bishop, Native, 358. 
 
 Biswas or Bhakti, 339, 451, 453. 
 
 Blackwood, Sir A.,' 235. 
 
 Board of Missions, 358, 359, 419. 
 
 Boniface, 2, 13, 31, 69, 79, 90, 129, 
 
 148, 353- 
 Book-Religions, 456. 
 Booth, General, 421. 
 Brahmanical System, 344, 347. 
 Brahmanical Worship, Influence of, 
 
 439- 
 Brahmins, 296. 
 Brahmoist, 184, 414. 
 Buddhist, 159, 344, 347, 4", 453- 
 Bushmen, 74. 
 
 Cairo, saluting sacred carpet, 229. 
 Cannibalism, 189. 
 Carey, 164. 
 
 Caroline islands, American Mission, 
 
 239- 
 
 Caste, 441. 
 
 Census of India, 295, 471, 47 2 - 
 
 Chapel, 168. 
 
 Chartered Company, 1 79. 
 
 Chauvinistic Missions, 437. 
 
 China, 221, 239. 
 
 Chinaman, 27. 
 
 Christianity, 342, 350, 441, 443. 
 
 Christians, Ignorance of, 461. 
 
 Church, the word a snare, 450. 
 
 Cicero, 162, 466. 
 
 Civil Law, Breach of, 246. 
 
 Civilization, 160, 181, 185, 195. 
 
 Clement, 174. 
 
 Columba, 13, 31, 65, 90, 129, 166. 
 
 Colurribanus, 2, 13, 31, 65, 90, 129, 
 
 131, 148. 
 Comber, 48. 
 Coming man, The, in India, 451, 
 
 452. 
 Commensality, 294, 306, 309, 441. 
 Commentary, Language is the best, 
 
 45 2 - 
 Commerce of thought, 44. 
 Committee-room, 16, 17, 360, 421. 
 Committees of different kinds, 423, 
 
 424. 
 Comparative Religion, 27, 436. 
 Confucianism, 344, 349. 
 Congress at Vienna, 23, 27. 
 Consul bullying a Fasha, 245. 
 Continental Missions, 48. 
 
 Conversion : what is it? 417, 419. 
 Covenants, Duration of the two, 435. 
 Cranmer, 80. 
 Creator, The wonderful patience of, 
 
 444. 
 Cremation of dead, 468. 
 Crowther, Dandeson, 48, 162, 379, 
 
 382. 
 Crowther, Samuel, 48, 162, 227, 367, 
 
 370, 379, 430. 
 " Curagoa," Cruise of the, 261. 
 Custody of Children, 34, 416. 
 Customs, Old-world, 441, 443. 
 Cyprian, 79, 450. 
 
 D 
 
 Dahle, Dr., 188. 
 
 Dalton, General, 315. 
 
 Danes, 30. 
 
 Darwin, 16, 162. 
 
 Daughter-killing, 414, 434. 
 
 Dayananda, 331. 
 
 Death, 22. 
 
 Defensive Warfare, 253. 
 
 Deities, Pagan, 459. 
 
 Denominations of Christians in India, 
 
 9, 472. 
 Dharma, Religious Caste, 316. 
 Diana of the Ephesians, 288. 
 " Domine, quo vadis ? " 79. 
 Duty, Our bounden, 21, 396, 450. 
 
 E 
 
 East India Company, 216. 
 Education, Secular, 26, 167, ,195, 205, 
 
 246, 322. 
 Egoism, 333, 453. 
 Egypt, 27. 
 
 Egyptian conceptions, 453. 
 Ellinwood, Dr., 36, 38, 189. 
 "EAiris, 329. 
 
 English Caste, 313, 314. 
 Episcopacy, 358, 381. 
 Erasmus, 449. 
 Essays, four omitted, 477. 
 Ethnology, 202. 
 Eton Days, 23. 
 Euphemism, 332, 333. 
 European and Eurasian Christians, 
 
 474- 
 European Wives in Heathen countries, 
 
 320. 
 Evangelization, 6. 
 Exeter Hall, 32, 35, 431. 
 Experts, Council of, Necessity for, 447. 
 
( 489 ) 
 
 Fads, Mischief of, 327, 414. 
 
