tihvaxy of t:he t:heolo0ical ^tminavy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 Presented by the 
 Green Fund 1879 
 
 BV 2570 .D87 1839 
 Duff, Alexander. 
 Missions the chief end of 
 the Christian Church 
 
^P^ynn^ 2 <^ a-r^-'/i/L^r f"^ 
 
 
 y^^ OF ?m^ 
 
 MISSIONS; THE CHIEK>W^D 
 
 JUL 7 19: 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHURCni'^^^^lli^^^ 
 
 THE QUALIFICATIONS, DUTIES, AND TRIALS, 
 OF AN INDIAN MISSIONARY : 
 
 BEING 
 
 THE SUBSTANCE OF SERVICES HELD AT THE ORDINATION 
 
 OF 
 
 THE REV. THOMAS SMITH, 
 
 AS ONE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND'S MISSIONARIES TO INDIA. 
 
 REV. ALEXANDER h)UFF, D. D., 
 
 CHURCH OF SCOTLAND MISSION, CALCUTTA. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 
 JOHN JOHNSTONE, HUNTER SQUARE, 
 
 SUCCESSOR TO WAOGH AND INNES ; 
 
 WHITTAKER & CO., AND NISBET & CO., LONDON. 
 
 MDCCCXXXIX. 
 
Printed by J. Johnstone, 104, High Street, Edinburgh 
 
STUDENTS OF DIVINITY 
 
 SBIiTiits^t^iitfieg ®f ^t fli^i^eto^, €&te|0^, fll^r^c-en, aw^ 
 
 WITH MANY OF WHOM THE AUTHOR HAS ENJOYED 
 MUCH GENIAL CONVERSE, 
 
 THE FOLLOWING PUBLICATION 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 WITH EARNEST PRAYER FOR THE DIV^INE BLESSING 
 
 ON ALL THEIR THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 
 
 AND 
 
 MISSIONARY INQUIRIES. 
 
Various reasons, witli Avhich it is needless to trouble 
 the reader, have necessitated the publication of the 
 following Discourse and Address. 
 
 The Discourse is given, as nearly as possible, in the 
 very form in which it was publicly delivered. The 
 Charge and Address, on account of the length to 
 which they extended, were greatly abridged in the 
 delivery. They now appear without curtailment, 
 as originally prepared. The sole design of both was 
 utilitij. When, at the suggestion and request of the 
 respected Convener of the General Assembly's Foreign 
 Mission Committee, the author consented to preside 
 at the ordination of a new Missionary to India, he felt 
 himself called upon to pen, as it were, a jjlain letter of 
 instructions^ which might prove really useful to a 
 young and inexperienced, but beloved, brother. And 
 if he has, in any measure, succeeded in conveying 
 some general conception of the qualifications, duties, 
 trials, and encouragements, not of a missionary at 
 large, but of one sent to occupy a specific sphere 
 in the heathen metropolis of British India^ all that 
 he contemplated will have been fully, though it may 
 be, feebly accomplished. 
 
 At the end of the concluding Address, the author 
 endeavoured to point out the facility with which 
 many a congregation might support a missionary to 
 the heathen, — while he somewhat expatiated on a few 
 
VI 
 
 of the manifold advantages that must accrue from the 
 adoption of such a plan. And he is truly rejoiced 
 to learn that in more instances than one, the sugges- 
 tion is likely to take practical effect. The Lord, in 
 mercy, grant that such a blessed consummation may 
 be speedily realized. 
 
 The proposed plan is the simplest imaginable. 
 From the field of heathenism there is a loud cry for 
 more labourers. At home, one, two, or more, are spe- 
 cially qualified, and eagerly desirous to go ; but the 
 Mission Committee are painfully compelled to declare, 
 that they have not the means of sending them. Well, 
 a congi'egation steps forward, and at once removes the 
 difficulty, by saying,- — Choose you a right man, and 
 we shall support him. On this, the Committee are 
 encouraged to select one duly qualified. When ap- 
 pointed to his new office, he appears in the midst of 
 the congregation ; he makes the personal acquaintance 
 of most of its members ; and henceforward their sym- 
 pathies and affections are, in a manner, individuahzed 
 and concentrated. Their pra;fers still continue to 
 ascend for missions in general; but expand, with 
 peculiar warmth and delight when offered in behalf 
 of their personal missionary friend. — While his se- 
 parate communications to them, from the field of 
 action, cannot fail vividly to call forth the purest and 
 holiest sensibilities of the renewed nature. 
 
 Parish of Moulin, Perthshire, 
 March 29, 1839. 
 
DISCOuHW&c. 
 
 "" God be merciful unto us, and bless us ; and cause his 
 face to shine upon us. That thy way may be known 
 upon earth, thy saving health among all nations." — 
 PsAL. Ixvii. 1—2. 
 
 The Royal Psalmist, in the spirit of inspiration, per- 
 sonating the Church of the redeemed in every age, 
 and more especially under its last and most perfect 
 dispensation, here offers up a sublime prayer for its 
 inward prosperity, and outward universal extension. 
 All is in the order of nature and of grace. Knowing 
 full well that he who has not obtained mercy from 
 the Lord, cannot be a fit bearer of it to others, — that 
 he who has obtained no blessings himself, can dis- 
 pense none, — that he who enjoys no light, can com- 
 municate none, — he first of all, with marked and 
 beautiful propriety, begins with the supplication of 
 personal and individual blessings, — " God be merciful 
 unto us," forgiving and pardoning all our sins : " and 
 bless us," conferring every gift and every grace really 
 needful for time and eternity : " and lift up the light 
 cf thy countenance upon us," cheering us with the 
 smile of reconcihation and love, and causing the Sun 
 
4 DISCOURSE. 
 
 of Riditeousness to arise on our darkened souls with 
 healing in his beams. 
 
 But does the Psalmist stop here ? Does he for a 
 moment intend that he and his fellow-worshippers, 
 as representatives of the visible Church of the living 
 God, should absorb all the mercy, all the blessing, 
 and all the liffht of Jehovah's countenance ? Oh no ! 
 Having thus fervently prayed for evangelical blessings 
 to descend upon himself, and every member of the 
 Church, he immediately superadds, in the true evan- 
 gelistic or missionary spirit, " That thy way," or, as it 
 is given in our metrical version, " Tliat so thy way 
 may be known upon earth, thy saving health among 
 all nations.'' 
 
 How significant the connection here established be- 
 tween the ohtaimnent and the distribution of evan- 
 gelical favours ! " God be merciful unto us, and bless 
 us." — Why ? only that we ourselves may be par- 
 doned and sanctified, and thereby attain to true hap- 
 piness ? No. There is another grand end in view", to 
 the accomplishment of which, our being blessed is 
 but a means. "God be merciful unto us, and bless 
 us, that so thy way may be knoAvn on earth," — that so 
 — that thus — that in this way — that by om* instru- 
 mentality — that by our being blessed, and having the 
 light of thy countenance shining upon us, — " thy 
 ^vay," — thy way of justification through the atoning 
 righteousness of the Redeemer, — thy way of sanctifi- 
 cation by his holy Spirit, — " may be made known on 
 earth, and thy saving health among all nations." 
 
DISCOURSE. 5 
 
 And then, seized with true prophetic fire, at the 
 grandeur of the divine design in reference to " all 
 nations,^' and hunied away by the magnificence of 
 the vision of the latter-day glory, does " the sweet 
 singer of Israel" break forth into heroic measures, 
 sublimer far than any ever strung on Grecian or Ro- 
 man lyre : — 
 
 " Let people praise thee, Lord ; 
 
 Let people all thee praise ; 
 Oh let the nations be glad, 
 
 And sing- for joy always. 
 Then shall the earth yield her increase, 
 
 God, our God, help us shall ; 
 God shall us bless, and of the earth 
 
 The ends shall fear Him all." 
 
 Here the two grand characteristics of the true 
 Church of God, — the evangelical, and evangelistic or 
 missionary, — are \^Titten as in a sunbeam : — the evan- 
 gelical, in the possession of all needful gifts and graces 
 out of the plenitude of the Spirit's fulness : — the 
 evangelistic, in the instant and perpetual propension 
 which that possession ought to generate and feed, in- 
 strumentally to dispense these blessings among all na- 
 tions. As if to confound lukewarm and misjudging 
 professors throughout all generations, these characteris- 
 tics are represented by the Spirit of inspiration itself, as 
 essential to the very existence and Avell-being of the 
 Church, and in their very nature inseparable. The 
 prayer of the Church, as dictated by the Divine Spirit, 
 is directed to the obtainment of blessings, not as an 
 
6 DISCOURSE. 
 
 end., merely terminating in herself., but as a means 
 towards the promotion and attainment of an ulterior 
 end of the subHmest description, — the enHghtenment 
 and conversion of all nations ! Hence it follows, that 
 wdien a church ceases to be evangehstic, it must cease 
 to be evangelical; and when it ceases to be evangeli- 
 cal, it must cease to exist as a true church of God, 
 however primitive or apostolic it may be in its out- 
 ward form and constitution ! 
 
 There is no mystery here. If, in the common affairs 
 of life, a servant besought and obtained an increased 
 portion of goods, that he might proceed to a distant 
 city or foreign nation, and lay out the whole for the 
 advancement of his master's interest ; and if, instead of 
 acting in the terms of his own requisition, and agree- 
 ably to the express design of his kind and munificent 
 employer, he chose to remain at home, and appropri- 
 ate all for his own private ends, — what judgment 
 would the world pronounce on such a man ? "Would 
 he not be condemned as an unprofitable servant, who 
 dishonestly attempted to embezzle the property of an- 
 other ? And would not the master be more than jus- 
 tified in taking away from him, even all that he had ? 
 
 Precisely similar is the position and attitude of the 
 petitioning church, and consequently, of all petition- 
 ing believers, as pourtrayed by the pencil of the Di- 
 vine Spirit in the words of our text. Believers are 
 there taught to pray, and all who have ever read or 
 sung this precious psalm in a believing frame of mind, 
 have actually prayed for the richest spiritual blessings : 
 
DISCOURSE. 7 
 
 — for what purpose ? that they themselves may enjoy 
 the comforts and consolations of piety in this life, and 
 a meetness for the heavenly inheritance hereafter ? 
 Doubtless, this is the first end^ and must be implied 
 and included in the object of the petition. But, so 
 little does this appear, in the eye of the Spirit, to be 
 the only^ or even the chief end., that it is actually left 
 altogether unexpressed I There is another end pre- 
 sent to his omniscient view, of a nature so transcen- 
 dently exalted, that the former is, as it were, wholly 
 overlooked, because eclipsed by the surpassing glory 
 of that which excelleth. And that other end of all- 
 absorbing excellence is, the impartation of God's sav- 
 ing health to all nations. So pre-eminent in import- 
 ance does this end appear to the mind of the Spirit, 
 that believers are taught to implore spiritual blessings, 
 expressly, and even chiefly, that they may thereby 
 have it in their power the more effectually to promote 
 it throughout the world ! 
 
 If, then, in answer to such prayers, spiritual bless- 
 ings should be conferred from on high ; and if, instead 
 of employing them for the promotion of their Divine 
 Master s interest, by causing his saving health to be 
 made known to all nations, believers should sit down 
 in ease, and appropriate all to themselves and their 
 ovm friends immediately around them, — what judg- 
 ment must be pronounced upon them in the court of 
 heaven ? Must they not be condemned as guilty of a 
 breach of faith — guilty of a dereliction of duty to their 
 Lord and Master — guilty of a dishonest attempt to em- 
 
S DISCOURSE- 
 
 bezzle tlie treasures of his grace ? And if so, must not 
 their sin, if unrepentecl of, bring cIo^^^l its deserved 
 punishment ? And what can the first drop from the 
 vial of Divine wrath do less, than expunge from the 
 spiritual inventory of such worthless stewards, all that 
 they have already so gratuitously and undeservedly ob- 
 tained ? AYhat a resistless argument does the Spirit 
 of God here supply, in favour of the missionary enter- 
 prise ! Who can peruse the words of his own inspira- 
 tion, without being overwhelmed with the conviction 
 that, in his unerring estimate, the chief end., for ivhich 
 the Church ought to exist — the chief end., for ichich 
 individual church-memhers ought to live, is the evan- 
 gelization or conversion of the world F* 
 
 * When strongly urging theclaims otthe worldon the Christian Church, 
 ■we are constantly met with language to this effect : — By causing the men- 
 tal eye to dilate itself over the grand and the magnificent, are you not apt 
 to overlook and despise the useful and the practicable ? By no means. To 
 every church, congregation, and individual member, the heavenly moni- 
 tion is still addressed, " What thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy 
 might," — in whatever sphere Providence may have appointed your lot ; 
 but in so doing, never for a moment lose sight of the grand ulterior object 
 for which the Church was originally constituted, and spiritual rights and 
 privileges conferred, viz., the conversion of the world. By the encou- 
 ragements of Scripture prophecies,— by the specific appropriation and use 
 of Scripture petitions,— by the binding obligation of Divine commands, — 
 you are bound to pray and to labour for the conversion of a lost world. 
 The amount and direction of your actual exertions in the great cause, must 
 of necessity vary with varying abilities, and means and opportunities of use- 
 fulness, and a thousand providential contingencies ; but your eye must 
 ever be fixed on the accomplishment of t/ie great design, as the jjroper 
 terviinating object. In immediate and simultaneous action you may not, 
 you can not, be a cosmopolite ; but in spirit, and prayer, and longing, and 
 positive appetency, a cosmopolite you may, and ought to be. In primitive 
 times, when the Divine command was still sounding in the ears of those 
 who first received it, by extraordinary vision, and otherwise, it was di- 
 rectly signified to holy apostles, that the "set time " to favour one parti- 
 
DISCOURSE. 9 
 
 But, lest any sliade of dubiety sliould exist as to the 
 incontrovertible legitimacy of this conclusion, the same 
 momentous truth may be established by other and in- 
 dependent evidence. 
 
 The spirit of prophecy, speaking through Isaiah, had 
 long announced the Messiah himself, not only as King 
 and Priest, but as the great Prophet and Evangelist 
 of the ivorld. " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," 
 says the Divine Oracle, '^ because the Lord hath ap- 
 pointed me to preach good tidings to the meek ; he 
 
 cular nation had not yet come, while a door, large and effectual, was shown 
 to be opened in another. With such supernatural intimations, the Church 
 cannot now expect to be privileged ; but, by due attention to the leadings of 
 Providence, the same end may be inferentially obtained. Should one na- 
 tion be hermetically sealedagainstmissionaryoperations, by temporary im- 
 practicability of access, or savage decrees of exterminating intolerance, — 
 what is this but the voice of Providence, distinctly proclaiming, that the 
 set time for favouring that nation has not yet come ? Should another 
 nation be manifestly thrown open, and facilities for diffusing the Gospel 
 therein abundantly multiplied,— what is this but the finger of Providence 
 directing the Church to enter in and take possession of the land? But, 
 in proceeding to cultivate the open and accessible, we must not forget the 
 closed and the inaccessible, — we must pray most earnestly that all impe- 
 diments may be speedily removed ; and when removed, we must labour 
 that the Gospel may have free course and be glorified, till at length it 
 overspread the globe. This, this is the grand end towards which all our 
 prayers and plans for the extension of Christ's Church ought directly or 
 proximately to point, — and in its full accomplishment, and that alone, be 
 made to terminate. Like the conductors of a new colony, who are laid 
 under imperative obligation to bring all the tracts of a district into culti- 
 vation, as the sole condition of being allowed to retain permanent possession 
 of any, the disciples of Jesus ma.y first commence with the most facile 
 spots, and, converting these into advanced posts, proceed to the less tract- 
 able,— terminating at last with the least tractable of all. But, should they 
 lose sight of the ultimate end, and wilfully or indolently stop sliort of its 
 accomplishment, do they not plainly incur a forfeiture of what they have 
 already acquired? The field for Christian husbandry is the world,— and 
 nothing short of its universal cultivation will suit the Divine design, or 
 implement the obligations of the Christian Church. 
 
10 DISCOURSE. 
 
 hath sent me to hind up the broken hearted, to proclaim 
 liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison 
 to them that are hound ; to proclaim the acceptable 
 year of the Lord ; to appoint unto them that mourn in 
 Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of 
 joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit 
 of hea\dness." And lest any might suppose that the 
 exercise of the functions here described, was to be li- 
 mited to the Jev^'S, the natural seed of Abraham, God's 
 chosen people ; or the Zion here named, was meant 
 exclusively to denote the literal local Zion at Jerusalem, 
 and not rather in type and figure, the true Catholic 
 Church throughout the world, — it is almost immedi- 
 ately added, " For Zion's sake will I not hold my 
 peace, and for Jerusalem's sake T\dll I not rest, until 
 the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and 
 the salvation thereof, as a lamp that bumeth ; and the 
 Gentiles ^\\2l\ see thy righteousness, and a/^ kings thy 
 glory." The prophetic import and design of these 
 words can admit of no doubt. For, when, on one 
 occasion, our blessed Saviour stood up in the syna- 
 gogue, and, opening the book of the prophet Esaias, 
 read the former of these passages, he distinctly ap- 
 propriated the application of it to himself, saying, 
 " This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." 
 
 Again, if it was prophesied that the Messiah would 
 " raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the prescribed 
 of Israel," it is immediately added, " I will also give 
 thee for a light to the Gentiles^ that thou mayest 
 be my salvation to the eiids of the earth." And 
 
DISCOURSE. 1 1 
 
 again, " Men shall be blessed in him, all nations shall 
 call him blessed." 
 
 In strict accordance, not only with the substance, 
 but almost the very words of these and many other 
 prophecies, we find the announcement of the heavenly 
 host to the shepherds of Bethlehem, " Behold I bring 
 you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all 
 people ; for unto you is born this day a Saviour^ 
 which is Christ the Lord." — The introductory saluta- 
 tion of the Baptist, the Messiah's forerunner, " Behold 
 the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
 ivorld." — And, lastly, the solemn declaration of the 
 Apostle John, " Li him was life, and the life was the 
 light of men. That was the true light which lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world." 
 
 Now, during our Saviour's ministry, he conveyed 
 many significant intimations to his disciples that he 
 intended to transfer to them, and through them to the 
 body of believers in every age, those high functions 
 wliich primarily and rightfully belonged to himself 
 as the world's Evangelist. " Ye are," said he, " the 
 salt," not of Judea or Jerusalem, but ^^ of the earth.'^ 
 One of the brightest of his own prophetic titles was, 
 " the light of the Gentiles ;" or, in the paraphrase of 
 the Apostle, " the light that lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world." And this very title he trans- 
 fers to his disciples, saying, " Ye are the lights" not 
 of Judea or Jerusalem, but " of the world." * 
 
 * In the Bible, almost all visible objects are consecrated as significant 
 types of invisible realities. The grand natural type of Christ is the sun ; 
 
12 DISCOURSE. 
 
 And, wlien about to withdraw his visible presence 
 from the earth, he formally transferred the ivhole of 
 his visible evangelistic functions to his professing dis- 
 ciples or Church, to be exercised and administered by 
 it, in his name and stead, till the end of time. " All 
 powev^' said he, " is given to me in heaven and earth. 
 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 (^. e., all nations) 
 to observe all things wdiatsoever I have commanded 
 you ; and lo ! I am with you alway even unto the 
 end of the ivorld." 
 
 This is the grand charter under which a visible 
 Church, directly holding of its Divine Head, was at 
 
 and of his Church, the moon. The sun shines with a created light of its 
 own : Christ, in his essential divinity, has ever shone in his own uncreated 
 light. The moon has no light of her own, and is luminous only from 
 reflecting the rays of the natural sun : The Church has no light of her 
 own, and shines only by reflecting the beams of the spiritual sun,— the 
 great Sun of Righteousness. The grand ordinance of the moon is, during 
 the temporary absence of the sun, to cast its borrowed and mellow lustre 
 over the benighted world of material forms : The grand ordinance of the 
 Church is, during the personal absence of her Divine Head, to spread her 
 borrowed and softened radiance over \the benighted world of spiritual 
 being. When the king of day bursts from his chambers in the east, re- 
 joicing as a strong man to run his race, the moon may well drop her en- 
 lightening functions in the presence of his surpassing brightness : And 
 when the King of Glory issues forth from his royal chambers in the 
 heaven of heavens, to assume, in visible manifested form, the reins of 
 universal government, the Church may then, but not till then, resign her 
 delegated functions in illumining a darkened world, — because, then, her 
 feeble light must be swallowed up and lost in the effulgence of his glory. 
 For some admirable remarks on the evangelistic design and constitution 
 of the Christian Church, the reader is referred to the Rev. J. Macdonald's 
 " Reasons for Accepting the Missionary Call." It is a pamphlet richly 
 fraught with missionary spirit and missionary principle, and ought to be 
 in universal circulation. 
 