 Faith, 329. 
 
 Faith-healing, 146. 
 
 Faith-Missions, 436. 
 
 Fallen Churches, 361. 
 
 Fate Island, 120. 
 
 Female Evangelist, Picture of, 99. 
 
 Female, Native, 135. 
 
 Festival, National, 404. 
 
 Fleming, Canon, 38. 
 
 Free-thinker, 158. 
 
 French, Bishop, 5. 
 
 French Language in French Colonies, 
 
 213. 237. 
 French Romanist Missionaries, 212, 
 
 213. 
 Fung Chu, 244. 
 Future State, 244. 
 
 G 
 
 Gall, Missionary, 13, 131. 
 
 Gardiner, 54- 
 
 Geographical Science, 198. 
 
 Geology, 199. 
 
 German Colonies, 238. 
 
 German Missions, 214. 
 
 Gobat, Bishop, 430. 
 
 God loved the whole world, 438, 452, 
 
 478, 480. 
 God's Name, Liberties taken with, 6, 
 
 437, 438- . 
 Golaz, Missionary, 50. 
 Gordon of Khartum, 79, 229. 
 Gospel and the Sword, 251. 
 Greenlander, 181. 
 
 H 
 
 Hannington, Bishop, 49, 51, 210, 
 
 211. 
 
 Harrison, Religion of Humanity, 
 
 450. 
 Heart turning to God, 26. 
 Heathen man, State of, 351. 
 Heavenly Host, Worship of, 355. 
 Hebrews, 185, 354, 441. 
 Helot Class, 298. 
 Hill, 52. 
 Hinderer, Rev. Mr. and Mrs., 49, 
 
 449- ... 
 Hindu inquirer, his standpoint, 445. 
 History, Appeal to, 328. 
 Hobhouse, Sir A., 291. 
 Holiness, 431. 
 
 Hongo, 251. 
 
 Hospital like a fortress in Turkey, 246. 
 
 Human fences of Denomination, 63, 
 
 455- 
 Hydra-headed Christianity, 435. 
 Hypatia, 454. 
 
 I 
 
 Idols, Exhibition of, 229. 
 
 Idols in China destroyed, 226. 
 
 Ignatius, 80. 
 
 Ignorance inexcusable, 155. 
 
 Ignorance of Hebrews, 460, 461. 
 
 Iman or Faith, 329. 
 
 Incarnation, Hindu, 407, 440, 451, 
 
 453, 454- 
 Inch rule, 437, 480. 
 Independent Church, 369, 376. 
 India, 27, 223, 413, 461. 
 India, capacity of people, 366, 379. 
 India, South, Churches, 364. 
 Individual Conversions, 31. 
 Influence, Sphere of, 259. 
 Islam, 453, 456. 
 
 Jainism, 344, 347. 
 
 Japan, 222. 
 
 John, the Apostle, 452. 
 
 Johnson, Archdeacon Henry, 48, 
 
 162, 382. 
 Johnson, Hon. and Rev. James, of 
 
 Lagos, Pastor, 48, 162, 379, 382. 
 Johnson, Rev., of Nyasa, Missionary, 
 
 258. 
 Johnson, Rev. William, of Sierra 
 
 Leone, Missionary, 167. 
 Johnston, Vice-Consul, 162, 174. 
 Johnston, Rev. James, 36. 
 Judaism, 344, 349. 
 Judson, Missionary, 164. 
 Justin Martyr, 355. 
 Juvenal, 161. 
 yuvenlus mundi has passed away, 
 
 479- 
 
 K 
 
 Kafir, Siah-Posh of Afghanistan, 231. 
 
 Keble, 453. 
 
 Keshab Chandra, 331. 
 
 Kishnagar, Caste trouble, 314. 
 
 Kong-Fu-Tsee, 453. 
 
 Kongo tribes, 74. 
 
 Krapf, Dr., 47. 
 
 Krishna, 454. 
 
 Kshatriya, 297. 
 
( 490 ) 
 
 Language-making faculty, 39, 194, 
 
 436. 
 Languages, 23, 35, 167, 452, 466, 
 
 467. 
 Laurie, Dr., Ely Volume, 196. 
 Lavigerie, Cardinal, 47. 
 Legion of Honour, 237. 
 Leisure, Guilty, 155. 
 Lepers, Burying alive, 414, 435. 
 Letter to Secretary of Missionary 
 
 Society on leaving, 421. 
 Lightfoot, Bishop, 50. 
 Liquor, 133,, 146, 147, 179, 185, 339. 
 Literature, Missionary, 200. 
 Livingstone, 25, 46, 164. 
 London Missionary Society, 47, 122. 
 Lord, Our, His parting injunction, 19. 
 
 M 
 
 Mackay, Missionary, 52, 137. 
 Madagascar, 188. 
 
 Mahomet, Relics of, at Lahore, 145. 
 Mahometan, 159, 176, 290, 329, 337, 
 
 342, 411, 412,414. 456- 
 Manu, Laws of, 292. 
 Manufactures, English, 400. 
 Maples, Bishop, 52. 
 Marriage, 305, 309, 339, 415, 441. 
 Marriage, Native Christian, 121. 
 Marsden, Samuel, 161. 
 Martyn, Henry, 25. 
 Martyr, real meaning, 142. 
 Maya or Delusion, 451. 
 McCall, Missionary, 50, 149. 
 McCarthy, Missionary, 249. 
 Means, Dr., 197. 
 Medical, 31. 
 Melanesia, 57, 167. 
 Mesopotamian conception, 453. 
 Messalina, 176. 
 Metempsychosis, 451. 
 Methods, 17, 132, 435, 478. 
 Mikronesia, 116. 
 Miracles, 144, 173. 
 Mission-Church, 411. 
 Missionary, 17, 18, 24, 28, 29, 31, 
 
 37, 41, 45. S3. 188, 198, 205, 231, 
 
 3°3. 389- 
 Missionary Conference, Lahore, 416. 
 Missionary Cry, 148. 
 Missionary Stations, Value of, 142. 
 Missions, 32, 132, 164. 
 Moffat, Missionary, 46, 181. 
 
 Moharram, 411. 
 Monfllatrist, 352. 
 Montefiore, Claude, 331. 
 Moravians, 19, 25, 30, 46, 54, 62, 
 
 166. 
 Mormons, 158, 193, 412, 414, 415. 
 Morrison, Missionary, 168. 
 Moses, Law of, 480. 
 Movement, Missionary, 18, 161, 458, 
 
 459,478- 
 Muir, Sir William, 413. 
 Mutus Homo, 40. 
 
 N 
 
 Narrowness of Ecclesiastical vision, 
 
 449- 
 National Church, 437. 
 Native Church, 313, 316, 325, 362, 
 
 448, 474- 
 Nature-Worship, 196. 
 Nazareth Mission, Palestine, 390. 
 Nehemiah, Father Goreh, 313, 317. 
 Neo-Buddhism, 420. 
 Neo-Platonism, 445. 
 New Guinea, 125. 
 New light on Truth from each age, 
 
 439- 
 New Religious beliefs, 418, 420, 437, 
 
 4S 6 ,4S7,470. 
 Newton, John, Missionary, 247. 
 Nicholas, Pope, his orders, 143. 
 Niger Bishopric, 367. 
 Niger Chartered Company, 206. 
 Niger Pastorate, Secession of, 368. 
 Niggardliness, Culpable, 156. 
 Non-Christian population increasing, 
 
 320. 
 North American Indians, 103. 
 Nyasa, Lake, 255. 
 
 O 
 
 Object-lesson presented by Christians, 
 
 435- 
 " Ocean of Love, " 453. 
 Oceania, 115. 
 Olivet, Mount, 28. 
 Opium-Trade, 133. 
 Opportunity may be lost, 139. 
 Outcastes, rules as to dress, 416. 
 
 Pagan influence on Christian worship, 
 
 440, 479. 
 Panjab Salt Mines, 75. 
 