DISCOURSE. 1 3 
 
 first constituted, and designed to be for ever perpetuat- 
 ed, for the administration of Gospel ordinances, and 
 the exercise of spiritual authority. These high func- 
 tions in the Royal Head were original and underived, 
 — as transferred to his body, the Church, they are, 
 of necessity, derivative and vice-regaU As Christ, 
 therefore, was proclaimed by prophets and apostles, as 
 well as by himself, in his appropriation of prophetic 
 announcements, to be the world's evangelist ; — ^in his 
 personal absence during the present dispensation, he 
 was pleased solemnly to appoint and constitute the 
 Church to be his delegated representative as the 
 world's evangelist ; and, along with the evangelistic 
 functions, he conveyed the power and authoriti/ in- 
 dispensable for their exercise. 
 
 That this was the interpretation put upon this 
 original Gospel commission by the primitive dis- 
 ciples, is evident, not only from the whole tenor of 
 their conduct, but also from the most express declara- 
 tions scattered throughout the Book of the Acts, as 
 well as the Apostolic Epistles. 
 
 It thus appears abundantly manifest from multiplied 
 Scripture evidence, that the chief end for which the 
 Christian Church is constituted — the leading design 
 for which she is made the repository of heavenly 
 blessmgs — the great command under which she is 
 laid — the supreme function which she is called on to 
 discharge — is, in the name and stead of her glorified 
 Head and Redeemer, unceasingly, to act the part of an 
 evangelist to all the tvorld. The inspired prayer 
 
14< DISCOURSE. 
 
 which she is taught to offer for spiritual gifts and 
 graces, binds her, as the covenanted condition on which 
 they are bestowed at all, to dispense them to all na- 
 tions. The divine charter which conveys to her the 
 warrant to teach and preach the Gospel at all, binds 
 her to teach and preach it to all nations. The divine 
 charter which embodies a commission to adminis- 
 ter Gospel ordinances at all, binds her to administer 
 these to all iiations. The divine charter which com- 
 municates power and authority to exercise rule or 
 discipline at all, binds her to exercise these, not alone 
 or exclusively, to secure her own internal purity and 
 peace, union and stability ; but chiefly and supremely, 
 in order that she may thereby be enabled the more 
 speedily, effectually, and extensively, to execute her 
 grand evangelistic commission in preaching the Gos- 
 pel to all nations. 
 
 If, then, any body of believers united together as a 
 Church, under whatever form of external discipline 
 and polity, do, in their individual, or congregational, 
 or corporate national capacity, wilfully and delibe- 
 rately overlook, suspend, or indefinitely postpone, 
 the accomplishment of the great end for which the 
 Church universal, including every evangelical com- 
 munity, implores the vouchsafement of spiritual trea- 
 sures — the great end for which she has obtained a 
 separate and independent constitution at all, — how 
 can they, separately or conjointly, expect to realize, 
 or realizing, expect to render abiding, the promised 
 presence of Him who alone hath the keys of the 
 
DISCOURSE 1 5 
 
 golden treasury, and alone upholds the pillars of 
 the great spiritual edifice ? If any Church, or any 
 section of a Church, do thus neglect the ^nal cause 
 of its being, and violate the very condition and te- 
 nure of all spiritual rights and privileges, how can 
 it expect the continuance of the favour of Him from 
 whom alone, as their Divine fount and springhead, 
 all such rights and privileges must ever flow ? And, 
 if deprived of His favour and presence, how . can any 
 Chm-ch expect long to ea^ist, far less spiritually to 
 flourish, in the enjoyment of inward peace, or the 
 prospect of outward and more extended prosperity ? 
 
 And what is the whole history of the Christian 
 Church but one perpetual proof and illustration of 
 the grand position — that an evangelistic or missionary 
 Church is a spiritually flourishing Church ; a7id, 
 that a Church which drops the evangelistic or mis- 
 sionary character, speedily lapses into superannua- 
 tion and decay ! 
 
 The most evangelistic period of the Christian 
 Church was, beyond all doubt, the primitive or apos- 
 tolic. Then, the entire community of saints seemed to 
 act under an overpowering conviction of their respon- 
 sible duty, as the divinely appointed evangelists of a 
 perishing world. No branch or ofi-set from the apostolic 
 stock at Jerusalem had, in those days, begun to surmise 
 that, not only its first, but chief, and almost exclusive 
 duty, was to witness for Christ in the city, or district, 
 or province, or kingdom, in which it was itself already 
 planted ; — in other words, to surmise, that the most 
 
1 6 DISCOURSE. 
 
 effectual mode of vindicating its title to the designation 
 of apostolic, was to annihilate its own apostolicity ! For 
 what can be named, as the most j>eculiaT and distin- 
 guishing feature in the apostolic Church at Jerusalem, 
 if not the burning and the shining aspect of salvation 
 which it held forth towards cdl nations ? No, no. 
 In those days, the Church's prayer, as breathed by the 
 inspired Psalmist, seemed to issue from every lip, and 
 kindle every soul into correspondent action. The 
 Redeemer's parting command seemed to ring in every 
 ear, and vitally influence every feeling and faculty of 
 the renewed soul. Every man and woman, and al- 
 most every child, through the remotest branches of the 
 wide-spreading Church, seemed impelled by a holy 
 zeal to discharge the functions of a missionary. All, 
 all seemed moved and actuated towards a guilty and 
 lost world, as if they really felt it to be as much 
 their duty to disseminate the Gospel among unchris- 
 tianized nations, as to pray, or teach, or preach to 
 those within the pale of their respective Churches, 
 — as much their duty to propagate the knowledge 
 of salvation among the blinded heathen, as to 
 yield obedience to any commandment in the De- 
 calogue. And were not those the days of flourishing 
 Christianity ? Has not the spiritual beauty and 
 brightness of the primitive Church been the theme of 
 admiration and praise to succeeding generations ? But 
 no sooner did the Church, in any of its subdi\4sions, 
 begin to contract the sphere of its efforts in diffiising 
 abroad the light of the everlasting Gospel, — no sooner 
 
DISCOURSE, 17 
 
 did it begin to settle do^vn with tlie view of snugly 
 enjoying tlie glorious prerogatives conferred by its 
 Great Head — forgetful of the multitudes that were 
 still famishing for lack of knowledge, to all of whom it 
 was bound by covenant to announce the glad tidings of 
 salvation : — in a word, no sooner did the Chm'ch, in 
 contravention of Heaven s appointed ordinance, begin 
 to relax in the exercise of its evangelistic function to- 
 wards the world at large, than its smi, under the hid- 
 ing of Jehovah's countenance, and the frown of his 
 displeasure, began to decline,* and hide itself amid 
 I the storms of wrathful controversy, or sink beneath a 
 I gloomy horizon laden with freezing rites and soul- 
 Avithering forms ! 
 
 It may be thought that the history of the Reforma- 
 tion tends to contradict this general view. So far from 
 
 * " Its sun began to decline," &c. The Christian reader need scarcely 
 be reminded, that at no period had the light and life of Christianity- 
 become wholly extinct. In the history of the Church, days of glorious 
 sunshine are seen to alternate with nights of gloomiest darkness. 
 Even in the longest and darkest night — that of the middle ages— we 
 find many a lamp twinkling athwart the gloom. At length the Reforma- 
 tion burst upon the world with somewhat of the effulgence of primitive 
 Christianity. And on a review of nearly eighteen centuries and a-half, 
 it may perhaps be affirmed, that the history of the Church has been 
 marked with " an obvious and triumphant progress " on the whole. 
 On this subject there are some compact aud beautifully expressed re- 
 marks, in the introduction to a recent publication, entitled " History of 
 Revivals of Religion in the British Isles, especially in Scotland." It is a 
 work which ought to be found on the study table of every clergyman. Be- 
 sides the historical matter, the work abounds with original reflections 
 characterised by such energy of thought and expression, and withal such 
 fervent piety, as to prove that the authoress might, if she willed, become 
 the Hannah More of Scotland. Why does she not cast aside the anony- 
 mous veil, and by her publications, at once assume the character of 
 open and avowed authorship ? 
 
18 DISCOURSE. 
 
 this, it is to that very period, as compared with the times 
 immediately succeeding, that -vve would appeal for one 
 of the most striking illustrations of ifs truth. Doubtless, 
 the Pagan world was not included within the immedi- 
 ate sphere of the Reformers' labours. Its miserable 
 condition was then scarcely, if at all, kno^\^l in its real 
 horror ; the very existence of the great Western Con- 
 tinent was but recently discovered ; and, in comparison 
 with present times, the facilities of intercommunion 
 with distant parts of the globe were so circumscribed 
 as to appear to us hardly conceivable. 
 
 Still, the work of the Reformation was itself a j 
 grand evangelistic work. God, by his Spirit, put it \ 
 into the hearts of an enlightened few, to arise and 
 make an " aggressive movement " on the unenlighten- 
 ed many, by whom they were every where surrounded. 
 Their first and paramount object was to rescue the 
 Bible itself — the great instrument of the world's evan- 
 gelization — from the dormitory of dead and unintelli- 
 gible languages ; to emancipate its doctrines from the J 
 superincumbent load of Popish traditions and Aris- T 
 totelian subtleties ; to vindicate the rights of conscience 
 in the perusal and interpretation of that Magna Charta 
 of all civil and religious liberty ; and, finally, to bring 
 out, and separate from idolatrous Rome, a true Church, 
 that might for ever protest against all doctrines and 
 rites whatsoever, that infi'inged, by one jot or tittle, on 
 Christ's supremacy, as the sole and all-sufficient | 
 Saviour of lost sinners, — a witnessing Church, that 
 might re-assume the great evangelistic function of 1 
 
DISCOURSE. 19 
 
 preaching the Gospel, as a testimonif to all na- 
 tions. 
 
 This struggle with anti-Christian Rome was, indeed, 
 a long and terrible one, — a struggle which, as regards 
 the extent of the field, the might of the combatants, 
 the imperishable interests contended for, and the mo- 
 mentous consequences dependent thereon, has no pa- 
 rallel in history, except the dreadful conflict of primi- 
 tive Christianity with Pagan Rome. But, if the 
 struggle was tremendous, proportionately glorious was 
 the issue. 
 
 Look at the Protestant Church of this land, at the 
 close of the Reformation asra. It would seem as if the 
 very windows of heaven had then opened, and the 
 showers of grace had descended in an inundation of 
 spiritual gifts and graces — converting the parched 
 lands into pools of water, and the ban-en wilderness 
 into gardens that bloomed and blossomed as the rose. 
 
 Look at the same Church a century afterwards. 
 What a poor, torpid, shrunken, shrivelled thing ! As 
 if the heavens were of brass, and the earth of iron, 
 and no dew descending, the very waters of the sanctuary 
 became stagnant, and bred, and sent forth a teeming 
 progeny of heresies, schisms, and dissents. Ah, how 
 is the beauty of Israel effaced in our high places ! How 
 are the mighty fallen ! Whence the cause of so sad 
 a discomfiture ? It was not from the violence of anti- 
 Christian adversaries, — ^for never did the Church enjoy 
 a safer respite from the myrmidons of her Popish foes. 
 It was not from the fires of political persecution, — for 
 
20 DISCOURSE. 
 
 never did the Church enjoy a more undisturbed secu- 
 rity from the State. 
 
 " It was not in the battle, 
 No tempest gave the shock." 
 
 No : — it was the bhght and miklew of Jeliovah's 
 displeasure, on account of a neglected and unfaithful 
 stewardship ! 
 
 The active principle in man, which, though often 
 sluggish, and oftener still strangely misdirected, is 
 never wholly extinguished, was aroused by the Re- 
 formation into unwonted energy. And most legiti- 
 mately was it then made to expend its force, in the 
 awful struggle with anti-Christian Rome. But, on the 
 total cessation of hostilities, and the restoration of ge- 
 neral peace, how ought the awakened energy of the 
 Reformed Church to have been directed and expend- 
 ed ? Plainly, and incontrovertibly, it ought to have 
 found its constant and determinate object — ^its divinely 
 intended employ, — in extending the triumphs of Pro- 
 testant, that is, primitive, Christianity, over the realms 
 of Paganism. But, instead of this, the Church, soon 
 casting aside her weapons of aggressive warfare, settled 
 down, in inglorious ease, to enjoy the conquests she had 
 won. What then ? Did her active energy abate or 
 sink into torpid quiescence ? No : as a proper outlet 
 Avas denied to it, in assaulting the enemy witJiout^ it 
 recoiled, with a vehement rebound, on the heads of the 
 negligent and slothful within. That mighty force which 
 should have been rightfully exerted in demolishing the 
 
DISCOURSE. 21 
 
 heathenism of the nations, soon found ample vent for 
 itself in fomenting intestine discords and imhallowed 
 speculation, idle impertinences and heretical contro- 
 versy — thus proving, when left undirected to its proper 
 object, through lukewarmness and treasonable neglect, 
 at once the scourge of the faithless professor, and the 
 unhappy instrument of the Church's distraction and 
 decay. 
 
 We have comparatively little or no guilt, in this 
 respect, to charge home upon the Reformers. The great 
 work assigned to them by heaven, they executed in a 
 manner that far exceeds " all Greek, all Roman fame." 
 It is at the door of their successors — for whom the 
 battle had been fought, and the victory won — that the 
 blame must be laid, for w^hich we can find no pallia- 
 tion. 
 
 When, after the Reformation, the Protestant Church 
 arose, as by a species of moral resurrection, with new- 
 born energies, from the deep dark grave of Popish ig- 
 norance and superstition, — then, was she in an attitude 
 to have gone forth in the spirit of her own prayers, and 
 in obedience to the Divine command, on the spiritual 
 conquest of the nations, — and, in the train of every 
 victory, scatter as her trophies, the means of grace, 
 and as her plentiful heritage, the hopes of a glorious 
 immortality. But instead of thus fulfilling the im- 
 mutable law of her constitution,'^ — instead of going 
 
 * This is said in perfect knowledge of what has been recently recorded 
 respecting occasional bursts of benevolence, on the part of the Church, 
 in sending pecuniary relief to poor and suffering Protestants on the Con- 
 tinent ; as well as occasional gleams and glimpses of still higher duties in 
 
22 DISCOURSE. 
 
 forth in a progress of outward extension, and onward 
 aggression, \ni\\ a view to consummate the great work 
 which formed at once the eternal design of her Head, 
 and the chief end of her being: — the Church seemed 
 mainly intent on turning the whole of her energies in- 
 ward on herself. Her highest ambition and ultimate 
 aim seemed to be, to hare herself begirt as with a wall 
 of fire that might devour her adversaries — to have her 
 own privileges fenced in by laws and statutes of the 
 realm — to have her own immunities perpetuated to 
 posterity by solemn leagues and covenants. 
 
 All well, admirably well, had she only home distinctly 
 in mind that she was thus highly favom'ed, not for 
 her own sake alone, — but that by her insti'umen- 
 tality, the glad tidings of salvation, tlirough a cmcified 
 Redeemer, might be made knoiAH to the uttermost 
 ends of the earth. All well, admirably well, had she 
 only borne in mind that her candlestick was not re- 
 kindled solely for her own use, — ^l3ut ihat the light of 
 the Gospel might largely emanate therefrom, and be 
 
 sending the Gospel to the unenlightened abroad, and more especially 
 in the British colonies and dependencies. To all this it is perfectly just 
 and proper to appeal, when repelling the ungenerous and unfounded at- 
 tacks of those who would represent the Protestant Church of these lands 
 as having been, throughout, wholly, and absolutely, and irredeemably 
 negligent in the exercise of every function and the discharge of ev-ry 
 duty ; and when parrying the assaults of those who may belong to com- 
 munities that nevei- did any thing at all, in the way of foreign benevo- 
 lence. But it were a perfect caricature of our Saviour's missionary design 
 —a perfect parody of the Church's evangelistic duty— to maintain that any 
 one, or all of these partial and isolated acts, amounted, by the slightest de- 
 gree of approximation, to that sustained, enlarged, and systematic efibrt 
 for the conversion of the heathen world, which alone is entitled to the 
 name of the missionary enterprise. 
 
DISCOURSE 2o 
 
 diffused throughout the nations. All well, admirably 
 well, had she only borne in mind that she possessed 
 no eA'clusive proprietary right to the blessings of the 
 covenant of grace, — but that, like every other branch 
 of the true Church of Christ, she held these in com- 
 mission for the benefit of a ivhole icorld Mng in wick- 
 edness. Ah, had the Church of these lands, in the 
 day of her glorious triumph and imdivided strength, 
 gone forth in accordance ^^'ith the letter and spirit of 
 her ovm. heaven-inspired prayers — as the Almoner of 
 Jehovah's bounties to a perishing world, — how different 
 might have been her position now ! Instead of being 
 compelled to act on the defensive, — instead of being 
 reduced to the necessitous condition of a besieged city, 
 around which the enemy is drawing his lines of cir- 
 cumvallation, threatening to demohsh her towers, dis- 
 mantle her bulwarks, and erase her palaces — leaving 
 her brave sons no alternative but that of raising the 
 desperate war-cry of beleagured valom*, " no surren- 
 der, no surrender," — she might all along have been 
 acting on the offensive, against " principalities and 
 powers, and spiritual >vickednesses in high places." 
 And, after havino: made the circuit of the orlobe, she 
 might this day have been displajTng her standard, en- 
 graven ^^'ith a thousand victories, in front of some of 
 the last strongholds of heathenism, and rending the 
 air ^^^th the conqueror's shout of " unconditional sub- 
 mission ! " 
 
 Is it then too late to retrieve our past en'ors and 
 criminal neglect ? No : blessed be God, it is not yet 
 
24 DISCOURSE. 
 
 too late. In answer to the prayers of a faithful rem- 
 nant in this land, the Lord hath been pleased once 
 more to regard with special favour that branch of the 
 Holy Catholic Church to which we more immediately 
 belong.* He hath been pleased to look down from 
 heaven, and visit this his vine, and the vineyard 
 which his own right hand once planted. And 
 now, if ever, is the time to exhibit not only the 
 model of a Gospel Church, but a complete model in 
 full operation. We are placed in very different cir- 
 cumstances from those of the early Reformers. We 
 have not, like them, to begin anew. We have not, like 
 them, to reckon up our Protestants by units. We have 
 not, like them, to struggle on for years in attempting to 
 new-create, as it were, a true Church fi'om the dark 
 womb of Popish superstition. We have not, like 
 them, to resist unto blood for many years more in 
 establishing the platform of a pure ecclesiastical con- 
 stitution. No. We at once count our hundreds of 
 thousands of members united together as a church, 
 under one of the noblest and purest, and most apos- 
 tolic constitutions which the world has ever seen. We 
 have the entire machinery ready made. We have 
 only to arise, and in the strength of our God, set 
 all the parts of it in motion, — and thus, at once 
 and simultaneously, discharge all the functions, 
 
 * From the peculiar lobject of the services of the day, the preacher was 
 naturally led to refer more particularly to that branch of the Church Uni- 
 versal of which he is a member. But all the general principles involved 
 in his remarks, must at once be seen to be alike applicable to every other 
 gection of the grgat Protestant community. 
 
DISCOURSE. 25 
 
 not merely of an evangelic, but of an evangelistic 
 Church. 
 
 That Church, Avhich, notmthstanding many ackno^v- 
 ledgecl weaknesses, and even alleged deformities, must 
 be regarded as our venerable parent still, may already 
 have passed through the different stages of existence. 
 From the feebleness of infancy, she may have speedily 
 risen to the giant vigour of maturity, — and, passing 
 the meridian of her power, may at length have sunk 
 enervated under a load of years. But what of all this, 
 if, in answer to the prayer, " Come from the four 
 winds, O breath, and breathe upon these dry bones, 
 that they may live," — we behold every where a mov- 
 ing and a shaking amongst them ? And if, already, 
 we behold her beginning to exhibit cheering symp- 
 toms of a revival, — to exchange the hoariness and 
 withered features of age, for the gTeenness and bloom- 
 ing freshness of youth ; — if, by the new quickening of 
 all her powers, she has now resolved to roll back the 
 dark tide of corruption, which is said to have swollen 
 to mountainous height with the lapse of time ; and 
 begun to emulate the purity and ardour of her Refor- 
 mation faithfulness, — Oh ! let her not again be guilty 
 of committing the egregious, the fatal, and it may be, 
 the irremediable blunder and sin of attempting to 
 grasp and appropriate all religious rights, blessings, 
 and privileges ; as if these were a special monopoly^ 
 exclusively intended for herself and her children, and 
 not rather, what they truly are, in the Divine pur- 
 pose and design, a sacred deposit^ — committed to 
 
26 DISCOURSE. 
 
 her, for the enriching of the famished nations ! On 
 the contrary, let her new-buniish all the lamps of her 
 noble institutions : Let her add to these by hundreds, 
 — not to dispel the darkness within her own temtory 
 alone, but for the kindling of a flame that shall rise, 
 and spread, and brighten, till it illumine the world. 
 Let her revive the golden age of the Christian Church, 
 when professing believers, not satisfied with showers 
 of words that contrast so ominously with barren prac- 
 tices, were ever prepared to testify, not only the sin- 
 cerity, but the height and depth, and length and 
 breadth of their gratitude and love to the blessed 
 Redeemer, by submitting to the amplest sacrifices of 
 comfort, and life, and all ; — when the Christian trea- 
 sury was replenished to overflowing by the free-will 
 offerings of a self-denying, God-honouring people ; — 
 and when a general assembly of apostles and prophets 
 met at Jerusalem, to select and set apart, not the 
 young and inexperienced, but the greatest and most re- 
 doubted champions, to go forth and shake the strong- 
 holds of error to their basis, by sounding the Gospel 
 trump of jubilee. Let the Protestant Church of these 
 lands, in this the day of her incipient revival, thus 
 nobly resolve to assume the entire evangelistic char- 
 acter, and implement the Divine condition of preser- 
 vation and prosperity, by becoming the dispenser of 
 Gospel blessings, not only to the people at home, but 
 as speedily as possible, to all the unenlightened na- 
 tions of the earth. — And, if there be truth in the Bible, 
 — if there be certainty in Jehovah's promises, — if 
 
DISCOURSE. 27 
 
 there be reality in past history, — she may yet arise 
 and shine, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, and 
 terrible as an army with banners. 
 