( 491 ) 
 
 Parable of Sheep and Goats, 352. 
 Parker, .Bishop, 52. 
 Parsi Christian Association, 473, 474. 
 Past and Future, Distinction between, 
 
 435- 
 Patagonia, 56. 
 Patrick of Ireland, 89. 
 Paul, the Apostle, 65, 72, 102, 108, 
 
 168, 187, 189, 317, 324, 330, 449, 
 
 451, 452, 453, 459, 471. 
 Pentecostal gift of tongues, 146. 
 Periodicals, Missionary, 133. 
 Perkins, Rev. H., 420. 
 Persia, 224, 413. 
 Peter, the Apostle, 79. 
 Philanthropy, 205. 
 
 Philosophy of Missions, 434, 436, 477. 
 Pierson, Dr., 35. 
 Pinkerton, Missionary, 50. 
 Ultrra, Faith, 453. 
 Plato, 26, 162, 324, 328, 466. 
 Plymouth Brothers, 478. 
 Polycarp, 79. 
 Polygamy, Polygyny, Polyandry, 264, 
 
 265, 266, 267, 339, 412. 
 Polynesia, 171. 
 Ponape, 214. 
 
 Populations, Barbarous, 24. 
 Prastorius, 50. 
 Prayer, 17, 152, 173. 
 Prema Sagara, 453. 
 Priesjcraft, 195. 
 Printing-press, 204, 441. 
 Proclamation of Queen in India, 418. 
 Progress of the Nineteenth century ■ 
 
 seven points, 438. 
 Proselytism, 475. 
 Pythagoras, 479. 
 
 R 
 
 Rama, 405, 407, 408. 
 
 Ramayana, 406, 454. 
 
 Rappart, Dr., of Switzerland, 38. 
 
 Rebman, Missionary, 47. 
 
 Red Indian, 178, 179, 181. 
 
 Religions, Ancient, 437. 
 
 Religious change, sad struggle, 226, 
 
 417. 
 Religious conceptions, 203, 322, 353. 
 Religious Instinct, 39, 194, 195. 
 Renegades in Turkey, 220, 413. 
 Rio Pongas Mission, 341. 
 Robertson, Church History, 444. 
 Romish Missionaries, 53, 148, 169, 
 
 363, 381, 382. 
 Russia, 219. 
 
 Sacred Books of Heathen, 25, 176, 
 
 186, 329. 
 Saker, Missionary, 48, 164. 
 Samoa, 118. 
 
 Sargent, Bishop, 165, 430. 
 Savage island, 1 18. 
 Sawyer, Mr., of Sierra Leone, 273, 
 
 284, 290. 
 Schmidt, Moravian Missionary, 18 1. 
 Science, 22, 41. 
 Scotch Missions, 46, 122. 
 Scott-Holland, Canon, 321. 
 Sculptor, Hindu, 441. 
 Sectarians, Hindu, 418. 
 Self-Sacrifice, I, 72, 73. 
 Selwyn, Bishop, 25, 123. 
 Selwyn, Bishop (the younger), 124. 
 Seneca, 161. 
 Servetus, 440. 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 242. 
 Sharkey, Missionary, 8. 
 Shintoism, 344, 349. 
 Ships, Missionary, 115, 124. 
 Sierra Leone, 364. 
 Skinner, Colonel, 229. 
 Smythies, Bishop, 339. 
 Socrates, 162, 479. 
 Spirits, 26. 
 St. Sophia, Church at Constantinople, 
 
 225. 
 Stanley, Henry, 162. 
 State-Support, 34. 
 Steere, Bishop, 52, 68, 164. 
 Stephen, the Deacon, 168. 
 Stipend of Missionary, 91. 
 Suffragan Bishop, 382. 
 Superfluity of Women, 101. 
 Sutherland, Dr., 38. 
 Swiss Missionary, ninth child, 130. 
 
 Taking off shoes in places of Worship, 
 
 239- 
 
 Taouism, 344, 349. 
 
 Taylor, Dr. , of New York, 36. 
 
 Taylor, Hudson, 37, 65. 
 
 Taylor, Bishop William, 38. 
 
 Teacher, Native, 29, 118. 
 
 Temple, Chinese, occupied by Mis- 
 sionaries, 225. 
 
 Tertullian 450. 
 
 Thakombau, 186. 
 
 Theology settled by the sword, 440, 
 469. 
 
( 492 ) 
 
 Theosophists, 158, 184, 414. 
 
 Thomason, James, 197. 
 
 Thomson, Joseph, 51, 210. 
 
 Tinnevelly Church, 365. 
 
 Titus, Emperor, 160. 
 
 Toleration, 143, 218, 352, 411, 413, 
 
 47I-. 
 
 Tonquin, 252. 
 
 Training of Missionaries, 100. 
 
 Translations of Scriptures, 29,46, 109, 
 117, 121. 
 
 Treaties, Appeal to, 16. 
 
 Triad, Hindu, 451. 
 
 Trinity, 440. 
 
 Trollope, A., 306. 
 
 Truth, Different modes of commu- 
 nicating, 439, 469. 
 
 Tucker, Bishop, 87. 
 
 Turkey, 219, 413. 
 
 Turner, Sir Charles, 420. 
 
 U 
 
 U-Ganda, 43, 137, 248, 250, 326, 
 
 471. 
 Ulfilas, Missionary, 78. 
 Ulysses, 170. 
 Unitarian, 184, 415, 420. 
 Universal Church of Christ, 437. 
 Universities Mission, 9, 47. 
 Untrained Missionaries, 436. 
 Upheaval among people of India, 
 
 460. 
 
 V 
 
 Valmiki, the Poet, 409. 
 
 Venn, Rev. H., 378. 
 
 Viceroy of India offering at a Temple, 
 
 229. 
 Visions, 146. 
 
 W. 
 
 Wakefield, Missionary, 49. 
 
 Welcome home of Missionaries, 429. 
 
 Wells, Use of, by Christians, 416. 
 
 Wesleyan Mission, 46, 122. 
 
 Westcott, Bishop, 14, 53, 377. 
 
 White Man's Religion, 418. 
 
 Widow, Remarriage of Hindu, 413. 
 
 Widow-burning, 414, 434. 
 
 Williams, John, 25, 54, 59, 115. 
 
 Williams, Missionary, 90. 
 
 Will- Worship, 131. 
 
 Wilson, Bishop Daniel, 15, 377, 450. 
 
 Wiseman, Sir W., 261. 
 
 Women, 31, 129. 
 
 Women, admission to Committees, 
 
 106. 
 Words of the Master, 479. 
 Work, not success, that sanctifies, 75. 
 World, Antiquity of, 443. 
 
 X 
 
 Xavier, 166. 
 
 Zappa, Father, 137. 
 Zoroastrianism, 344, 346, 453. 
 
( 493 ) 
 
 ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF QUOTATIONS. 
 
 Adamson, Rev. Mr., 313. 
 Aitchison, Sir C, 372. 
 Aitken, Hay, 11. 
 Anson, Bishop, 5. 
 Aratus, 230. 
 Aristotle, 156. 
 Arnot, 81. 
 Augustine of Hippo, 444. 
 
 B 
 
 Baptist Association, Bow, 9. 
 Baptist Rules, Serampur, 7. 
 Barton, Rev. J., 375. 
 Ba-Suto Missionaries (French), 237, 
 
 326. 
 Bereavements, Effect of, 442. 
 Booth, General, 4. 
 Bower, Dr., Madras, 311. 
 Brainerd, n. 
 
 Bullock, Rev., Sec. to S. P. G., 311. 
 Butler, Dean of Lincoln, 4. 
 
 Calcutta, Bishop of, 3. 
 Cambridge Mission, 84. 
 Campbell, Sir G., 305. 
 Canterbury, Archbishop of (Dr. 
 
 Benson), 332, 353, 373, 425, 435- 
 Carey, 92. 
 Carter, Sir G., 274. 
 Chalmers, Dr., 179. 
 Chinese Missionaries, 12. 
 Chowry Muthu, 455. 
 Clarke, Robert, 374. 
 Clement, 355. 
 Clifford, Rev. A., 93. 
 " Clouds on the Horizon,'' 456. 
 Congregationalist view, 362. 
 Conversion, 10, 444. 
 Crosse, Dr., 258. 
 Cust, R. N., 454. 
 