 Again, we say, the field of Divine appointment is 
 not Scotland or England, but " the world" — the world 
 of " all nations." The prayer of Divine inspiration is, 
 " God bless and pity us," — not, that thy way may be 
 known in all Britain, and thy saving health among 
 all its destitute families, — but, " that thy way may be 
 kno^\ii on all the earth, and thy saving health among 
 
 I all nations." The command of Divine obligation is 
 not — " Go to the people of Scotland, or of England," 
 but, " Go unto all the world, and preach the Gospel 
 to every creature" And if we take our coimsel from 
 those blind and deluded guides that would, in spite 
 of the Almighty's appointment, and in derision of our 
 own prayers, persuade us, altogether, or for an indefi- 
 nite period onwards, to abandon the real proper Bible 
 field, and direct the whole of our time, and strength, 
 and resources, to home : if, at their antiscriptural sug- 
 gestions, we do thus dislocate the Divine order of pro- 
 portion : if we do thus invert the Divine order of 
 magnitude : if w^e daringly presume to put that last, 
 which God hath put first ; to reckon that least which 
 God hath pronounced greatest : — What can we expect 
 but that he shall be provoked, in sore displeasure, to 
 deprive us of the precious deposit of misappropriated 
 
 ! gi'ace, and inscribe " Ichabod" on all our towers, 
 bulwarks, and palaces ? And if he do — then, like 
 beings smitten wdth judicial blindness, we may hold 
 
28 DISCOURSE. 
 
 hundreds of meetings, deliver thousands of speeches, 
 and publish tens of thousands of tracts, and pamph- 
 lets, and volumes, in defence of our chartered rights.i 
 and birthright liberties ; — and all this we may hail as 
 religious zeal, and applaud as patriotic spirit. But if 
 such prodigious activities be designed solely, or even 
 chiefly, to concentrate all hearts, aifections, and ener- 
 gies, on the limited interests of our OAvn land : if such 
 prodigious activities recognise and aim at no higher ter- 
 minating object than the simple maintenance and ex- 
 tension of our home institutions — and that too, for the 
 exclusive benefit of our own people — while, in contempt 
 of the counsels of the Eternal, the hundreds of millions 
 of a guilty world are coolly abandoned to perish: — Oh ! 
 how can all this appear in the sight of heaven as any 
 thing better than a national outburst of monopolising 
 selfishness ? And how can such criminal disregard 
 of the Divine ordinance, as respects the evangelization 
 of a lost world, fail, sooner or later, to draw down 
 upon us the most dreadful visitation of retributive i 
 vengeance ? ; 
 
 Thus it was with the Jews of old. Twice, after 
 the creation and the flood, was the tnie religion uni- 
 versal ; and if, subsequently, it was contracted in its 
 sphere, and shut up within the nan-ow bounds of a 
 favoured locality, it was out of mercy and loving-kind- 
 ness to man. It was, that it might not be wholly swept 
 away and lost in the swelling tide of an apostasy, which 
 threatened to rise and overwhelm all the kindreds of 
 the nations. But, in the Eternal decree, it was ordain- 
 
DISCOURSE. 29 
 
 ed ; and by the mouth of prophets who spoke in suc- 
 cessive ages, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, 
 it was clearly foretold that, in the fulness of time, the 
 true religion should once more become universal — that 
 out of Jerusalem the law should go forth to the ends of 
 the earth. The inhabitants of Jerusalem, however, 
 resolved that beyond the bounds of Judea, their oAvn 
 I beloved home, it should not go, — and thus dared the 
 Omnipotent to hostile collision. And never, never, 
 did any people put forth efforts, of a nature so absolutely 
 volcanic, in defence of their heaven-ordained institu- 
 tions. But it was all, in order that they might wholly 
 monopolize the advantages of these to themselves. 
 Calamitous monopoly ! Insane opposition ! Preser- 
 vation of the types and shadows for their own ex- 
 clusive benefit, was the Jewish watchword. Preser- 
 vation of the substance in new, expanded, and remo- 
 delled forms for the benefit of the " world," was the 
 Divine watchword. Who could for a moment doubt 
 which must, in the end, prevail ? Surely the people 
 that could presume to contend, in unequal strife, mth 
 the full thunder of Jehovah's power, must have been 
 more than ordinarily infatuated ? And seized they 
 verily were with injudicial infatuation, out of which 
 they were not, and would not, be awakened till the 
 tempest of Divine wrath burst upon them with ex- 
 terminating violence ! 
 
 And thus, assuredly, will it be >vith us, if we do 
 
 not arise and speedily resolve to discharge all those 
 
 I high Catholic and evangelistic functions that devolve 
 
30 DISCOURSE. 
 
 upon us, as a Protestant Church and Protestant nation. 
 Or, shall we blindly and perversely determine, alike to 
 scorn the counsels of heaven, and brave the warnings 
 of Providence ? Then, let us only try the fatal, the 
 disastrous experiment ! — let us try, if we will, and 
 overlook wholly, or in great measure, heaven's irre- 
 vocable law, and our own plighted obligations to save 
 a lost world, — let us try, if we will, and maintain the 
 warfare in defence of our home institutions, alto- 
 gether or chiefly, for our own benefit and that of our 
 children, — and as sure as Jehovah's purposes are un- 
 changeable, our doom is sealed. By unparalleled ex- 
 ertions we may arrest for a season, the day of national 
 calamity. We may retard, but shall not be able 
 finally'to arrest, the progress of national disorganiza- 
 tion and decay. The chariot wheels of destruction 
 may be made to drag more heavily as they roll along 
 the fatal declivity. But nothing, nothing shall effec- 
 tually prevent the ultimate awlful plunge of all our 
 institutions, — social, civil, and religious, — into the 
 troubled waters, where they shall be dashed to pieces, 
 amid rocks and quicksands, in a hurricane of an- 
 archy ! 
 
 To avert a catastrophe so fell and so temble, oh, 
 let us all imbibe into our inmost souls, the Church's 
 heaven-inspired prayer ; — " Lord bless and pity us, shine 
 on us with thy face." In order to prove the sincerity 
 wherewith the prayer is uttered, let us put forth the 
 mightiest exertions in the endeavour to repair all the 
 ancient channels, and open up hundreds of new ones, 
 
DISCOURSE. 31 
 
 through which the blessing may be expected to de- 
 scend in refreshing streams into every congregation, 
 every household, and every heart in our oami land. But, 
 oh, let us not, in bhnd, and narrow-minded, and anti- 
 Christian selfishness, forget the Jinal cause and' chief 
 end for the furtherance of which, the blessing must be 
 mainly sought by us, and for the accomplishment of 
 which, it must be mainly conferred, if conferred at all 
 by a gracious God, — as emphatically taught us in the 
 ever memorable words of his own Holy Spirit, — 
 " That so thy way may be kno^Mi upon earthy and thy 
 saving health among all nations." And let not our 
 efforts in attempting to 'realize the glorious end, for 
 which evangelical mercies and favom-s are avowedly 
 sought and bestowed, be either feeble or dispro- 
 portionate, — lest, by deficient or contradictory prac- 
 tices, our prayers should prove so many idle mockeries 
 of our God ; and our petitions, so many provocations 
 to the High and Holy One, to withdraw from us alto- 
 gether those privileges which we already enjoy, — if 
 we enjoy them only with the selfish and dishonest in- 
 tention of enriching ourselves by defrauding the world ! 
 Come and let us, with united heart and soul, adopt 
 as oiir own, the fervid language of one who drank 
 deep at the fount of inspiration — one, whose presence 
 once gladdened these shores and tended to chase 
 the darkness from heathen lands — one, who is now 
 of the happy number of glorified spirits that cease 
 
 not to chaunt their hallelujahs before the throne. 
 
 And, while we appropriate his glowing words, as the 
 
32 DISCOURSE. 
 
 urr 
 
 vehicle of our own iiTepressible longings, — oh, let oi 
 hands be ever ready to give prompt effect to the ut- 
 terance of the heart, when we sing, — 
 
 " Waft, waft, ye winds his story, 
 
 And you, ye Avaters roll ; 
 Till like a sea of glory 
 
 It spread from pole to pole ; 
 Till, o'er our ransomed nature, 
 
 The Lamb for sinners slain, ' 
 
 Redeemer, King, Creator, 
 
 In bliss return to reign." I 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS 
 
 TO 
 
 MR SMITH. 
 
 Reverend and Dearly Beloved Brother, — 
 
 Having Ijeen called, as we believe, by the " grace 
 that is given to you of God, to be a minister of Jesus 
 Christ to the Gentiles, to minister the Gospel of God, 
 that the offering up of the Gentiles may be acceptable, 
 being sanctified by the Holy Ghost," you have now, by 
 " prayer, and the laying on of the hands of the Presby- 
 tery," been separated and solemnly set apart for dis- 
 charging the functions of that primitive, sublime, and 
 apostolic office. 
 
 It were interesting, on an occasion like the present, 
 to inquire, what constitutes the call of a missionary 
 to undertake the solemn trust of making known the 
 unsearchable riches of Christ among the Gentiles ? 
 But the variety of topics that claims our attention, 
 precludes the possibility of besto-\ving more than a 
 I passing notice, even on the most important. 
 
 The nature of a missionary's call has been so often 
 mystified, — so often represented as something perfectly 
 
34 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 unique^ — that to the mass of mankind at large, it 
 seems to hold out an aspect of ahsolute incompre- 
 hensibility. But there is nothing really mysterious 
 connected with it, — except it be the mystery of unde- 
 served grace, which is its root and origin, as well as 
 the spring-head of all other privileges confeiTed by an 
 offended I\Iaker on offending man. 
 
 When a responsible office becomes vacant, or is 
 new-created by peculiar exigencies, in the republic of 
 letters, the realm of State, or firmament of the Church, 
 liow comes it that almost all eyes are instantly directed 
 to one, two, or three individuals, that stand promi- 
 nently out from the multitude of their fellows ? — Is it 
 not on account of their generally acknowledged fitness, 
 real or supposed, for the office ? And what constitutes 
 this fitness ? Practically considered, may it not l)e 
 pronounced as coincident with an assemblage of speci- 
 fic qualifications for the specific end in view ? 
 
 What, in any of the cases now imagined, would 
 be held to form a valid call to a particular individual ? 
 Is it not, in the first place, that he himself should be 
 conscious, or at least not unconscious, of possessing 
 the requisite qualifications ; and, at the same time, 
 willing, or at least not unwilling, to exercise these in 
 the new vocation to which his attention may have been 
 directed ? Is it not, in the second place, that the elective 
 party, in the full persuasion of his possessing all the 
 necessary qualifications, should formally invite or 
 summon him to undertake the trust ? When all these 
 points unite, in concurrent harmony, who would hesi- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 35 
 
 tate as to the legitimacy of tlie call? But surely 
 in all this there is nought of mystery. 
 
 Now, precisely similar, in its broad outline, is the 
 nature of a missionary call. A responsible office in 
 the church militant is to be supplied. That office, like 
 every other, demands qualifications specifically adapt- 
 ed to the discharge of its duties. Is there a man who 
 is not unconscious, though in deepest humility and 
 self-abasement, of possessing them ; and not unwilling, 
 though with fear and trembhng, to exercise them in 
 the way required? And is the party in whom is 
 vested the right of appointment so satisfied of this, 
 as to summon him to the post of honour ? — then, is 
 the call of the man clearly manifested and legitimated 
 to himself, and to the Church. 
 
 The only difference between the civil and the sa- 
 cred is this, — that whereas, in the former, all the qua- 
 lifications come within the ordinary range of our 
 common nature ; in the latter, the foundation of all 
 the more peculiar qualifications lies in the supernatu- 
 ral, — originated however, and regulated after an in- 
 telligible and established order of its own. 
 
 When, in the days of old, the Lord commissioned 
 a prophet or apostle to carry his message to the 
 people, he qualified and called his servant by some 
 extraordinary manifestation of his grace and presence. 
 Such manifestations are no longer to be expected. But 
 are behevers, on that account, thrown loose on an ocean 
 of uncertainty ? No such thing. With theBible in their 
 hands, aided by the interpretation of experience, and a 
 
36 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 due attention to the leadings of Providence, the mis- 
 sionary candidate, and the Missionary Church, may 
 fairly decide as to the possession of all the prerequisites 
 and constituent elements, that unite in forming the 
 foundation of a valid call. 
 
 Now, as the leading function of a missionary is, by 
 preaching repentance and remission of sins, in the 
 name of Jesus, to call men from darkness to light, 
 from sin to holiness, from Satan unto God ; it follows 
 that the seed and rudiment of all his more peculiar 
 endowments, must be, his own conversion, — effected 
 by a specific operation of Divine grace — a specific ex- 
 ercise of the Almighty Spirit's incommunicable prero- 
 gative. Without this, all other qualifications whatso- 
 ever are but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. 
 Without it, should he be able to discourse in the mel- 
 lifluous cadences of a Plato, or descant in the philo- 
 sophic strains of a Bacon, — should he be able to 
 kindle with the fire of a Cicero, or overawe with the 
 thunder of a Demosthenes, — should he be externally 
 called in succession, by all the congregations, and be 
 externally consecrated by all the assembled bishops 
 and presbyters in Christendom, he must still, in the 
 eye of heaven, be accounted as an imauthorised, un- 
 apostolic intruder — a thief and a robber, who has 
 climbed some other way into the sheepfold, wholly 
 unsanctioned by the great Shepherd and Bishop of 
 souls. 
 
 Now every genuine conversion must include the prin- 
 ciple and germ of what, when matured and nourished 
 
• CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 37 
 
 t till it ripen and expand into full growth, becomes the 
 I very flower and vigour of the missionary character. 
 ji When the sinner is powerfully awakened to an alarm- 
 I ing sense of his sin, and guilt, and danger ; — before, 
 I a fiery lake ready to consume him ; behind, the dark 
 1 mountain of unforgiven sin, ready to crush him into 
 ] perdition ; wathin, the scorpion sting of an accusino- 
 . conscience, ready to be changed into the worm that 
 I never dies ; above, the thick clouds surcharged with Di- 
 vine vengeance l—pale with horror, and speechless with 
 I. despair, his eyes are turned to the wondrous cross ! 
 Who can describe his emotion, when there he beholds 
 : the storm of Divine vengeance exhausted, and even 
 i death and hell actually swallowed up and devoured ? 
 Can he confine to himself the bursting expression of 
 his joy, when the sense of pardon, reconcihation, and 
 love, comes streaming through his inmost soul ? Im- 
 possible. Overwhelmed with gratitude on account of 
 the great deliverance, and moved with pity and compas- 
 sion towards all who are still in "the gall of bitterness," 
 the spontaneous utterance of his heart is, — Oh that I 
 could awaken all around me to a sense of their o-uilt 
 and danger ! Oh that I had the wings of a dove, that 
 I could flee over intervening oceans and continents, 
 and proclaim to all, beneath the circling heavens, what 
 a dear Saviour I have found ! 
 
 And why should men account such a feehng 
 I strange ? Why should they marvel at it ? Why should 
 1 they brand it as the very essence of fanaticism ? 
 Is it not the feehng of the emancipated slave, who 
 
] 
 
 38 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 longs to announce, to his fellow-bondsmen, the royal 
 warrant which struck the iron fetters off his own limbs, 
 and made him a joyous child of freedom ? Is it not 
 the feeling of the liberated prisoner, who longs to 
 supply his companions in misery with the key, that 
 opened to himself the door to the clear fields and 
 broad daylight of heaven ? Is it not the feeling of 
 the renovated patient, who longs to administer to his 
 brethren in affliction the precious balm which, to his 
 own shattered frame, restored the fresh and blythesome 
 vernal glow of health ? Is it not the feeling of the 
 rescued mariner, — whose vessel, in a night of storms, 
 with lowering elements Avarring overhead, and moun- 
 tainous billows raging underneath, has been drifting, 
 amid the moans of the desponding, the piercing ejacu- 
 lations of the fearful, and the extorted cries of the 
 bold and stout-hearted, " All is lost, all is lost," — ra- 
 pidly drifting to some rocky shore, — that now longs to 
 light up to his. associates in peril, the beacon blaze 
 which guided himself in safety to the fair havens ? 
 Is it not the generous feeling of all of these unit 
 ed, though vastly heightened and sublimed, which 
 springs up in the converted soul, — inflaming it M'ith 
 zeal to proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening 
 of the prison doors to them that are bound ? And is 
 not this a feeling which, so far from being chargeable 
 with fanaticism, is justified in its intensest exercise by 
 enlightened reason itself, — and that, too, in the relative 
 proportion of magnitude which an eternitij of woe 
 bears to the short-lived sufferings of time ! ' 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 3f) 
 
 AV^hen this feeling, germinating from faith and the 
 new hirth of the soul, under the operation of omni- 
 potent grace, proves not only abiding, but grows unto 
 the strength and stability of a ruling principle — a holy 
 passion for the glory of God and the salvation of perish- 
 ing sinners ; when it can smile in the face of anticipated 
 danger, and kindle into greater warmth at the contem- 
 plation of trials and difficulties ; — and, when around it 
 are seen clustering, in fair and fit proportion, piety, 
 strong but unaffected ; humility, deep but miostenta- 
 tious ; integrity, meek but unshrinking ; gentleness, 
 conciliatory but uncompromising ; patience, calm but 
 unconquerable ; charity, ardent but enlightened ; 
 zeal, unquenchable but under the guidance of sound 
 judgment ; docility, childlike but discriminating ; 
 sincerity, transparent but unobtrusive ; simplicity, 
 guileless but sagacious and wise — with all the other 
 gifts and graces of God's Holy Spirit : — These, these, 
 are the qualities which constitute the chiefest pre- 
 requisites to the missionary call, — the chiefest com- _ 
 ponent parts of the missionary character. 
 
 There was a time, when these were reckoned, not 
 merely the chiefest, but the only requisite qualifica- 
 tions, — a time, when teaming^ sacred or profane, in its 
 ordinary acceptation and most comprehensive sense, 
 was esteemed an acquisition wdth which the missionary 
 had little or nothing to do. But these times are now 
 happily gone by. Besides the degradation implied 
 in that once prevalent notion, how utterly irrational 
 and ruinous has experience made it to appear ! — as if 
 
40 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 a soldier on the field of battle should be less perfectly 
 disciplined and equipped than one of the guardians 
 of a peaceful city ; and fewer resources and less skill 
 should be required for carrying on a successful warfare 
 in the territory of a powerful enemy, than for quietly 
 ruling over a long subjugated and obedient people I 
 We are still, however, constantly reminded, that the 
 first and most successful promulgators of Christianity 
 were illiterate men, and that, by such " weak things," 
 the Lord was pleased to bring down the " things that 
 are mighty," to the praise of his glorious grace. And 
 the inference is, that such an example should not 
 merely invigorate our faith, but regulate our practice. 
 The premises, what pious mind can deny ? — the in- 
 ference, what sane mind can admit ? That the Al- 
 mighty, by the use of the humblest means, or A^dthout 
 any means at *all, can achieve the greatest ends, must 
 ever be held as a simple axiomatic principle in all 
 ti-ue religion. But because the Almighty can so act, 
 does it follow that frail man is, in all cases, or, indeed, 
 in any case, without a special commission, warranted 
 to imitate ? By the sounding of rams' horns, the Al- 
 mighty brought down the proud battlements of 
 Jericho, and shook to pieces its munitions of rock. 
 Wliat mortal man, at the head of an invading army, 
 dare trust to any similar expedient ? The truth is, 
 that under the pretext of superior piety, and superior 
 faith, and superior zeal for the honour of Jehovah, 
 we are ever apt, unconsciously, to indulge our own 
 indolence, feed the most unmeasui*ed pride, and cherish 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 41 
 
 the most boundless presumption. The Great Head 
 of the Church did send forth his apostles, unfui-nished 
 with any of the accomplishments of human learning ; 
 but, were they, on that account, left without any valid 
 substitute ? No ; they had more than a substitute. 
 They were endowed Avith the power of working 
 miracles. And, if we could invest missionaries with "^ 
 this extraordinary power now, we might well dis- 
 pense with ordinary attainments. But, to send men / 
 forth, witliout any powers or attainments ordinary or j 
 extraordinary^ beyond the possession of simple pietyy^ I 
 seems a strange imitation of our blessed Lord's exj 
 ample ! It is neither more nor less than to profess to 
 imitate, by flatly contradicting it ! And such contra- 
 diction must soon bring its retributive award. For, 
 however indispensable in itself, and however valuable 
 in directing the employment of all other gifts, gracious 
 or acquired, natm-al or supernatural, disastrous ex- 
 perience must soon teach us, that vnere piety never 
 was designed to supply the place of any one of these, 
 far less, of all combined. Hence, it follows, that in 
 the absence of miraculous endowments, and in the 
 peculiar state of society, native and European, in the 
 place of yom' destination, it were a contravention of 
 all reason — a dereliction of all duty — to forego any 
 of those qualifications that result from the attainment 
 of human learning in its largest and mdest sense ; — 
 these, however, to be always under the regulation of 
 religious principle, and directed to the promotion of 
 religious ends. 
 
42 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 Now, dearly beloved brother, that honoured coun- 
 cil of presbyters, to whom the Church of Scotland 
 has, in such matters, delegated all the powers which 
 it has itself derived from, and continues to hold, by 
 authority of its Great Head, having, on due and so- 
 lemn inquiry, found you possessed of all the requisite 
 qualifications in such measure, as to warrant them to 
 pronounce you worthy to become a candidate for 
 labour in the apostolic field of missions ; — ^having 
 satisfied themselves, not only of your ability but mll- 
 ingness, to make trial of the apostleship, and of your 
 disengagement from all interposing ties and obliga- 
 tions ; — and having fomid the firm pedestal and grace- 
 ful column of endowment surmounted by the crowning 
 circumstance, that a widowed parent has, through 
 grace, been enabled, with more than Spartan courage, 
 in a nobler than the noblest Spartan cause, to deliver 
 unto the hands of a beloved son the shield of his wai*- 
 fare, emblazoned with the inscription — " With this, 
 or on this, return," — ^they could no longer hesitate in 
 setting their seal, in the name of the Lord Jesus, as 
 they have done this day, to your call as a missionary 
 to the heathen. 
 
 Since, then, you now stand before us, in this new 
 and interesting relationship, bent on deeds of glory, 
 and high emprise in the cause of our common Lord 
 and Saviour, shall we allow you to go forth un- 
 distinguished by any tokens of sympathy or concern '( 
 
 It is not thus that the men of the world would 
 deal with those who devote themselves to the ac- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 43 
 
 complisliment of their favourite designs. Let but 
 some relic be supposed to lie buried under the moul- 
 dermg ruins of an ancient edifice, and the antiquarian 
 who volunteers to remove the rubbish mil be ap- 
 plauded for his laudable zeal, curiosity, and dis- 
 interestedness. Let but a passage be supposed to be 
 concealed amid the snows and ice-bergs of an arctic 
 circle, and the navigator who resolves to brave the 
 hon'ors of such a region, will be extolled for his skill 
 and daring inti-epidity. Let but a rare species of 
 animal or of vegetable form, be supposed to exist 
 in some remote waste, or unvisited wilderness, and 
 the naturalist, who eagerly undertakes to leave no 
 corner unexplored, will be loaded with the praises 
 of an enlightened people, for his ardour and his 
 enterprise. 
 
 And when we think of the unappreciable value of 
 an immortal soul, — of the horror of that hell, to which 
 by nature it is doomed, — of the grandeur of that hea- 
 ven to which by grace, it may be privileged to rise : — 
 when we strive to realize the appalling fact, that there 
 are millions of such souls now wandering, sunless 
 and starless, in the waste howling wilderness, along 
 and around the very frontiers of perdition : — and 
 when we, this day, behold you, in the spirit of an an- 
 cient patriarch or primitive apostle, prepared to leave 
 your kindred, your connections, and the comforts of 
 home; and, in the face of toil, and difficulty, and 
 danger, ready to go forth on the God-like errand, of 
 attempting " to seek and to save that which is lost :"— 
 
44 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 shall we remain mute and unconcerned spectators? 
 Impossible ! What then ? Shall we ring in your ears the 
 syren song of human merit, or lull you into carnal com- 
 placency, by the hosannahs of human applause ? No ! 
 No. This were to heighten the beauty of one of the 
 most brilliant productions of art, by overlaying it with 
 a covering of dust ; or, to enhance the glories of the sun, 
 by overspreading his disk with a canopy of thick clouds ! 
 But, since on you has been conferred the exalted hon- 
 our of being called of Jesus, our Sovereign Lord 
 and King ; and, of being inaugurated, by this branch 
 of his Catholic Church, as a special ambassador to the 
 heathen, it well becomes us, as loyal subjects, to 
 unite in oifering you, our most sincere, our most heart- 
 felt congratulations. 
 
 II. In sending forth its missionaries to the heathen, 
 the Church of Scotland distinctly recognises the so- 
 lemn obligation under which she is laid as a branch 
 of the Church universal, to publish the glad tidings 
 of salvation to '"'•all nations" And were the resources 
 at her disposal, at all commensurate with her catholic 
 sense of duty towards a world lying in wickedness, 
 her missionary stations would at once be planted on 
 every shore. But these resources being fearfully dis- 
 proportioned to the magnitude of the field, which is 
 the world, it became a matter not of choice, but of 
 imperative necessity to select^ in the first instance, 
 some favourable spot for commencing missionary 
 operations. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 45 
 
 The spot selected, and in which you are destined, 
 with the blessing of God, to exercise your functions as 
 an ambassador of Christ, is India. 
 
 There^ the field open for improvement is wide as its 
 extended regions, and waste as an uncultivated wil- 
 derness. There^ human depravity, with its twin ofF- 
 sprmg, ignorance and prejudice, has reared one of its 
 most stupendous monuments. There, the demon of 
 superstition, not propitiated with the immolation of an 
 occasional victim — no, not even with the sacrifice of 
 whole hecatombs — has refused to be satiated 'with 
 aught less, than the entire prostration of the soul 
 and body of more than a hundred millions of un- 
 happy beings, endowed with immortal spirits like 
 ourselves. There, sprung from such mihallowed pa- 
 rentage, the prevailing system of pantheism and idolatry 
 tends, ^^dth resistless force, to rivet the fetters that 
 enchain the reason, and prolong from age to age 
 the reign of moral debasement. From the earliest 
 years of infancy, men are subjected to its varied 
 and vitiating influences: their outward senses are 
 attracted by the pomp and tinsel brilliancy of never- 
 ending rites and festivals that embody every prin- 
 ciple of evil : their imaginations are daily regaled by 
 tales of wonder, founded on the exploits of gods, and 
 mythological heroes, who, though adored, are stained 
 with crimes, which, even in many a realm of savage 
 life, would consign a man to the execration of his 
 fellows : the natural corrupt tendencies of the heart, 
 instead of being checked, are stimulated into por- 
 
46 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 tentous developement, under the most flattering pro- 
 mises of easy expiation and pardon : the diversified 
 sensibihties and affections of the soul, instead of 
 being refined and purified, are perversely moulded by 
 the intimate descent of the most contaminating prin- 
 ciples into every possible relationship of life : — in a 
 word, all the moral feelings and intellectual faculties 
 seem over-mastered, and misdirected by an omnipo- 
 tency of malignant energy, that extorts the confession 
 — that India is the chosen hunting field, and its people 
 the chosen prey of the arch-destroyer, whose very life 
 and vocation it is to go about continually, " seeking 
 whom he may devour." 
 
 But it is not our intention, at this time, to expatiate 
 on the ^vretched condition and degi'ading superstitions 
 of the people of India. To enter into minute particu- 
 lars would outstrip our limits, and after all, not meet 
 the full reality. To deal in a more profuse variety of 
 general terms, would neither inform nor satisfy the 
 mind, though in the case of many, such generalities 
 might serve to render the picture more awful by 
 leaving the imagination to supply the deficiency. 
 
 It were uncandid, however, to omit noticing that 
 on this subject the most diverse and contradictory 
 sentiments have been entertained. Nor is this to be 
 wondered at. It is the profound remark of a certain 
 author, that " in every object there is inexhaustible 
 meaning ; as the eye sees in it what the eye brings 
 the means of seeing," — and the illustrative example 
 suggested by another, is not less characteristic, " To 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 47 
 
 Newton and to Newton's dog, Diamond, what a dif- 
 ferent pair of universes ; while the painting on the 
 optical retina of both was, in all probability, the same." 
 To the Christian philanthropist, and the man of ava- 
 ricious selfishness, or lordly ignorance, or infidel in- 
 difference, what a different pair of worlds must such a 
 vast system as that of Hinduism ever present, — while 
 most of the palpable phenomena that address the out- 
 ward eye may be the same ! 
 
 At the same time, it must be owned that there never 
 perhaps was a case in which mistake was more excus- 
 able, and mis-statement less reprehensible ; as there 
 never was a people that could more readily assume a 
 fictitious character, and throughout sustain it with 
 more admirable art. In the presence of men of wealth, 
 and influence, and power, who have favours to bestow, 
 or whose ample expenditure is the source of ceaseless 
 emolument, never did flattery assume a form so insi- 
 nuating, nor duplicity such an air of natural integrity, 
 nor vice such a cloak of impenetrable secrecy. And 
 hence, in the entire want of familiar acquaintance or 
 any tendency towards social intercourse, and viewing 
 the most plausible and interested reporters as faithful 
 interpreters and representatives of the general system, 
 have even honourable men been led to speak and write 
 of the Hindus, as a race, so amiable^ gentle, and vir- 
 tuous — a race, so rejined, and civilized, and happy, 
 that it would be cruelty to distm*b them in the con- 
 tinued possession of their social, and civil, and religious 
 polity. But before those, from whom no worldly fa- 
 
48 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 vours or honours are to be expected, and whose sole 
 purpose it is to educate and rear souls for eternity, old 
 nature usually exhibits itself without a covering, and 
 the exterior surface of flimsy moralities is seen to con- 
 ceal beneath a sink of the most hideous deformity. It 
 is always invidious, and, in numberless exceptive cases, 
 utterly fallacious to describe national character in the 
 s^ross. Keeping, however, all real exceptions and fic- 
 titious appearances out of view ; and bearing in mind 
 that India is composed not of one homogeneous people, 
 but of sundry races and tribes, physically and morally, 
 the most diverse ; — the penetrating observer may have 
 still to report of the great bulk of the inhabitants, that 
 all those representations of them seem to approach 
 nearest the truth that are shaded with the darkest 
 colours. Talk to him of their amiableness, — in his esti- 
 mate what is it ? The mere efflorescence of a soft and 
 doAvny effeminacy. Gentleness ? The joint product of 
 weakness and timidity. Politeness ? Courtesy, without 
 sincerity or esteem. Fortitude under suffermgs ? The 
 apathy of a blind fatalism. Patience under provocation ? 
 The passive endurance of an unfeeling unimpassioned 
 temperament. Deference and obligingness ? The ver- 
 satile craft of a base and crouching servility. Trust- 
 worthiness in service? Self-interested expediency 
 without principle. Diligence in business ? The tri- 
 umph of cupidity over sottish indolence. Liberality ? 
 The reckless profuseness of a sordid vanity. Happiness ? 
 The animal exhilaration of grossly sensuous enjoyment. 
 Refinement and civilization ? Disfigured reHcs, that 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 49 
 
 Still survive the -wreck and ruin of the primitive patri- 
 archal economy. External decorum and general pro- 
 priety of conduct, a^ to what meets the stranger's eye? 
 Tlie gloss and varnish of whited sepulchres that con- 
 ceal the mass of loathsomeness beneath. — Or, the 
 smile and roseate freshness of their own luxuriant ve- 
 getation, reflecting the glories of the upper heavens, 
 and yet, serving only as a treacherous shroud for marsh 
 miasmata, and pestilence, and death. 
 
 And oh ! were it only possible to remove the dark- 
 ening veil of artificiality and distance, — were it only 
 possible to expose to view the inmost recesses of In- 
 dian moral scenery, — were it only possible to bring 
 the hearts and the \4sion of British Christians into 
 immediate contact with the childish fooleries, the 
 meaningless rites, the atrocious enormities, the inhu- 
 man brutalities, aye, and the licentious abominations 
 that are daily and hourly practised under the vene- 
 rable name of religious worship ; and above all, the 
 self-complacent infatuation with which multitudes 
 dream of ascending by such steps into the heaven of 
 heavens ; — oh, methinks, the spectacle were more than 
 enough to cause those eyes to flow, that never, never 
 shed a tear over the degradation of fallen humanity ; 
 and those hearts to be inflamed ^vith jealousy for the 
 honom- of the Lord of Hosts, one chord of which 
 never, never vibrated to the touch of a religious affec - 
 tion ! 
 
 Is any one now disposed to ask. What is the object 
 of that missionary enterprise on which the Church of 
 
50 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 Scotland has embarked, and for the promotion of 
 which you have this day been solemnly set apart to 
 the office of the holy ministry ? Jt is, to announce to 
 those millions, who are still enslaved in sin and ex- 
 posed to eternal misery, that, to restore and save them, 
 the Son of God himself came doA^^l from heaven, to 
 proclaim liberty to the captives, and shed his precious 
 blood for their ransom. It is, to beseech them to re- 
 noimce their numberless penances, and soul-deceiving 
 w^orks of merit, and flee for refuge to the atoning sacri- 
 fice and justifying righteousness of the divine Redeemer. 
 It is, to implore them to abandon their countless ablu- 
 tions, and soul-deluding ordinances of purification, and 
 apply, through faith in the blood of the everlasting 
 covenant, to the Almighty Spirit for the plenteous efiu- 
 sion of his sanctifying grace. It is, to endeavom* to per- 
 suade these wretched multitudes to abandon all the vile 
 and ruinous infatuations of a monstrous idolatry, and set 
 up altars in their hearts to the only living and true God, 
 and monuments in their lives to the sa^dng name and 
 doctrine of his only begotten Son, and trophies in 
 eternity of the power of redeeming love and sovereign 
 grace. — In a word, it is, that you and your associates 
 may be the honoured instruments, through God's effi- 
 cacious blessing, in turning thousands from the gates 
 and suburbs of hell, and directing them to the man- 
 sions of everlasting happiness, — that, through these 
 thousands, tens of thousands, and through the tens of 
 thousands, ten thousand times ten thousand, may 
 become heirs of glory, — and that, to the Father who 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 51 
 
 created, to the Son who redeemed, to the Holy Spirit 
 who sanctified them, these countless myriads may , 
 sing endless praises to all eternity. „i,— 
 
 III. Before proceeding to the consideration of 
 positive duties, let us premise a few precautionary 
 hints. 
 
 1 . To the Christian inhabitants of a northern clime, 
 India presents itself as a new world. Every thing con- 
 nected with its physical appearance, and the state of 
 native society, viewed in any of its aspects, is strange. 
 To people at a distance, no account of it, oral or 
 written, can convey adequate conceptions. If intend- 
 ed merely to supply a literary blank in a library of 
 useful or entertaining knowledge, and not a chart for 
 practical guidance, a sketch could be furnished that 
 might be w^eighed by the judgment, contemplated by 
 the understanding, and illustrated by the suggestions 
 of fancy or experience. But let the foreigner visit 
 the scene for himself, and he will soon find that the 
 liveliest portraiture has proved in a great measure de- 
 lusive — that, from certain peculiarities of time, place, 
 and circumstance, the very outline has been greatly 
 misapprehended ; and the parallel details, suggested by 
 imagination or antecedent experience, often unnatural 
 or false. How miiformly has the truth of this remark 
 been verified, whenever the home or preconceived pic- 
 ture has been contrasted with the realities of .every 
 thing Indian ! How often have even the choicest and 
 most significant terms been found to mislead ! How 
 
 D 
 
52 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 often has the mind at first been made to wonder, that 
 the same words seemed to bear one meaning in India, 
 and quite another in Great Britain, imtil made to feel ^ 
 that the things represented are only in some respects 
 analogous, and in none, pe7fectli/ identical I Now, 
 to dissolve the associations of fancy, and replace them i 
 by the realities of sense, is not the business of a day. 
 Beware, therefore, o^ first imp^^essions, and above all, 
 oi first judgments. Record both, if you will, for fu- 
 ture reference and comparison. The vi^dd freshness 
 of the earlier pencillings, even when modified or cor- 
 rected by after-knowledge, will tend to infuse new life 
 into the fainter sketches of a didl and monotonous 
 familiarity. But in all your homeward communica- 
 tions, beware of hasty inferences from partial induction, 
 or ill-digested facts, or snatches of observation. Be- 
 ware, especially, of opinions and statements that may 
 seem to clash with those of your predecessors. It is 
 always better to go slow, than to go ^^Tong. The 
 instant you get afloat among perplexing details and 
 difficulties, that instant pause. And, like a wary voy- 
 ager, coasting along an unknown shore, when suddenly 
 enshrouded in mist, or overtaken with darkness, drop 
 anchor, and wait till fi'esh light disclose the safe mid- 
 channel, along which your bark of inquiry may speed 
 its way. Should time reveal any of those errors 
 or mistakes, into which precipitancy is sure to hurry 
 the sjtranger, correction will be an easy work when 
 neither credit nor character has been publicly com- 
 mitted ; and you will rejoice, as a lover of peace and 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 53 
 
 a friend of truth, that you have escaped the bitter re- 
 trospective regret that must result from having thrown 
 in fresh materials, to swell the billows of confusion and 
 discord. And should time confirm any conclusions 
 Idi verse from those previously formed by others, you will 
 then bring experience to add weight to yom- authority ; 
 jand the chastened calmness of long-continued delibera- 
 tion, to render that authority as inoffensive as may be, 
 in conducting a corrective process, attended with all 
 the natural pains and unpleasantness of an operation 
 in moral chirurgery. 
 
 2. Formerly, one of the greatest hindrances to the 
 spread of Christianity in the East, arose from the 
 vicious imgodly lives of our European countrymen. 
 When we think of the time, when in India, the dis- 
 mal expression, "Christian rehgion, devil religion," had 
 passed into a proverb, — when, in indignantly repell- 
 ing the insinuation of dishonesty, even the Hindu was 
 wont to exclaim, " What ! dost thou think me a Chris- 
 tian that I would go about to deceive thee ? " — and 
 ^^ hen, in a neighbouring island, the natives were so 
 disgusted at the Christian name, that they obliged the 
 European traders to take an oath that they were not 
 Christians^ before agreeing to open any traffic or com- 
 merce with them : — when we seriously think of such 
 a time, how could the European missionary expect 
 a willingness to embrace Christianity on the part of a 
 people, that must have felt and acted in the spirit of 
 the South American Indians, who constantly protested 
 ' against " that heaven where the Spaniards were to bo 
 
54 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 their colmbitants ? " And when we think of the state 
 of things, in a place like Calcutta, only fifty years ago, — 
 when, to the customary question on Lord's day morn- 
 ing, " Is it Sunday?" — the customary reply was, " Yes, 
 for I see the flag is hoisted ; " — when " no business^ 
 any more than pleasure^ whether public or private, 
 was discontinued " on the day of rest ; — when " the 
 domestic morning work-table was as regularly sur- 
 rounded on the Sunday forenoons, as the card-table was 
 on Sunday evenings ; " — when, in rebutting all admo- 
 nition, it was constantly urged, that " there could be 
 no use in keeping holy the seventh day in a heathen 
 country, since the common people not being, as in 
 England, Christians, the example was not needed ; " — 
 and when, in attempting to form a small prayer meet- 
 ing of five or six members, it was found necessary in 
 order to fill up the complement, to advertise for a 
 Christian ! — when we think of all this, what chance, 
 humanly speaking, had Christianity of obtaining a 
 fair hearins: from the surrounding heathen ? 
 
 Blessed be God, what a change now ! The Christian 
 Sabbath, with its hallowed ordinances, may truly be 
 said to be as well observed in Calcutta, on the part of 
 the British population, as in any commercial town in 
 Great Britain. 
 