 D 
 
 Driver, Prof., 355. 
 Dubois, Abbe, 477. 
 Dykes, Rev. Oswald, 355. 
 
 Eastman, Rev. A. F. F., 334. 
 Education, Secular, 464, 465. 
 Elliot, Sir C, 445. 
 
 Frere, Sir Bartle, 84, 460. 
 
 G 
 
 Gardiner, 56. 
 Gell, Bishop, 311. 
 Gladstone, W. E., 442. 
 Goblet d'Alviella, 440. 
 Goldsmid, Sir F., 306. 
 Gordon, General, 5. 
 Gordon- Cumming, Miss, 180. 
 Grant, Dr. A., Bampton Lecture, 450. 
 Green, " English People," 449. 
 
 H 
 
 Hatch, Dr., 373, 440, 465. 
 Havelock, 80. 
 Hebrews, Cap. II, 46. 
 Hickey, Rev. Mr., 313. 
 Horace, 22, 114, 171. 
 Hume, 178. 
 Hunter, Sir W., 5, 83. 
 
 J 
 
 Japan, Bishop of, 373, 467, 475. 
 
 John, Rev. S., 462. 
 
 Johnston, Consul-General, 7, 183. 
 
( 494 ) 
 
 Lefroy, Mr., Missionary, 448, 464. 
 
 Lightfopt, Bishop, 374. 
 
 Liverpool Missionary Conference, 
 
 448. 
 Livingstone, 6, 334/ 
 London Missionary Society, 64. 
 
 M 
 
 Maclear, Dr., 350. 
 
 Maine, Sir H., 228, 310. 
 
 Manning, Cardinal, 146. 
 
 Martin of Tours, 459. 
 
 Martyn, Henry, 12. . 
 
 Missionary, 464. 
 
 Missionary to the Ba-Ganda, 437, 471. 
 
 Missionary Periodical, 458. 
 
 Missions Catholiques, 312. 
 
 Mitchell, Archdeacon, 457, 458. 
 
 Moule, Handley, 334, 451. 
 
 Muirhead, Dr., 7. 
 
 Murdoch, Dr., 467, 468. 
 
 N 
 Native Church, 474. 
 
 O 
 Origen, "De Principiis, '' 440. 
 
 P 
 
 Paton, Missionary, 1. 
 Patteson, Missionary, 170, 460. 
 Paul, the Apostle, 193, 352. 
 Pierson, Dr., 3, 35. 
 Pressense, Dr., 354. 
 Prince Kung of China, 327. 
 Propagation of Gospel Society's Re- 
 port, 371. 
 
 R 
 
 Race-peculiarities, 368. 
 Renan, 195. 
 Rig- Veda, 295. 
 Romish Missionaries, 9. 
 
 Salisbury, Marquess of, 256, 259. 
 
 Sargent, Bishop, 314. 
 
 Selwyn, Bishop, 10. 
 
 Smith, G., "Conversion of India, ' 
 
 478. 
 Stoughton, Dr., 374. 
 
 Tennyson, 115. 
 Theognis, 230. 
 Times, of London, 469. 
 Turkestan Gazette, 470. 
 
 U 
 Universities Mission, 278. 
 
 Vaughan, Cardinal, 324. 
 
 W 
 
 Welldon, Dr., 10. 
 
 Westcott, Bishop, 7, 172, 350, 355, 
 
 469. 
 Wilkinson, Rev., of Mildmay, 21. 
 Williams, John, 442. 
 Wilson, Bishop Daniel, of Calcutta, 
 
 310. 
 Wilson, Archdeacon, 335. 
 Winchester, Bishop Daniel of, 353. 
 "Wisdom of Solomon," 331. 
 Wiseman, Cardinal, 442. 
 Wood, Rev. Buckley, 273, 282. 
 Wood, Mr., Kashmir, 462. 
 
 Yariba-land, Report, 448. 
 
 York, Archbishop of (Dr. Maclagan), 
 
 373- 
 York, Archbishop of (Dr. Thomson), 
 456. 
 
 PRINTED BV STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS, HERTFORD.