 But what bearing, it may be asked, has all this on 
 your more immediate labom'S as a missionary ? The 
 practical bearing is obvious. When the British re- 
 sidents, still retaining the honoured name of Christian, 
 as if anointed by the richest effusion of Divine gi'ace. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 55 
 
 rendered it a " proverb, a bye-Avord, a reproach, and a 
 hissing" among the nations ; — when they proved them- 
 selves as brutishly ignorant of the Gospel of salvation, 
 and led lives as Avickedly unprincipled as the lowest 
 and vilest of the heathen around them, and no one to 
 care for their souls ; — and when their foul and un- 
 godly practices became the grandest stumbling-block 
 in the way of converting the millions of blinded ido- 
 laters to the faith of Jesus : — piety, patriotism, and 
 even zeal for the conversion of the heathen — all con- 
 spired in demanding, that the missionary should devote 
 a large share of his most effective services, to the re- 
 vival of religion among his own deluded countrymen. 
 But is that obhgation alike imperative, in the present 
 altered state of affairs, in the metropolis of British 
 India ? By no means. In that city, there are now not 
 fewer than nine Protestant churches,* with more than 
 that number of ordained clergymen, whose sole dutij 
 and business it is to officiate to the Christian inhabi- 
 tants. In other words, there are in Calcutta, at least as 
 many stated pastors for the mere thousands of its Chris- 
 tianized, as there are missionaries, for the hmidreds of 
 thousands of its unchristianized, population. You 
 ought, therefore, in ordinary circumstances, to con- 
 sider yourself as exempt from all obligation to minis- 
 ter to professing British Christians, whether civil or 
 military, merchants or seafaring men ; and regard the 
 whole of your time, attention, and strength, as sacredly 
 
 * Five of the Church of England, one of the Church of Scotland, two 
 Baptist, and one Independent, 
 
56 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 flue to the perishing heathen. Except in extraorclinaiy 
 emergencies, or under some very peculiar necessity, , 
 you ought to account any services statedly rendered 
 to the former, as so much surreptitiously abstracted 
 from the just claims of the latter — an abandonment of 
 your missionary sphere — a robbery of the missionary 
 treasury. 
 
 3. Many have gone forth to stard alone amid the 
 multitudes of heathen. You go to join a small, but de- 
 voted band, of Christian brethren. These will receive 
 you with open arms ; throw yourself unto them -with 
 the full bound of generous confidence and love. And 
 the tie which confidence and love first form, let con- 
 fidence and love continue to cement into the oneness- 
 of perfect membership in Christ. 
 
 In the common affairs and joint labours of the mis- 
 sion ever act alono: with them in full concert and co- 1 
 operation. And, even in your separate and isolated 
 efforts, frankly consult and freely communicate -VAdth 
 your coadjutors — that concurrent unanimity may dis- 
 tinguish all your plans. 
 
 AYhile conscious of your parity of ministerial bro- 
 therhood, beware of being forward or obtrusive in 
 manifesting that consciousness to those who may be 
 your seniors in years and in service. These, without 
 presuming to arrogate either the reverence of age, or the 
 admiration of superior attainments, might justly feel 
 that the scars which they exhibit, as the trophies .of a 
 toilsome warfare, claimed the respectful consideration ! 
 of a mere novice. And if, from the infirmities of hu- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 5? 
 
 inanity, occasions of variance should unhappily arise, 
 pray, by the grace of God, that you may not be the 
 offender ; and resolve, by the same gi'ace, that you may 
 be delivered from the curse of being apt to take oifence. 
 In the spirit of our blessed Lord, who kissed the 
 man that had but the moment before betrayed him, 
 be you, however aggrieved, the foremost to show 
 yourself prepared for offers of reconciliation — assured 
 that the first concessions seldom originate with a con- 
 sciously offending party. Thus to act, will be real 
 magnanimity. Whatever causes of difference may arise, 
 endeavour, as much as in you lies, to have them speed- 
 ily obliterated. Suffer them not to sink into your 
 heart ; let them not be retained, if possible, on the 
 tablet of memory ; but, beneath it, let them sink into 
 the tomb of oblivion. At all events, send them not 
 away, to thrill the notes of discord, from across the 
 ocean. Even in the correspondence of easy unsus- 
 pecting confidence, avoid expressions which admit of 
 being so construed as to imply some injurious reflection 
 on a fellow-labourer. For, you know not, how some 
 future necromancers in the black art of backl)iting 
 and malice, may drag these fi'om the cabinet of confi- 
 dential privacy ; or, how some future inquisitor may ex- 
 tort from them evidence, that may magnify the slightest 
 failings, and the most trivial inadvertencies, into mat- 
 ters of grave imputation against the men and the 
 mission. Have always the heart that would lead you 
 to desire to see your brethren's virtues through a 
 magnifying telescope ; and their faults or defects, if 
 
58 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 these cannot be wholly overlooked, through the same 
 telescope inverted. 
 
 Be not rash in interfering wdth established plans 
 and modes of usefulness. Such caution by no means 
 implies that the present order of things admits of no 
 amendment. Quite the contrary. The general sys- 
 tem is indeed based on fundamental principles, which 
 we hope to see unaltered. But the application and 
 working of these, in mode, and manner, and detail, 
 may be endlessly diversified. In this respect, the 
 system is one of indefinite flexibility and expansive] 
 power. And how could it be otherwise, if, not merely 
 prospective hut progressive utility was distinctly aimedi 
 at, and provided for ? It is not, in a country like India, ( 
 the same as at home, w here maturity has, to a great 
 extent, long stamped its fixing signature on the forms 
 and the institutions of the people. There, all things 
 that imply a change for the better may emphatically 
 be said to be in a state of infancy, and most things, 
 scarcely visible, in embryo. Definitely to legislate for 
 such a state of things, would either be to fix the regi- 
 men of manhood upon a child, or to extend the regi- 
 men of childhood unto the man ! Those, on the field 
 of labour, must be frequently called upon to judge of 
 the nature of growing necessities. In all things around 
 there is perpetual change ; and w^isdom and prudence 
 must be exercised in providing for it. Experience 
 will suggest new corrections. Arrangements highly 
 useful at the commencement, it may be absolutely 
 necessary to abandon altogether. And plans, which 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 59 
 
 may liave been the fruit of much thought, must under- 
 go successive alterations, to meet the rapidly progressive 
 natui'e of improvement in a partially cultivated field. 
 Still, such changes ought to be proposed as the re- 
 sult of actual experiment, and not of closet speculation. 
 And herein lies the force of the caution. A new 
 comer is ever apt to be a mere theorist. To the in- 
 stinctive sagacity of experience his \4ews may appear 
 little better than the reveries of a dreamer. Beware, 
 therefore, of home-formed plans and projects. Many 
 have gone to India brimful of theories, and returned 
 as emptied of them as if the mind had been turned 
 into perfect vacancy. Clear yom* way well, before you 
 assume the onerous and invidious office of a reformer 
 of the measures of your predecessors and associates in 
 the mission. Let your proposals never appear, directly 
 or offensively, to impeach their character for wisdom, 
 or judgment, or consistency. Let them gradually rise 
 in the form of modest suggestions and gentle insinua- 
 tions. Let it be seen and felt that it is the good of 
 the cause which is the great animating principle, and 
 not the gratification of any personal ambition, the 
 love of superior distinction, or the promotion of 
 favourite or peculiar views. Should any part of the ex- 
 isting machinery seem sluggish and inert, be not hasty 
 in condemning it as ill-adapted or useless. Remember 
 that, as no material machinery is of itself physical in- 
 fluence, so neither is any moral machinery of itself 
 practical influence. There must be an extraneous 
 power to set one and the other in motion. There 
 
60 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 must be a living intelligence to direct and apply the 
 motive force, and resultant action. Instead, therefore, 
 of at once consigning to destruction what, at first 
 view, may appear wholly unproductive, he it your s to 
 strive, through grace, and let in a living spirit among 
 the wheels, — reserving all your destructiveness to be 
 let loose on the fabrics of error. 
 
 4. In the scene of your future labour, you will meet 
 with missionaries of almost all the leading religious deno- 
 minations in Great Britain. In this respect, Calcutta 
 differs from most other mission stations in the world. 
 Now, regardless of the frightful dissensions at home, 
 we earnestly exhort you to exhibit, towards all of them, 
 the attitude of Christian forbearance and brotherly love. 
 
 There was a time, when the Calcutta missionaries 
 acted almost ivholly apart from each other. What was 
 the consequence ? — The growth of a \'igorous crop of 
 surmisings, and jealousies, and collisions. 
 
 Now, since it is the very nature of distance and oppo- 
 sition to dissever and scatter, and the very nature oi con- 
 tiguity and coincidence to bind and cement, would it 
 not be well, first to endeavour to inquire into, and dis- 
 cover those subjects on which all are a^reerf, rather than 
 keep the eye of a keen inquisitorial inspection constant- 
 ly fastened on topics, on which even good men may 
 differ 9 And should these be found to involve none 
 other than the universally acknoivledged fundamental 
 principles of Christianity, — or those grand and trans- 
 cendent verities, which alone lay the foundation of 
 real concord on earth, and true blessedness in heaven. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDKESS. 61 
 
 —would it not be wise to allow all little points of dif- 
 ference to be cast by them into the shade, for the sake 
 of enjoying, inhappy and undisturbed union, the bright 
 efiFulgence of their glory ? To aid in the attainment of 
 such a blessed end, it was at length proposed and resolv- 
 ed to hold a monthly prayer meeting ; and, thereafter, 
 a conference for friendly counsel and advice, respecting 
 the mutual fiu-therance of plans, and the removal of 
 difficulties. And what was the effect ? Often, often, 
 while the cry of joint supplication was ascending, it 
 seemed as if fire from heaven came down, and licked 
 up the bitter waters in the trenches of jealousy, and 
 kindled the fuel that ought ever to be kept blazing 
 on the altars of Christian charity. And as the tide of 
 peace, and love, and brotherly kindness increased, all 
 seemed sincerely resolved to merge the mere circum- 
 stantials of the common faith in the Divine amplitude 
 of the Christian spirit, and unite, as with one heart 
 and one soul, in assaulting the strongholds of heathen- 
 ism. And where is the Christian man, who can look 
 at the cross of Calvary, whence peace and good-will 
 has come streaming to the children of men, and not 
 rejoice in such a state of things ? Where is the Chris- 
 tian man, who really expects to embrace every redeem- 
 ed spirit in heaven, with the fervour of a seraph, that 
 will not join in the solemn exclamation, — God forbid, 
 that the unholy jealousies, and ungodly rivalries, and 
 relentless enmities, that have rent asunder the bonds 
 of communion in this land, should ever, ever be trans- 
 ported to desecrate the shores of India ! 
 
62 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 Only consider the disastrous results that would en- 
 sue from introducing those matters of " doubtful dis- 
 putation," that convulse the Christian communities of 
 this land. ' 
 
 It is of the very nature of all controversy to swell 
 as it advances. Every new rejoinder suggests fresh 
 occasions of difference. From the sifting of each 
 difference, new ones start up, and, from the agitation 
 of these, others still. And such is the fatal aptitude 
 for multiplication and increase, that that which, ori- 
 ginally, may have appeared but as a speck in the hori- 
 zon, expands by onward accession, till it dilate itself 
 over the whole heavens — shrouding the very essentials 
 of Christian faith and practice in one mantling gloom. 
 
 And, if this be the lamentable effect of controversy 
 in general, how much more so, of that which all ex- 
 perience proves to be so apt to degenerate into the per- 
 sonal ! Here the feelings, and latent motions, and im- 
 pulses of the soul soon array themselves as interested 
 parties. "Wounded and exasperated, these crave for 
 revenge. As the combat thickens, a whole brood of 
 fiery spirits may be waked from their slumber. And 
 these, seizing on the reins of government in the cita- 
 del of head and heart, may become too implacable for 
 any human emolients to appease, and too potent for 
 any human spell to exorcise. In this state of mind and 
 feeling, parties are hastening to the brink of an abyss. 
 A few steps farther, and into it they plunge. And then, 
 carried away by the main current, and tossed about by 
 contrary tides, they are sure to miss the fair breeze of 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 63 
 
 charity, lose the chart of principle, drop the helm of 
 discretion, and fail in reaching the haven of reconcilia- 
 tion and ti-uth. Surely, surely, the arch-deceiver 
 has never gained a more decisive victory, than when 
 he has tempted the Christian combatants to turn 
 aside from the pursuit of a common foe, and squan- 
 der away precious time and precious opportunities, in 
 scanning and sifting their own petty, paltry, points 
 of difference ; and, instead of exercising the patience 
 and forbearance of saints, convert such points, under 
 the fair guise and semblance of jealousy for the truth, 
 into objects and occasions of all-devouring strife ! 
 Having once triumphed in transforming devoted zeal 
 against idolatry and superstition, into fiery zeal 
 against the non-essentials of religion ; having prevailed 
 in turning the united phalanx of leaders in the ai-my 
 of the faithful, into disunited partizans, seized with the 
 fatal ardour of waging hostilities against each other : 
 and having succeeded in causing the antagonist truth 
 to be lost sight of, amid the fire and the smoke of that 
 artillery, which was first pointed in its defence, but is 
 now plied in destroying the defenders ; — well may the 
 great enemy of God and man suspend his vigils, and 
 retire to his aerial halls, to enjoy at leisure the strang- 
 est spectacle under the sun ! — Tlie professed heralds of 
 salvation fiercely contending, to earn fresh laurels for 
 their gTcat adversary, instead of new crowns for their 
 OAvn Immanuel ! 
 
 And what an insuperable stumbling-block in the 
 way of evangelizing the surrounding heathen ! With 
 
64- CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 what disdainful scorn, may they not turn round to 
 those who profess to have gone forth, in pity and com- 
 passion, to deUver them from the chains of error, and 
 say, Since all of you are at war against each other — 
 one contending for this, and another for that — one 
 canonizing, what another is as ready to anathematize 
 — and every one solemnly protesting against all tenets 
 hut his own, — must it not be wiser and safer for us, 
 to retain and confide in our own time-honoured sys- 
 tems, than entangle ourselves in the new labyrinth of 
 yours ? 
 
 We charge you, therefore, dearly beloved brother, not 
 to allow the wild fire of polemic partizanship to be 
 carried along with you, out of this distracted land — 
 that partizanship, which, in struggling for the pecu- 
 liarities of sectarianism, would rob us of some of the 
 fairest attributes of Catholic humanity ; and, instead 
 of earning for us a title to the designation of saints, 
 would render us unworthy of the denomination of 
 men ! Or, if one small spark should still remain un- 
 detected as you leave these shores, pray that, ere you 
 tjuit the bosom of that mighty stream, in whose waves 
 have been engulphed the l)odies of thousands and of 
 tens of thousands, in the vain hope of gaining an 
 immortality of bliss, — ^pray that, there, the last linger- 
 ing atom may be engulphed and extinguished too ! 
 
 IV. As to the duties^ in the discharge of which you 
 will be expected to engage, something must be now ad- 
 dressed to you. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 65 
 
 To enter into details is impossible ; or, if it were 
 not so, no details would prove wholly adequate. 
 To an admiral, on assuming the command of a 
 fleet, or a field-marshal, that of an army in time of 
 ^var, what instructions from the ablest minister of 
 state could meet all the possibilities and contingen- 
 cies, which may lie undeveloped in the womb of fu- 
 turity ? General counsels may and ought to be sup- 
 plied ; but new difficulties Avill arise — new events 
 transpire — new combinations be formed, Avhich no 
 human counsel could possibly have anticipated. Much, 
 very much, must therefore be left to the discretion 
 and the wisdom, and promptitude, of all who may be 
 intrusted with offices of such high reponsibility. 
 
 Thus, too, it must be with every missionary who is 
 commissioned to conduct a Christian warfare in the 
 hostile realms of heathenism. His case, in no degree, 
 diffijrs fi-om that of all of every name and profession, 
 who enter on foreign fields and untried services. But 
 if he has the spirit of the Christian hero, unexpected 
 trials, obstacles, and inconveniences, will only prove 
 like ramparts of straw before an invasion of fire. At 
 the very outset, he may encounter a state of things of 
 Avhich no accomit, however varied or accurate, could 
 have enabled him to conceive the reality. No pre- 
 vious description can supply the place of personal ex- 
 perience, or contemplate every varying exigency. 
 
 In your case, one duty of a negative description is 
 very obviously marked and defined. You are not 
 sent to a field either wholly unknoANTi or uncultivated. 
 
66 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 There, a certain line of missionary operation has been 
 carried on, which has met with the cordial approval 
 of the Christian people of this land, and to the prose- 
 cution of which the Church of Scotland is solemnly 
 pledged. You are, therefore, sent, in the first in- 
 stance, not to originate new measures, but to assist in 
 giving greater efficiency to the old. Neither are you 
 sent to upset or innovate, but to strengthen and up- 
 hold. 
 
 As to positive duties : — those, on which you are 
 more immediately to enter, may now be briefly enu- 
 merated. 
 
 1 . You are aware that, from the first, the mission 
 was designed to embrace all the departments of labour 
 that have been resorted to, and found efficacious, by 
 societies of different denominations, in reclaiming the 
 wastes of heathenism, — such as the Christian educa- 
 tion of the young, — the teaching and preaching of the 
 Gospel to adults, — ^the translation and distribution of 
 the Sacred Scriptures, and religious tracts, &c. These 
 are the means sanctioned or ordained of God ; — this, 
 the instrumentality that must prove, through the 
 agency of the Holy Spirit, irresistible in its efficacy — 
 infallible in its ultimate results. 
 
 And how is this grand instrumentality to be brought 
 to bear on the teeming millions of India, that these 
 may thereby be awakened, regenerated, saved ? Is it 
 conceivable that in a field so vast, the magnificent 
 design can be executed by the direct immediate exer- 
 tions of a iQ\f foreign instructors^ labouring, as these 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 67 
 
 must ever do, under numberless disadvantages ? If 
 not, what is to be done ? Instead of scores, or even 
 hundreds of agents, the exigencies of the case loudly 
 call for thousands and tens of thousands. Whence 
 are these to come ? Or, shall we sit down vdth 
 folded hands, indolently waiting till these thousands 
 and tens of thousands, some how or other, arise, — we 
 care not whence, and know not how ? No. This were 
 to despise those means of raising them Avhich God 
 himself, in the dispositions of providence, hath placed 
 within our reach — means, which in times past he has 
 so greatly blessed in this and other lands, and which, 
 we confidently believe, he will ever continue to bless, 
 when employed in humble dependence on Almighty 
 grace. To meet, therefore, the fearful exigency, and yet, 
 as speedily as possible, consummate the glorious end, 
 the General Assembly of our National Church deter- 
 mined to put forth a portion of its strength towards the 
 formation of an effective native agency^ — an agency 
 consisting of men who, from being habituated to the 
 climate, from their vernacular acquaintance with the 
 languages, from their knowledge of the manners, cus- 
 toms, feelings, sentiments, and prejudices of the people, 
 would possess unrivalled facilities in bringing the Gos- 
 pel of salvation within reach of the millions of their 
 benighted countrymen ! And are we not warranted, 
 hence to infer, at once the necessity and the lawfulness 
 of such a Christian Institution as that founded and 
 supported by the Church of Scotland in Calcutta ? — 
 an Institution, which has, for one of its grand speci- 
 
68 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 fic objects, not merely the general dissemination of 
 somid knowledge, literary and religious, but the raising 
 up of a ])ody of duly qualified natives, who, as teachers, 
 catechists, and preachers ; translators, and tract dis- 
 tributors, can labour ^Yitll peculiar effect in dissemi- 
 nating the light and life of Christian truth, through- 
 out every province in the land ? 
 
 From thejirst, the Institution was designed to con- 
 sist of two departments, — the one, preparatory ; the 
 other, of a higher order — the one, rudimental ; the 
 other, collegiate. The object of the former is to 
 initiate the boys into the elements of Grammar, 
 History, Geography, Arithmetic, in connection ^^dth 
 the principles of Christianity. The object of the latter 
 is, to perfect an acquaintance with Chronology, Geo- 
 graphy, and History — natural, civil, and sacred. And 
 the course is intended to embrace, more or less exten- 
 sively, as gi'owing circumstances may admit, all the 
 higher branches of Polite Literature, as well as all the 
 various departments of Moral and Economic, of Ma- 
 thematical and Physical, Science. The feature, how- 
 ever, that peculiarly distinguishes the Seminary is, — 
 the regular and systematic study of the Christian 
 Scriptures ; the Evidences of Religion, natural and 
 jevealed ; and Doctrinal and Practical Theology. 
 
 Now, in conducting the multifarious details of this 
 Institution, you will be expected to take yom- full 
 share, in concert with your predecessors, from the very 
 time of your arrival. 
 
 Other branches of missionary labour can only be 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 69 
 
 effectively entered on, after the lapse of months, or 
 even years. Should you, for example, have good 
 reason to expect a more enlarged freedom in public 
 " preaching," when transported to that burning clime, 
 than most Europeans enjoy, still, before any profitable 
 intercourse could be maintained with the mass of the 
 people, much time must necessarily be expended in 
 acquiring such an idiomatic form of speech, and in 
 gaining such an intimate acquaintance with their ha- 
 bits of thought and long cherished opinions, as 
 would enable you to address them with effect. But, 
 in the Mission Institution, there is a large and effec- 
 tual door opened for immediate exertion. Is it not 
 natural, therefore, and reasonable, and just, that that 
 which, in the first instance, is found to be most prac- 
 ticable, should first of all engage a due share of at- 
 tention, and call forth a portion of your best efforts ? 
 And when present plans have been more matured, and 
 present systems better established, and present means 
 of operation further advanced, your mind will not 
 only be more at liberty, but much better prepared, if 
 prompted by inclination or a sense of duty, to enter 
 upon other connected or separate departments. 
 
 From the line of action on which you are Jirst to 
 enter, as already pointed out, duties will necessarily 
 devolve upon you, which were not wont to be associated 
 va\h. the avocation of a missionary to the heathen. 
 In the earlier stages of the modern evangelistic en- 
 terprise, the missionary went forth under a firm 
 persuasion and ruling impression, that his single 
 
70 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 object was, directly and exclusively to preach the 
 Gospel, through the medium of the vernacular tongue. 
 Experience, however, has often succeeded, where 
 reason had failed, in enforcing the conviction, that 
 without the effective co-operation of a competent 
 native ministry, the Gospel can neither be generally 
 communicated, nor permanently maintained in any 
 land. This conviction has necessarily, in many cases, 
 led to a corresponding change in the mode of action. 
 Instead of being wholly occupied, in a direct and per- 
 sonal communication of the Gospel to uneducated 
 adults, some have been called on specially to devote 
 themselves to the task of qualifying natives to become 
 teachers and preachers to their heathen brethren. And 
 this fruit of a Christian ministry being now deemed es- 
 sential, it were worse than folly, to neglect or despise 
 the cultivation of the only tree, that can be made 
 effectually to yield it. 
 
 Leaving, therefore, behind you all the arts and 
 trammels, all the pomp and parade, of ministerial con- 
 sequence, in the artificial state of society in this land, 
 — and having the love of souls uppermost in yom- heart, 
 — you must not decline condescending to the lowest 
 services that may, directly or indirectly, immediately 
 or ultimately, subserve the great object of yom* mission. 
 Mindful of the exhortation and example of the Sa- 
 viour, and his rebuke to the disciples, you must not 
 reckon it an employment beneath the dignity of your 
 character or office, should you, for instance, be called 
 upon to assist in rearing up the youngest of a rising 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 71 
 
 generation, — provided you can really benefit them, and, 
 through them, transmit to posterity those principles 
 of truth and righteousness, that tend to gladden the 
 earth and people the skies. 
 
 To the carnal mind it may seem, no doubt, more dig- 
 nified, and, to the carnal feeling of self-importance, it 
 may minister more gratefully, to sit in the Profes- 
 sor's chair, or stand erect in the Pastor's pulpit, than 
 to exercise the humbler office of teacher or catechist. 
 But, Avithout the lal)ours of the two latter, the ablest 
 lecture and the best digested sermon may be utterly 
 thro^^ai away. To be engaged in embellishing the 
 state apartments of a palace, or in fabricating a new 
 crown for royalty, is, beyond all question, a nobler 
 employment than to be digging the rubbish for a 
 foundation, or excavating the drossy ore in Peruvian 
 mines. But, mthout the latter, where were there 
 room for the former? In every undertaking, great 
 and small, there must be a beginning. If we neglect 
 to begin at the beginning, we must spend our labour 
 very much in vain, and our strength for nought. And 
 in a work of magnitude, should there be few or none 
 to stoop to the drudgery, we must, if bent on its exe- 
 cution, set our own shoulder to the yoke, and begin 
 ourselves. The General, who, in pushing a campaign, 
 on whose success depended the prosperity of millions, 
 would refuse, in certain emergencies, to take the 
 pioneer's pick-axe into his hands, must surely prove 
 himself utterly unworthy of his solemn trust and high 
 commission. 
 
72 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 It were infinitely to be desired, in order to insure 
 the largest amount of success, that a perfect division of 
 labour could be effected, — that each missionary could 
 have that sphere of duty allotted to him, for which 
 he was best fitted by previous tastes and habits, talents 
 and acquirements, — and that every one, on leaving 
 these shores, could be informed, what specific depart- 
 ment he was expected to occupy : — Since, it may well 
 be laid down as an axiom of dear-bought experience, 
 that no man can do every things either at once or in 
 .succession, and do all equally well. Such a distinctive 
 apportionment of duty has all along, to a certain ex- 
 tent, existed. But the smallness of the number of 
 labourers, and the perpetual contingencies from sick- 
 ness or removal, have, hitherto, precluded the possibility 
 of a perfect division. Neither, from the same causes, 
 is it possible now. This, therefore, you ought to keep 
 constantly in view. And whatever may be your ini- 
 tial vocation, and whatever your own natural predi- 
 lections, you ought, by free intercom-se and occa- 
 sional reciprocation of duty with your brethren, to hold 
 yourself in readiness to supply any temporary vacancy 
 that may occur in any department, from the highest 
 to the lowest. 
 
 2. The nature and importance of this subject may 
 be farther illustrated by an historical incident. 
 
 The very last day^ on which he who now addresses 
 you, was privileged to visit the Institution, which he 
 hopes will ere long be benefited by your presence, — and 
 >vlule already labouring under the incipient stages of 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 73 
 
 that malady ^vliicli finally drove him to seek tempor- 
 ary refuge in a more hospitable chme, — it was, in the 
 company of a gentleman, who has been honoured in 
 making sacrifices for the furtherance of the Gospel, 
 that have fallen to the lot of few in this self-seeking, 
 self-pleasing age. 
 
 After the lower classes were rapidly inspected, the 
 highest, consisting of about fifteen, was assembled in 
 a small apartment adjoining the main hall, for the 
 pm-pose of undergoing a more minute and searching 
 examination. The yomig men were first of -all ques- 
 tioned as to their attainments in general learning, such 
 as, geography, history, economic science, and geometry, 
 — ^in all of which they acquitted themselves to the no 
 small surprise and delight of the examiner. He, how- 
 ever", felt more interest in ascertaining their progress 
 in religious knowledge. In that department, they were 
 minutely questioned on the necessity and credibility 
 of Divine Revelation, — the leading external evidences 
 from miracles and prophecy, — and all the leading doc- 
 trines of Christianity. 
 
 To most of the queries, ready and appropriate an- 
 swers were returned. But when the condescension 
 and love of Christ in dying for guilty sinners became 
 the leading theme, the visitor's own soul suddenly 
 caught fire, and from teacher or catechist, he suddenly 
 tmned preacher. And with such fluency of speech 
 and fervom- of manner did he dilate on the wonders 
 of redeeming love, that the attention of the most in- 
 considerate was rivetted. As he proceeded, one and 
 
74 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 another was observed stretching out his head, as if 
 eagerly drinking in the stream of utterance. The 
 eyes of one in particular, "vvhose shoulder still bore the 
 sacred Brahmanical thread, were seen copiously suf- 
 fused with tears. The speaker could not hut feel that 
 every word was distinctly understood, and every senti- 
 ment sending back, for the time, a responsive echo 
 from the heart. Penetrated with holy joy, he sud- 
 denly started up, and with characteristic warmth, thus 
 in substance addressed the missionary : — " Dear bro- 
 ther, how is this ? Will you explain the matter to me ? 
 This is what I have been in quest of ever since I left 
 old England. At the station where I laboured for 
 years, I almost daily exhorted the adult natives, as I 
 have now done these, and often with far greater ear- 
 nestness. Some appeared to listen attentively, and 
 some did not. But, in the case of the most attentive, 
 I always painfully felt, at the end, that there seemed, 
 as it were, a crust between their mind and mine, — and 
 that, all the while, I was only playing round and 
 round the outer surface, without ever being able to get 
 within, or beneath. But here, I feel, — I camiot but feel, 
 — that everi/ word is finding its way 2vithin. In fact," 
 added he, with peculiar emphasis, accompanied with 
 corresponding gesture, " / here feel, as if I could empty 
 the IV hole of my oivn soid into theirs. How is this?" 
 Instead of returning a direct or immediate answer, 
 the missionary, turning round, opened the door, which 
 disclosed to view the ])usy scene in the larger hall. 
 At the further extremity of it, appeared conspicuous, 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 75 
 
 one of the native monitors, with his long rod, in the 
 centre of a group of children, ranged in a semicircle 
 in front of a large frame. Along the frame, in hori- 
 zontal grooves, were seen, inserted, the letters of the 
 alphabet, printed on moveable wooden slips. " There" 
 said he, directing the visitor's eye to the alphabetic 
 operation, " There, is the true explanation of what 
 you have now witnessed and felt — the real source and 
 origin ofivhat has noiv transported your soid." When 
 a candidate for the ministry in Scotland, well do I re- 
 member how I would have loathed such employment, 
 not only as insufferably flat and dull in itself, but as 
 beneath the dignity, and utterly derogatory to the char- 
 acter, of the clerical office. But, on arriving at this 
 place, it was soon found that the institution of some 
 such initial process, with a specific view to the syste- 
 matic attainment of higher erids, was imperatively de- 
 manded, as auxiliary to the ultimate renovation of In- 
 dia. The sooner, therefore, it was begun, the better. 
 Accordingly, on the principle of becoming all things to 
 all men, and new things in new circumstances, the re- 
 solution, once formed, was promptly acted on. And 
 there, in that hall, about four years ago, did I betake 
 myself to the humble, but essential task, of teaching 
 A, B, C. Pilloried though I was, at the time, in the 
 scorn of some, the pity and compassion of others, and 
 the wonder of all, the work, once begun, was, through 
 good report and through bad, strenuously persevered 
 in. And this day you have been a delighted eye-wdtness 
 of some of the fruits. The processes, that followed the 
 
76 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 alphabetical training, tended, in a gradual and piece- 
 meal way, to the breaking up and removing of that 
 veri/ crust, which interposed an impassable banier, be- 
 tween your instructions and the minds of your quo7i- 
 dam auditors. And, if it had not been for these rudi- 
 mental and subsequent processes, you might this day 
 have found only listeners with incrusted minds, instead 
 of hearers, with open understanding to take in all your 
 meanings, and relaxed hearts to receive the impress of 
 yom' animated exhortations. And tell me now — do 
 tell me candidly — if it was not worth while to begin 
 so low, in order to end so high ? " 
 
 " Indeed, indeed," replied our warm-hearted friend, 
 " this does throw neiv light on the whole subject. I 
 frankly confess to you, that I left England an avowed 
 enemy to education, in any shape or form, in connec- 
 tion with missions ; but I now tell you as frankly, 
 from what I have seen this day, that I shall feel myself, 
 henceforward, at liberty to avow myself its friend and 
 advocate." 
 
 Does not an incident like this, prove something more 
 than the mere propriety of oiot being above engaging 
 in any drudgery, however humble, that may eventually 
 conduce to noble ends ? Does it not open up a dis- 
 tinct glimpse of the working — the natural tendency, — 
 and legitimate fffect of a system of thorough educa- 
 tional training, on Christian principles ? And was it 
 the least pleasing feature in the experiment, that a 
 herald of salvation, from a far distant land, was at 
 once enabled io preach the Gospel to a number of im- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 77 
 
 mortal souls ? — Yea, and pi'each it more effectually, 
 and -with a happier consciousness of resulting impres- 
 sion, than he had ever been privileged to do, in the 
 hearing of any class of heathen adults ? Here, surely, 
 was the saying verified to the apprehension of sense, 
 that " the school is the nursery of the Church." 
 
 3. The grand object being, to rear up a number of 
 well-educated agents, the constant medium of instruc- 
 tion in the higher or collegiate department of the In- 
 I stitution is English, We exhort you, therefore, to 
 encourage to the utmost, the cultivation of it. 
 
 The propriety of this may not be so obvious to you 
 now, it mil be self-evident when you reach the field 
 of labour. 
 
 The case stands thus, — For the great mass of the 
 people, Bengali, the vernacular dialect, alone can be 
 I the instrument of instruction. The futihty of the 
 , attempt to supplant the native language by the for- 
 i cible introduction of a foreign tongue, can only be 
 surpassed by its extravagant absurdity. No such at- 
 tempt mil any sane person ever sanction, far less ad- 
 vocate or propose. On the contrary, we exhort you to 
 lose no time in mastering that language yourself, and 
 insisting that all the young men, under your charge, 
 study it grammatically too. The acquisition of it, as the 
 medium of instructing the mass of the population, is in- 
 dispensable. But, while it is acknowledged that the 
 Bengali language alone is available for imparting an 
 elementary education to the people at large, it is as- 
 serted, as a simple matter of fact, that tliis language 
 
78 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 does not afford any adequate means for communicat- 
 ing a knowledge of tlie higher departments of litera- 
 ture, science, or theology. It is no more fit for such 
 a purpose, than the English itself was, a thousand 
 years ago, to represent the whole range of Grecian li- 
 terature and philosophy. And if it had the requi- 
 site vocabulary, it has not the necessary books. No 
 original works of the description wanted have yet ap- 
 peared ; and, though the Bible and several minor pub- 
 lications have been provided by missionary talent and 
 perseverance, no translations have yet been made, in 
 any degree sufficient to supply materials for the pro- 
 secution of the higher objects contemplated. Neither 
 is it likely, in the nature of things, that either by ori- 
 ginal publications, or translations of standard foreign 
 works, the deficiency can be fully or adequately re- 
 moved, for such a number of years to come, as may 
 leave the whole of the existing, and several successive 
 generations, sleeping with their fathers. 
 
 What then is to be done ? It is here that the English 
 language, presentsitself as incomparably the best instru- 
 ment for the noble purposes in view. But how can a 
 language, so alien to the idiom of oriental tongues, be in- 
 troduced ? How can it ! Why, it has been already 
 w^idely introduced. It is afact, that there is an extreme 
 anxiety among a large portion of the natives for the 
 acquisition of it. It is a fact, that native youths dis- 
 cover a remarkable aptitude for the acquisition. It is 
 a fact, that numbers have already mastered the lan- 
 guage so as to write and converse in it with consider- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 79 
 
 able fluency. It is a fact, that many young men have 
 become as conversant with the hterature and science 
 of Great Britain, as most British students of the same 
 age. It is a fact, therefore, that numbers are well 
 qualified to read the Christian Scriptures in oui' ad- 
 mirable English version, peruse treatises on Christian 
 evidence, and expositions of Christian doctrine, and 
 appeals on the subject of Christian duty and privilege, 
 directly in the language of their authors. This, sure- 
 ly, is no ordinary blessing. This is not to impart 
 knoAvledge, whether common or sacred, by measure 
 — ^to bestow it with niggardly hand — to dole it out of 
 our treasury by scraps and fragments, in versions and 
 translations, accurate or inaccurate. No ; this is at 
 once to present numbers with the key of knowledge 
 — of all knowledge, literary, and scientific, and reli- 
 gious — knowledge, which ages of time, and hosts of 
 translators, could never furnish — knowledge, which, in 
 quantity and quality, the works written in all other 
 languages, living or dead, of the world besides, could 
 not collectively supply ! 
 
 Is there not something in such a statement calculated 
 to an-est the attention of the dullest ? Is it, in very 
 deed, true, that that language, which of all others is 
 the most effective medium, for pouring in upon the 
 millions of India, the entire stream of vivifying know- 
 ledge, is the object of general and eager demand ? — a 
 demand, in that part of the country to which you pro- 
 ceed, far beyond our means of supply ? And who 
 can fail to perceive in this, the most signal interposition 
 
80 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 of Divine Providence in behalf of the people of that 
 benighted land — Divine Providence, secretly and un- 
 consciously inclining their hearts to crave for one of 
 the most potent instruments of their o^vn final emanci- 
 pation from the yoke of ages ? Verily, it is the doing 
 of the Lord, and wondrous in our eyes ! 
 
 Another most important view of the subject is this : — 
 At most of the mission stations throughout the world, 
 a labourer, on his Ji7'st arrival, finds himself as helpless 
 as a man sent to the quarry without a hammer, or to 
 the forest mthout an axe. He is speechless, and there- 
 fore, useless, till he acquire the language. The acquisi- 
 tion of this, with most, will be the business of a twelve- 
 month ; and with numbers, a great deal more. Now, 
 how many are not privileged to have their tongues 
 unloosed at all ? How many have actually been cut 
 down by death, or driven mth shattered constitutions 
 from the field, before preaching once ; or holding even 
 one intelligible conversation with the natives, on the 
 subject of their everlasting welfare ! And what a 
 source of harromng reflection this, both to sender and 
 sent ! The preparation of years ; the expenses of edu- 
 cation, voyage, and maintenance j the dreary period 
 of weeks and months spent in the very presence of 
 perishing multitudes — all lost — profitlessly, irrecover- 
 ably lost ! How it would have cheered the departing 
 labourer if, even once, during his brief sojourn, he had 
 ])een in close contact with the native mind — dropping 
 the seed of life, which might spring up after many days, 
 and bear fruit for immortality ! 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 81 
 
 Difterent, indeed, if spared, will be your position. 
 From the Jirst day of your arrival, though among a 
 people of strange lips, and still stranger habits, situ- 
 ated at the distance of half the globe, your tongue 
 will be at once untied to hundreds — hundreds, who, 
 from the process of instruction that has been adopted, 
 have already mastered your vernacular language ; and 
 vdio are as fit recipients for immediate instruction 
 therein, as any corresponding number, of the same age, 
 in any of our home institutions. And is not this an 
 inestimable privilege ? However short may be the 
 allotted time of your pilgrimage ; — that time may be 
 intensely occupied in the direct work of propagating 
 the everlasting Gospel. Yea, should you be but a 
 single day on the field of action, (and God in mercy 
 grant that your days may be many,) on that single day, 
 you may be the instrument of converting a heathen to 
 the tiTie God ; and he, of converting others. And 
 thus, may your spiritual being be transfused and mul-1 
 tiplied through perpetual generations ! 
 
 From all these, and other reasons combined, we ear- 
 nestly exhort you, to encourage to the utmost the growth 
 and extension of the English language, as the instru- 
 ment of boundless blessings to India. 
 
 4. Through the medium of the English language, it 
 will be your part to assist in pouring in the full stream 
 of European knowledge. 
 
 On this subject, many doubts and mistakes have 
 from time to time arisen. It has, however, been fre- 
 tjuently shown, how the knoAvledge in question tends 
 
82 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 to whet the faculties, sliarj^en the intellect, and ex- 
 pand the whole sphere of mental vision ; how, owing 
 to the incorporation of literature and science mth the 
 reliixion of India, true information on such themes 
 lays a train which, when it explodes, must shatter the 
 whole hideous fabric of Hinduism into atoms ; how it 
 supplies the means of enabling us to exhibit an im- 
 pressive and overwhelming view of the external evi- 
 dences of Christianity ; how it furnishes native la- 
 bourers with a magazine of weapons, offensive and 
 defensive, in conducting the mighty warfare with ido- 
 lators, Pantheists, and infidels of every grade ; — all this, 
 and much more, has often been exemplified with a 
 copiousness of detail and a redundancy of illustration, 
 that ought to banish all old misconceptions, and ren- 
 der the growth of new ones all but impossible. 
 
 But, should any of the lowering clouds of misap- 
 prehension not yet be dissipated ; should a smooth 
 passage not yet be opened up into the haven of con- 
 viction ; should any of the objectors still continue to 
 rehearse their stale and starveling doggerels of doubt 
 and suspicion, probably the best reply would be, an 
 expression of compassionate regret, — and the best apo- 
 logy, to suppose that ''• they know not what they do." 
 
 Forbearing, therefore, at present, to enter on the 
 subject at large, there is one view of it that ought to 
 satisfy even the most scmpulous pietists. These are 
 constantly demanding Scripture precedents. To the 
 law and the testimony, let us now appeal. 
 
 Think, then, of our blessed Saviour amid the de- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 83 
 
 serts, the wildernesses, and the mountains of Judea. 
 Why did these soUtudes, which for ages slumbered in 
 undisturbed silence, save when the evening breezes 
 sighed, or the raging tempest swej^t harmless over 
 their baiTenness, suddenly become animated by the 
 tread, and vocal mth the sounds, of innumerable mul- 
 titudes ? Did men throng to the Redeemer, for the 
 single and sole purpose of hearing words of sweet sal- 
 vation flow from his hallowed lips ? No. Why then ? 
 The report had gone forth, and all the cities of Judali 
 heard, that with him resided a mysterious power, that 
 caused the ver}^ elements to rebel against their own 
 native and inherent properties. And they brought 
 unto him the blind, and the dumb, and the lame, and 
 the maimed, and the sick, to be healed. 
 
 Did the blessed Saviour reproach them for the secu- 
 lar ity of their motives ? Did he send them away as 
 betraying a state of worldly feeling, which rendered 
 them unworthy, or unfit, to listen to the words of eter- 
 nal life ? Did he sharply rebuke them, for supposing 
 that he had any thing to do with i\\% physical^ the cor- 
 poreal, or the temporal comforts of man? Did he assure 
 them, that his sitigle aim and exclusive object was to 
 proclaim the glad tidings of salvation ? No such thing. 
 He that knew the heart of man, knew better how to 
 gain access to it. He that knew the infirmities of 
 man, knew better how to make allowances, deductions, 
 and abatements for ignorance and prejudice. He felt, 
 that directly to promote man's temporal well-being, 
 was not incompatible wdth the advancement of his 
 
 F 
 
84 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 eternal happiness. To alleviate suffering, he felt to be 
 a legitimate object in itself; and he knew full well, 
 that a boon of a temporal kind was the only one 
 w^hich the carnally-minded could spontaneously ask, 
 as it was the only one which they were enabled spon- 
 taneously to appreciate. He knew more. He knew, 
 that to bestow a favour eagerly sought, because its 
 object was highly valued, would be the surest means 
 of gaining attention to the nobler ends of his heavenly 
 mission. Accordingly, at the bidding of his omnipo- 
 tent will, he fed the hungry, cleansed the leper, and 
 healed all manner of diseases. By such welcome 
 favours, he excited the gratitude, and awakened the ad- 
 miration of the multitude. He unstopped the ears of 
 the deafest, and relaxed the rigid fibres of the most ob- 
 dui'ate heart. And, w^hen all were under the full glow 
 of grateful feeling and raised expectation, he poured out 
 those gracious words, Avhich extorted from the stoutest 
 adversaries the memorable confession, " Never man 
 spake like this man." 
 
 And can we err in imitating so Divine an example ? 
 We are not armed with the power of working mira- 
 cles. We cannot open the eyes of the blind, untie 
 the tongue of the dumb, or cause the lame man to 
 leap as an hart ; but there are other temporal favours 
 Avhich the people of India crave at our hands. They 
 crave for om- language, our arts, and our sciences. The 
 knowledge of these it is in our power to communicate ; 
 and the communication of them would tend to alleviate 
 a thousand hardships, and multiply a thousand-fold the 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 85 
 
 comforts and enjoyments of life. Shall we then re- 
 fuse to confer a boon which the people are already 
 enabled to prize, and which they eagerly long, for our 
 generous sympathy to bestow? Shall we refuse it, 
 under the pretext, that being merely a secular benefit, 
 the heralds of salvation can have nothing to do vdih 
 it ? Above all, shall we refuse, when we know that 
 in receiving it, the people are ready, yea predisposed, 
 to receive all else, of a higher nature, which we have to 
 convey ? — that, in receiving what they themselves 
 value, their hearts must be called out in gratitude for 
 the gift, and thereby prepared to listen with greater can- 
 doui' and attention to those spiritual truths, which it is 
 our grand end to communicate ? Surely, if, in such 
 circumstances, we refuse, instead of imitating either 
 the letter or the spirit of our Lord's example, we must 
 be flatly contradicting both ! 
 
 But, in conferring temporal benefits, through the me- 
 dium of "useful knowledge," in any of the departments, 
 literary or scientific, beware of ever being betrayed 
 to drop the missionary character. Keep ever in view 
 the all-perfect model and pattern of oui- Lord and Savi- 
 our — the Great Teacher — the very Prince of mission- 
 aries. Instant in season and out of season, resolve, like 
 Him, never to forget the gra7id end of your mission. 
 When imparting knowledge which more directly bears 
 on the amelioration of man's condition in time, never 
 lose sight of that higher knowledge wliich regulates the 
 interests of eternity. Let the grateful sense created, on 
 I account of favours, sought for, and o1)tained, be con- 
 
S6 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 stantly turned into a vehicle for conveying other fa- 
 vours, which, though not sought for, may thereby he more 
 advantageously imparted. Watchfully seizing every re- 
 curring opportunity, he ever ready to strike in with some 
 practical suggestion, inference, or application, natural]}', 
 and as it were, incidentally, arising out of the subject 
 taught. Cultivate the holy art of converting every 
 fact, every event, every truth, every discovery, into a 
 means, and an occasion of illustrating or corroborat- 
 ing sacred verities. Endeavour to realize in your 
 own experience the truth of tlie remark, that per- 
 haps the most efficacious mode of instilling moral 
 and religious principles, particularly in the case of 
 youth, is, " at choice moments, and when all minds 
 are seen to be in a state of gentle emotion, and in 
 a plastic mood, to drop the word or two of practical 
 inference — ^to announce the single, pithy, well-digested 
 sentiment, which shall, by its natural affinity Avitli 
 the excited feelings, at the moment, combine itself 
 with the recollected facts." 
 
 In this way, all knowledge must soon cease, in your 
 hands, to be any longer merely secular ; seeing that 
 it may all be baptized, so to speak, into the name 
 of Jesus. Indeed, considering the holy uses which 
 all knowledge may be made to subserve, as taught 
 and applied by a pious and skilful missionary, it 
 ought to drop the misleading application of " secular" 
 altogether. If even the products of earth, the silver 
 and the gold, and the Avood and the stone, which were 
 dedicated and set apart for the special service of the 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 87 
 
 temple, could, from such consecration, be denominated 
 holjj ; how much more, the superior products of mind, 
 when similarly consecrated to the garnishing of a 
 spiritual temple in the souls of men ? Or, if the term 
 "■ holy," so applied, be thought too violent an innova- 
 tion on modern usages and current practices, wh}- 
 not coin a designation that may prove unobjection- 
 able ? And, since all knowledge, in a missionary insti- 
 tution, may, and ought to be, enstamped with re- 
 ligious tendencies, and made to bear on religious ends, 
 instead of speaking or writing henceforward, of " the 
 religious and the secular departments," would it not 
 be more strictly accordant with the truth and reality 
 of things, to speak and ^^Tite of " the religious and 
 sub-religious departments ? " 
 
 5. It has been asserted that believers have nothing 
 to do -with Natural Science. Strange assertion ! For 
 what is natm-al science ? If true, what is it but the 
 record and interpretation of God's visible handiworks ? 
 And has the Great Creator deemed it worthy of his great 
 name to produce aught, which it is unworthy of any of 
 his creatures, far less of any of his own adopted children, 
 to know and to understand ? Believers, nothing to do 
 with God's works ! Why, we would exhort ^^ou to as- 
 sume at once the highest ground, and demonstrate, in 
 all your teachings, that believers alone are properly en- 
 abled, and alone are justly entitled to scan and enjoy 
 these works. 
 
 Unbelievers do talk of tracing the footsteps of Di- 
 vinity, and more especially the prints of his power, 
 
88 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 wisdom, and goodness, in the works of creation. But 
 do you tell them, in the language of the schools, that 
 such footsteps and prints " have only some impresses or 
 notices of causality, which, unillumined by revelation, 
 can never amount to such a perfect portraiture or image, 
 as would be the representation of a cause, according to 
 the similitude of his specific form, and not only of his 
 causality." Tell them, that it is the Bible which, to the 
 eye of the believer alone, throws the glow of heavenly 
 radiance over nature, that converts it into a miiTor re- 
 flecting, though dimly, the true pictures or likenesses 
 of things supernatural, — that it is the Bible which, 
 to the eye of the believer alone, elevates and di\dnely 
 irradiates all visible objects, by instituting the whole 
 into one vast magazine of types and emblems, which 
 body forth a faithful, though faint, expression and 
 pattern of invisible truths, — that it is the Bible which, 
 to the renewed and sanctified eye of the believer 
 alone, exhibits the character, the express image, the 
 substantial engraven form of the Eternal Godhead, in 
 the wonderful person of Immanuel, who is the bright- 
 ness, the effulgence, the shining lustre of all God's 
 essential perfections, and transcendent attributes. 
 
 Unbelievers do talk of " rising through nature, up to 
 nature's God." But tell them that such uprising is im- 
 possible, — that such communing must be with a phan- 
 tasm of their own diseased imagination, and not with 
 the real Author of nature, — ^that it is only in, and 
 through Christ, the Mediator, that the Holy Jehovah 
 can be approached, or can vouchsafe to hold any com- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 89 
 
 munlon with his sinful creatures; — that if, out of Christ, 
 access to him be sought, whether through his own 
 works or the works of sinfiil man, he is, and must 
 ever he, " a consuming fire," — and that it is the hehever 
 alone who can safely and truly commune with God 
 through his works, because he alone has the key that 
 unlocks their hidden treasm-e of spiritual capabilities ; 
 and the holy skill, that can construct out of these a 
 spiritual ladder, reaching from earth to heaven. 
 
 Unbelievers do talk in rapturous strains of their 
 familiar and delightful converse with the works of 
 creation, as if they had an exclusive right to such en- 
 joyment — as if, 
 
 " Suns, moons, and stars, and clouds, their sisters were ; 
 Rocks, mountains, meteors, seas, and winds and storms, 
 their brothers ! " 
 
 «. 
 And strange to say, that believers there are, who would 
 
 concede to such absurd claims and pretensions, by a 
 base surrender of their o^vn blood-bought privileges. 
 
 Be it yours then, to protest alike against the inso- 
 lent usurpations of the former, and the unwarranted 
 concessions of the latter. Suppose that, by an act of 
 undeserved favour, a company of rebels were allowed 
 to plead their own cause in the presence of a gracious 
 sovereign, whose authority they had despised, whose 
 laws they had outraged, and wdiose throne they had la- 
 boured to overturn, — and suppose that, instead of fall- 
 ing prostrate, confessing their guilt, and imploring for- 
 giveness, they coolly and carelessly turned away from 
 
90 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 the royal presence, and began to talk, in ecstasy, of 
 some sketchings on the table, or paintings on the wall, 
 that might be the handiwork of him who wore the 
 crown, — What verdict would plain unsophisticated 
 common sense pronounce on the hardened impeni- 
 tence, — the ungrateful requital, — the grand imperti- 
 nence, of such conduct ? 
 
 And what are unbelievers but rebels and traitors 
 against the Majesty of heaven ? If, therefore, instead 
 <^f falling doAvn, in deep contrition and penitential 
 confession, at the Divine footstool, beseeching for the 
 pardon of their sins and a restoration to the Divine fa- 
 vour, — we behold them constantly turning aAvay, mth 
 ill-suppressed aversion, from the face of their offended 
 Maker and King, who is waiting to be gracious — 
 and wasting precious time, in philosophical specula- 
 tions and poetic fervours, amid the products of created 
 materialism : — Hoav can their impenitence be deemed 
 less obdurate — their requital, less ungenerous — their 
 impertinence, less insulting ? 
 
 Oh, if unbelievers would only sue for mercy, ^^-ith 
 strong crying and tears, as guilty, hell-deserving crea- 
 tures ought ever to do : and were they pri\dleged to re- 
 turn from the presence of the King of kings, pardoned 
 and acquitted, through the blood of the everlasting 
 covenant, and laden with various other tokens of tlic 
 Royal clemency, and the Royal munificence, — thcn. 
 indeed, but not till then, might their souls expand 
 themselves, with even seraphic ardour and adoriiT. 
 wonder, over the immensity of the Creator's w or!-. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 91 
 
 — because, then, and then only, could all be hailed 
 as the glorious monuments of a gracious Sovereign's 
 handiwork — the perpetual remembrancers of a com- 
 passionate Father's lore ! 
 
 Instead, therefore, of surrendering the study and 
 contemplation of the works of Nature to the unbe- 
 liever, as if these were his peculiar domain and in- 
 hei-itance ; you ought, at all times, to assume the high- 
 est and most commanding position, and fearlessly tell 
 him that he has no valid right, or title, to regale 
 himself among the wonders of the Divine w^orkman- 
 ship, while, as an unpardoned rebel, he continues the 
 enemy of the Great God, who is the Maker and 
 sovereign Proprietor of all. On the other hand, you 
 ought as fearlessly to protest against the compromise 
 and treachery of the believer, Avho, wilfully or igno- 
 rantly, w^ould relinquish so fair a portion of his heavenly 
 Father's patrimony, and coolly give it up for spoil 
 and pillage to His bitterest foes. You ought unceas- 
 ingly to tell him, that, as a new^ creature in Christ 
 Jesus — as a child of God — he, and he alone, has a 
 covenanted right and title to expatiate, with wonder 
 and delight, among the works of Creation : — 
 
 " His are the mountains, and the valleys his, 
 And the resplendent rivers ; his to enjoy 
 "With a propriety which none can feel, save who 
 Can lift to heaven an iinpresumptiious eye. 
 And smiling say, my Father made them all." 
 
 6. But, as already stated, the feature that peculiarly 
 distinguishes the seminary, with all its subordinate 
 
92 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 branches, Is, " the regular systematic study of the 
 Scriptm-es, the evidence of religion, natural and re- 
 vealed, and doctrinal and practical theology." 
 
 On the paramount advantages of habitually direct- 
 ing the attention of the pupils to this sacred study, 
 it were worse than idle to dilate. To it, all other sub- 
 jects ought ever to be rendered subservient, and be 
 prosecuted chiefly in proportion as they are found ef- 
 fectually to encourage it. The only previous question 
 that can be raised by any real friend of the species, 
 must regard, not the advantages, but the practicability 
 of introducing the study. And it were imcandid to 
 overlook the diversity of opinions respecting this sub- 
 ject, or the obvious difficulties with which it has been 
 associated. But after due inquiry, and a tolerable share 
 of experience, the result may be thus simply stated. 
 ; While it is evident that an authoritative or even obtru- 
 \ sive interference "with the religion and prejudices of the 
 1 natives, would excite their apprehension and arm their 
 'opposition, — while it must be granted that in a ma- 
 / jority of instances. Scripture reading is tolerated rather 
 I for the sake of the other branches of learning that arc 
 I taught, than desired or relished on its owti accomit ; 
 j and lectures and sermons may be listened to by others, 
 I rather to remove the appearance of disgraceful incon- 
 j sistency in attacking a system of which the profound- 
 est ignorance is professed, than in the spirit of sincere 
 and humble inquiry after truth, — it is not the less 
 certain, that by a careful and judicious management, 
 the Christian Scriptures will be read, addresses on 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 93 
 
 Christian evidence and doctrine will be attended, if 
 not by numbers, to meet our wishes — for who would 
 bound his wishes by any thing short of the whole 
 family of man ? — at least, by numbers sufficiently large 
 to enable us to commence and caiTy on projected plans, 
 to the utmost extent of our present resources. And 
 what greater encouragement in the first dawning of a 
 better day can be reasonably expected ? 
 
 As a faithful steward of the mysteries of God, you 
 must, therefore, hold forth to men, as opportunity 
 olFers, the entire system of revealed truth — expatiating 
 on the corruption, guilt, and helplessness of human 
 nature ; the divinity of our Saviour, the reality of 
 his vicarious sacrifice, and the all-sufficiency of his 
 atonement ; the personality and divinity of the Holy 
 Spirit, and the necessity of his regenerating influences ; 
 justification by faith alone, and sanctification through 
 the operation of Divine grace ; the resuiTCction of the 
 body, and the general judgment ; the eternal misery 
 of the wicked, and the eternal happiness of the 
 righteous. 
 
 And here, we must caution you against a current of 
 sinister influence to which you will be constantly ex- 
 posed. Through the medium of oral and written 
 communications, private and public, the most un- 
 measured eulogies may be heaped on the educational 
 system pursued, in all its general departments ; — while 
 its conductors may be hooted, twitted, and ridiculed ; 
 cozened, cajoled, and flattered ; upbraided, abused, 
 and threatened, by turns, into an abandonment of the 
 
94 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 peculiar doctrines of Christianity in the course of in- 
 struction. Such an abandonment may be blazoned 
 forth, under the spacious guise of a free-will offering 
 at the shrine of peace, charity, and liberality. 
 
 Beware of the subtlety of the old serpent in all this. 
 In matters of comparative unimportance, you can 
 never maintain a silence too deep, or a neutrality too 
 rigid. But in the case of prime essential truths, 
 silence would be the most despicable cowardice; 
 neutrality, the basest treachery. " Here," as one of 
 our worthies has remarked, " here, peace must be 
 broken with the world." Here, it is not a point of 
 order and form, or a matter of indifference ; it is a 
 question of life or death — the eternal salvation of our- 
 selves and of others being at stake. Here, according- 
 ly, " a breach of peace is nothing but obedience to 
 the higher law of Christian charity, — is nothing but 
 conforming to the primary and great commandments, 
 the love of God and the love of our neighbom-. Here, 
 therefore, must peace be sacrificed to truth, and real 
 charity and genuine liberality, i. e., to the honom- of 
 God and the eternal interests of mankind." For, sure- 
 ly, my brother, that must be at once a delusive and a 
 dangerous peace, which would require you to surren- 
 der at discretion the very citadel of your strength, the 
 very asylum of your safety ; and, that must be a false 
 and a ruinous charity, which would require you to 
 extinguish the rays of revealed truth, in order that mis- 
 guided men may grope their way to the eternal world 
 by lights of their own kindling ; and, that must be a 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. <).5 
 
 spurious and fathl liberality, which would require you 
 to concede, to the multitude aromid you, the sorry 
 privilege and license, of converting the highest prero- 
 gatives of their immortal nature, into a capacity of 
 greater ^^Tetchedness than the brutes that perish. 
 
 " Teach the Bible," say they, " but leave out its 
 peculiar doctrines;" — the doctrine, for example, of 
 the divinity, incarnation, and atonement of the bless- 
 ed Redeemer ! As well might others say, " Teach 
 the Newtonian system of Astronomy, but leave out its 
 peculiar doctrine of universal gravitation!" In the 
 eye of reason, can such comicillors be deemed sane f 
 Better far that they should cause the smi to veil his 
 light, and the moon her brightness ! Better far that 
 they should cause the earth and the visible heavens to 
 rush into annihilation ! For even amid Nature's ex- 
 piring agonies, a soul redeemed through the blood of 
 Immanuel would rise in its new-born energy, and soar 
 into the beatific presence of the Great Jehovah. But 
 let them once succeed, by persuasion or otherwise, 
 in shrouding from public view, for extinguish they 
 iKver can, the divinity and atonement of our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ, with its kindred and col- 
 lateral truths ; and soon would the spiritual world 
 relapse into a chaos of wild and jarring discord, 
 and souls immortal be shrivelled into dwarfish forms, 
 or sink into creation's prison-house beneath the load 
 of sin unforgiven, and Divine wrath unappeased. 
 And shall you — shall any of us, from a love of false 
 peace, mistaken charity, and hollow heartless liberali- 
 
96 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 ty, — sliall we, in order to court the favour, and depre- 
 cate tlie displeasure, of men, whose breath is in their 
 nostrils, — shall we dare to compromise our most so- 
 lemn TOWS, and basely consent to obliterate the most 
 shining signatures of the Almighty's presence and 
 Spirit, by muffling up or rescinding the peculiar doc- 
 trines of the marvellous volume of his ovm inspira- 
 tion ? — Impossible. Those who counsel us so to act, 
 would render our passage, like their own, across the 
 fair fields of Revelation, similar to that of a swarm of 
 locusts over the luxuriant regions of the East. Be- 
 fore, all is as the garden of Eden for beauty and 
 plenteousness — ^behind, all is as a desert in bleakness 
 and naked desolation. So it is with the host of spolia- 
 tors that would suborn us, as allies, in invading the 
 hallowed domain of Revelation ; and in laying the 
 axe to the root of all its Divine peculiarities. Be- 
 fore them, all is indeed like the garden of the Lord, 
 teeming with the riches of heaven, and smiling with 
 the beauties of paradise. And gems there are, spark- 
 ling in the beams of the Sun of Righteousness ; and 
 flowers there are, diffusing odours of sweetest incense ; 
 and leaves for healing, and golden fruitage, " cropped 
 from the tree of life, fast by the throne of God." 
 Behind them, all is as a desert, a waste and dreary 
 solitude ; the riches of heaven concealed, its beauties 
 faded, its gems obscured, its flowers mthered ; the 
 rivers of God's pleasure dried up ; and the pastures 
 of Gospel grace, as if under the power of a burning 
 drought, parched into utter barrenness. 
 
I" 
 
 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 97 
 
 Oh, if ye do enter yourself, and strive to conduct 
 others, on a voyage of simple discoveri/ and enjoy- 
 ment^ into the fair havens and radiant howers of Re- 
 velation, your spirits will he gladdened, and your souls 
 feast on immortal dainties ! But if — which God for- 
 hid — 3'e ever be seduced to follow in the rear of those 
 ruthless destroyers, that would cut down and lay 
 waste, all that is peculiar and glorious in those arbours 
 of heavenly light, your spirits must languish, and 
 youi' souls famish in a region of darkness, w^here all 
 life dies, and death itself lives — and above, beneath, 
 and round about, " a universe of death ! " 
 
 7. Now, while engaged in duties and exercises like 
 the preceding, you are not to allow yourself to be borne 
 down by the vulgar clamour, that you are not acting the 
 part of a missionary. Not a missionary ! You may be 
 more than a simple missionary ! You may not be direct- 
 ly planting the seed of the Gospel in widely scattered 
 regions. But what of that ? If, through God's bless- 
 ing, you have reared a nursery, not merely of plants 
 but of planters, you may see your own planting 
 powers multiplied a hundred-fold, and yourself plant- 
 ing through a hundred agencies. You may not be 
 directly watering the seed sown in widely scattered 
 regions. AYhat of that ? If, through God's blessing, 
 you have opened a reservoir of pure water, and se- 
 cured the services of many waterers ; you may see your 
 own watering powers multiplied a hundred-fold, and 
 yourself watering through a hundred channels. You 
 may not be directly preaching the Gospel in widely 
 
98 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 scattered regions. But what of that ? If, through 
 God's blessmg, you have trained a company of preach- 
 ers ; you may see your preaching powers mukipHed a 
 hundred-fold, and yourself preaching through the 
 voice of a hundred heralds. To be thus a teacher oj 
 teachers^ a trainer of j^reachers ; this, this must be, to 
 effect the greatest good by the simplest means — the 
 most permanent good in the shortest time. This, this 
 must surely be, to act the missionary on the grandest 
 scale ! 
 
 V. — 1. If spared, however, in the good providence 
 of God, you may feel yourself impelled when duly 
 qualified, to take a share in other modes of propagat- 
 ing the Gospel — such as translations, and preaching 
 in the native language. 
 
 As to the propriety of the former, few differ in 
 opinion. But, though with this department is link- 
 ed in immortality the venerable name of Carey, it 
 may yet remain for you to consider how far the great 
 work of translation in general ought to be reserved 
 for qualified natives ; and whether the imperfections 
 of many of the existing works, ought not to convert 
 the zeal for making new ones, into a zeal for care- 
 ful and laborious revision of the old. As to the 
 latter, you must be prepared for various opposition. 
 In prosecuting the attempt, you may be doomed to 
 hear the name of your God blasphemed, and yourself 
 become the scorn of the rabble, or the laughing-stock 
 of the profane. By many of your own. countrymen, 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 99 
 
 too, all public oral instructions, with a view to the 
 conversion of adults, may be held in absolute derision, 
 as being symptomatic of a weak enthusiasm in desir- 
 ing, or of a foolish ignorance in attempting, moral im- 
 possibilities. Or, is reference made to the place and 
 7tiode of the attempt ? Then may the crowded bazaar, 
 the thronged street, the river's bank, the secluded 
 field, and the lonely tree be appealed to, as consummat- 
 ing proof of fanatical delusion. And, have terms of 
 reproach ever been wanting, when the spirit of ca 
 lumny has been goaded on by inveterate hate ? 
 
 Still, if conscientiously satisfied that you are in the 
 path of duty, you must cast your burden on the Lord, 
 and pray that you may not be put down by opposition 
 from whatever quarter it proceeds. Elevated on an 
 immoveable rock of commanding prospect, you may, 
 with keen insight, penetrate the true nature of things. 
 In the outrages of the heathen, you will discern 
 nought but the manifestation of the natural enmity of 
 the heart towards God and his righteousness, and the 
 certain proof that sin's ravages are yet unimpaired ; 
 that repentance and conversion are unknown ; and 
 that your efforts to communicate the knowledge of 
 these is not groundless. The outcries of those, who 
 profess the name of Christ, you will identify with the 
 entire absence of that which makes profession of any 
 value, and without which, nothing can save the name 
 from hj-pocrisy, nor the person from the woes pro- 
 nounced against the hypocrite. "When time and place 
 are adduced as instances of the ridiculous, in that 
 
100 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 ridicule, whether playful or scornful, you behold the 
 consistency of men, who, in the plenitude of their 
 wisdom, overlook or despise the fact, that there is 
 such a thing as difference of people and of climate, 
 and with these differences, unbounded diversities in 
 the modes and conditions that constitute social exist- 
 ence. Thus, in Great Britain, halls, and assembly- 
 rooms, and churches innumerable, are open ; and the 
 humble cottage of the poor is at all times accessible. 
 But what corresponding facilities does India offer to 
 the man who " goes forth bearing precious seed ? " — 
 Not its temples, for these are consecrated as the abode 
 of some misshapen log, and a few menials to guard it 
 from the attacks of noisome insects that prey uncere- 
 moniously on the lifeless, helpless deity ; — not, in 
 general, its private dwellings, since these would be 
 in danger of being polluted by the tread of outcasts ; — 
 not usually its family circles, for, to these the stranger 
 seldom finds any admission. In fact, except in large 
 towns, the Indian's hall of audience, his mart of busi- 
 ness, and his retirement for the reciprocities of social 
 intercourse, are constantly to be found beneath the 
 shade of the village, or traveller's tree ; and, thither 
 must the messenger of salvation often bend his course, 
 if resolved that benighted idolaters shall not live \vith.- 
 in his reach, and yet enter eternity, without ever hear- 
 ing the sound of the glad tidings. 
 
 ' 2. Now, what we would desire to impress on your 
 mind, by way of encouragement, is this, — that, to 
 Avhatever mode of exertion you may eventually direct 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 101 
 
 a portion of your time and strength, your earliest labours 
 in the Institution, instead of proving a hindrance, or 
 invoh-ing any real loss of time, may be regarded as a 
 grand preparative, and training, discipline. 
 
 In communicating a knowledge of your own lan- 
 guage to the native youth, you may and ought to be 
 acquiring a familiar acquaintance with theirs.* And, 
 in your primary attempts at speech, you will thus 
 avoid the hazard and the pain of mangling Diving 
 truth, in a tentative address before a heathen multi- 
 tude, by means of an imperfect idiom and a stammer- 
 ing tongue. 
 
 But, what is, if possible, of still greater consequence, 
 you will enjoy the fittest opportunities of disco ver- 
 
 * The design of this Address being strictlj' practical, nothing has been said 
 on the study of Sanskrit, the learned and sacred language of India ; because, 
 however advantageous it must ultimately prove to the missionary, whether 
 native or European, the acquisition of it, at the first outset, is by no means 
 indispensable. Many have alleged that, as it is the real and acknowledged 
 parent of most of the vernacular dialects of India, the study of it should 
 precede that of any of the dialects. But this is, to say the least, a sheer 
 philological figment. Greek and Latin are the undoubted parents of 
 many of the modern dialects of Europe ; but who would recommend to a 
 Hindu or Chinaman, to spend years in mastering Greek or Latin, before 
 he commenced the study of English, or French, or Italian ? It is all very 
 well, in studying the latter, to be constantly letting in such collateral light 
 from the former, as may reveal the etymologies and radical meanings of 
 words. But a foreigner may acquire an easy, familiar, colloquial, and 
 even grammatical acquaintance, with any modern European language 
 without any previous study'of Greek or Latin,'or even any cotemporaneous 
 elaborate study of them. Precisely similar is the case, with reference to 
 Sanskrit and the vernacular dialects of India. Still, the advantages that 
 accrue from an ultimate knowledge of the former are great and manifold- 
 in breaking down the monopoly, and humbling the pride of the Brahmans, 
 in commanding the admiration and respect of learned and unlearned, in 
 enriching the poorer dialects, and promoting the work of translation, 
 &c., &c. 
 
102 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 ing the genuine sentiments and opinions of the natives 
 on widely varied subjects, — opportunities which few 
 Europeans ever possess in kind, and fewer still in 
 the same degree. This arises from no fault or de- 
 ficiency on the part of others. It is, therefore, to 
 them no possible ground of disparagement. The su- 
 perior advantage to which we refer is entirely OA\'ing to 
 a rare peculiarity in the circumstances of your position. 
 ** The venerable Con-ie, a name dear to India, — in 
 his earlier days the friend and associate of Henry Mar- 
 tyn ; and last of all, most w^orthily. Bishop of Madras, 
 — in a letter of instruction to certain Missionaries of 
 the Chui-ch of England, strongly recommends them 
 to bestow an hour or two a-day, in affording instruC" 
 tion in English, on the special ground that, by so 
 doing, "they would greatly gain on many of the 
 natives, and especially on the children; and would 
 obtain more insight into their real character in a 
 month than they might otherwise do in a yeavT 
 This is strong language, fi'om a man so eminently 
 cool and dispassionate ; and, than whom, there never 
 Avas any that had a more extensive acquaintance, with 
 the practical workirig of missions in India. And if 
 the advantage in obtaining an insight into native char- 
 acter, be so great in the case of an ordinary Englisli 
 school, in any part of the country, what must it be in 
 the case of such an Institution as that of the General 
 Assembly, — an Institution, which has now risen from 
 the status of an ordinary school, to that of a mission- 
 ary college ? 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 103 
 
 Think of the numbers and age of those who attend 
 it ! Upwards of seve^i hundred., of different castes, 
 from the Brahman, downwards ; and of different ages, 
 from eight or nine, to twenty or twenty-one. Think 
 of the different locaHties that have suppHed these 
 numbers. Ca lcutta, as _the metrnpolif', .ii^,.„iu„a IQ^ 
 ner the very heart of India ; from it proceed, and to 
 wards it return, the principal veins and arteries of the 
 great commercial, judicial, and political systems of 
 that extensive region. Hence it is, that Calcutta has 
 become a sort of general rendezvous for natives from 
 almost every province, from Cashmere to Ceylon; 
 so that, without the trouble and expense of locomo- 
 tion over thousands of miles, you have living speci- 
 mens of almost every class and tribe of the great 
 Hindu family, brought, as it were, to your very door. 
 The greater part of the pupils, doubtless, are natives 
 of Calcutta, and the circumjacent territory ; but, fi-om 
 the confluence of strangers frqm various and widely 
 scattered districts, there have been, and may be, in 
 the Institution, one or more young men from every 
 province, between the Indus, on the west, and the 
 Brahmaputra, on the east. 
 
 Think of the facihties of friendly intercourse that 
 are thus opened up, between the conductors of the 
 Institution, and the parents and guardians of the pu- 
 pils, who may be regarded as the living representa- 
 tives of the distinguishing peculiarities, speculative 
 and practical, of their respective provinces. 
 
 Think of the close and immediate contact into 
 
104 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 which the teachers are habitually brought -with the 
 minds of the taught, — several hundreds of whom are 
 eagerly engaged in different branches of study, through 
 the medium of the Bengali and EngHsh languages. 
 Remarkably lively, acute, and intelligent, the minds 
 of the more advanced are daily brought, as it were, 
 into juxtaposition with the improved systems of Euro- 
 pean literature, and science, as well as the evidences 
 and doctrines of the Christian faith. There is thus an 
 unceasing collision between the light of truth, and the 
 darkness of error, on every subject, literary, scientific, 
 and theological. 
 
 It is not merely the arguments and objections that 
 occur to the young men themselves, that are daily 
 mustered in hostile array. At home they usually con- 
 sult the more intelligent of their own friends, — their 
 Gurus ^ or religious guides, and other learned Brah- 
 jmans. They thus daily return, fresh armed with the 
 
 imost foniiidable objections to our religion and philo- 
 sophy, and the most artful defences of their own, which 
 I the ingenuity and the subtlety of the despotic lords 
 I of opinion amongst them can supply. Our Institu- 
 I tion has thus become a grand focus, towards which, 
 I from hundreds of native intellects, the rays of reflected 
 ■ intelligence and sentiment, perpetually converge. 
 
 In this way, we speak "the words of truth and 
 soberness," when we declare, that, you may enjoy an op- 
 portunity, at least as ample as any that has ever yet been 
 enjoyed, by a British born subject, of obtaining, not 
 merely an acquaintance with the general sentiments 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 105 
 
 of different classes of natives, on every important 
 subject, but also, what is infinitely more difficult of at- 
 tainment, and when attained, infinitely more valuable 
 to the missionary, viz., an intimate, and, in some 
 cases, an almost microscopic insight into their real 
 character, intellectual, social, and rehgious. Yea more : 
 in this way, you may possess the amplest means of 
 obtaining a far more intimate insight into the inner- 
 ■f'orkino-s and counter- workinojs, the more secret-striv- 
 ings and counter-strivings, of souls, long securely 
 anchored in ignorance and superstition ; when, strug- 
 gling to break loose, they are tossed from their ancient 
 moorings into an ocean, where the rocks and shoals 
 of error are first exposed to view, not amid azure 
 calm, by the bright beamings of a cloudless sun ; but 
 amid angry surges, and the loud tempest's roar, by the 
 occasional Ughtning flash of truth, — a more intimate 
 insight, we say, into all such workings and strivings 
 of soul, dming the confessedly brief space of a few short 
 years, than you might other^^dse have obtained in a 
 century, — aye, perhaps, than you might have gained, 
 even had the period of your sojourn been prolonged 
 to the age of Methuselah ! 
 
 VI. — 1. Armed and fortified by such cumulative 
 experience and attainments, you will be the better 
 prepared for addressing with effect the different 
 classes of adults. 
 
 In the place of your destination, individuals are to 
 be found of almost every nation and tribe in Asia ; — 
 
106 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 Burmese and Mugs — Malays and Chinese — Tartars, 
 Thibetians, and Siklis — Arabs, Parsees, and Jews — 
 Buddhists from Ceylon, and nondescript pagans from 
 the Laccadives, and other islands. Now, towards all 
 of these, and as many more besides as come within 
 the scope and range of his personal observation, the 
 Missionary cannot but turn a compassionate eye. And 
 he will be ever ready to assist in devising any mea- 
 sures, that may promise to bring the wanderers of 
 every nation, into the spacious fold of the Redeemer, 
 But, as it is not within the range of human possibili- 
 ty for any single man to distribut'e his own time and 
 attention, with equally profitable effect, among such 
 varieties; and, as the Hindus abound in numbers 
 greatly exceeding all of these combined, it is but na- 
 tural that, in a practical Address like the present, your 
 view should be specially directed to the vastly prepon- 
 demting mass. 
 
 2. Passing by the numberless tribes of devotees 
 and self-tormentors ; those ungainly and unsightly- 
 fanatics, who are often too perfect to regard any ex- 
 cess of depravity a reproach — and the Yogis or Mys- 
 tics, who, pretending to rise above things real and 
 visible, usually dwell on the heights of delirious ab- 
 straction and enthusiasm — and the illiterate domineer- 
 ing Brahmans, who despise learning as a despicable 
 employment, and who, in their conduct, often exhibit a 
 filthy compound of ignorance, pride, and villany ; — let 
 us, for a moment, direct your attention to some of the 
 principal divisions of the Hindu community in Calcutta. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 107 
 
 3. First, there is the great mass of the people. These i 
 can scarcely be said to have any education at all ; con- 
 sequently, they grow up in a state of ignorance and 
 abject dependence. They seem positively to have noi 
 will, no liberty, no conscience of their own. Theyj 
 are passive instruments, moulded into shape by exter= 
 nal influences — mere machines, blindly stimulated, at \ 
 the bidding of another, to pursuits the most unworthy 
 of immortal creatures. In them, reason is in fact, 
 laid prostrate. They launch into all the depravities of 
 idol worship. They look like the sports and derision 
 of the Prince of darkness. And they can point to * 
 little that indicates their high original, save the erefi€/ 
 attitude of the human form. ' 
 
 Now, it will not do to make'^ight of the difficulty 
 of conveying spiritual truths with effect to the minds 
 of such a people. To instruct an ignorant adult in 
 any country, however willing to learn, is no easy task ; 
 and if he is as obstinately un^^^lling, as ignorant, how 
 immeasurably is the difficulty enhanced ? And yet, 
 this, it must be confessed, in general is the case \aih. 
 the multitudinous and degraded race now under con- 
 sideration. 
 
 In our OAvn land, we have of late been awakened, 
 as from a trance, to discover how much the best dis- 
 courses may be thro^\Ti away upon adult hearers, that 
 have been undisciplined and untrained in the rudi- 
 ments of the faith. And hundreds are almost ready to 
 set their seal to the emphatic announcement of an old 
 author, who declared, that " sermons can never do good 
 
108 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 upon an uncatechised congregation." And if this be 
 true, when people have groAvn up in a Christian land, 
 and breathed a Christian atmosphere ; what must it be 
 in the case of those, born and brought up in a heathen 
 land, and breathing nought but a heathen atmosphere? 
 While ignorant of the peculiar condition of that 
 country, well do we remember how our spirits were 
 chilled and frozen into apathy, when, in reference to 
 its evangelization, schemes of education were promi- 
 nently held forth to view. Well can we recall some 
 of our occasional misgivings, when, in the reports of 
 certain home committees, so much importance was 
 attached to what was termed " the auxiliary means." 
 On the other hand, how intense was the glow of ex- 
 citement that warmed the heart, when we pictured to 
 ourselves the ambassador of salvation proclaiming the 
 joyful sound to multitudes of assembled idolaters, — 
 when fancy represented the impressive silence, the 
 earnestness depicted in the countenance, and the ea- 
 gerness with which the Word of Life was listened to, 
 or portions of it received. But, Oh ! we did not, we 
 could not, then realize ; neither can we describe now, 
 the grossness of feeling, the baseness of intention, the 
 obtuseness of intellect, the stupid gaze of aimless curi- 
 osity, the fluctuation and restlessness, the ebullitions 
 of insolence, and the outbreaks of levity, all of which, 
 if known, might have helped to dispel the illusion, 
 and almost provoke the inquiry, — Whether the beings 
 addressed in human form, or the stones of the neigh- 
 bouring temple, or the trees of the surrounding jungle. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 109 
 
 understood best, and retained most permanently, the 
 impressions of sacred truth ? Really we have wit- 
 nessed enough to make us feel that experience may 
 prove a ruthless destroyer of fondly cherished fancies, 
 — that close contact may convert the pleasures of 
 delusion into the bitter painfulness of unwelcome 
 truth, — that Christian zeal may, day after day, be ap- 
 proaching only the bodies, when it undoubtingly be- 
 lieves it is reaching the minds, of the ignorant and 
 perishing ; — in a word, that much time and strength 
 may be wasted in one place upon air, and much 
 exciting interest stirred up in another, by magnifying 
 into realities the images of a shadoAv ! 
 
 What then ? Would we abandon the case of these 
 adult millions as utterly hopeless ? God forbid ! From 
 among them, himdreds have been already called, 
 through the devoted labours of missionaries of differ- 
 ent denominations, — hundreds who, from being mem- 
 bers of the Church militant on earth, are now, we 
 humbly trust, enrolled in that bright array of glorious 
 spirits which compose the Church triumphant in hea- 
 ven. And your attention is strongly drawn to the 
 real difficulty of effectually communicating spiritual 
 instruction to minds so ignorant, carnal, and perverse, 
 that you may be prepared to expect* it ; and expecting, 
 
 * The author has been led to express himself on this, as well as on other 
 connected subjects, solely from what fell under his own personal observa- 
 tion. But, that others of far greater experience than himself have felt 
 the difficulty, now adverted to, at least as strongly as it presented itself to 
 his own mind, might, if necessary, be shown by copious extracts from 
 their journals. For the present, however, a single passage from the pen 
 of that most excellent servant of God, and long-tried friend of missions, 
 
110 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 may be the better enabled, in dependence on Divine 
 grace, to assist in debasing an adequate remedy. 
 
 The system of instruction best suited to the capacities 
 and wants of these multitudes would, beyond all doubt, 
 be the same in kind and method, as that which is now 
 followed, with such happy effect, in our improved infant 
 and juvenile schools. But in the case of adults, such a 
 system must ever be found impracticable. The next 
 best substitute would be, to have missionaries so lo- 
 cated that the same individuals might, day after day, 
 and especially Sabbath after Sabbath, become their 
 hearers, when preaching the Gospel, solving difficulties, 
 or removing misapprehensions. But such a plan, to be 
 at all co-extensive wdth the field, must presuppose a 
 
 the Rev. Josiah Pratt, must suffice. In a sermon, preached at the conse- 
 cration of the Right Rev. D. Corrie, Lord Bishop of Madras, he thus 
 speaks : — " The missionaries who led the way in the more recent efforts 
 among the heathen, went out under a prevailing feeling that, their one 
 and almost exclusive object was to preach the Gospel. The education of 
 heathen children seems not to have entered into their estimate of the 
 means which might be profitably employed. Bnt the apathy, fickleness, 
 levity, superstition, and sensuality of the adult heathen, so discouraged, in 
 many instances, the hearts of the labourers, that tliey felt relief only in the 
 hope that God might be pleased to bless their endeavours among the chil- 
 dren of those heathens. 
 
 " So little, indeed, had this course of labour entered into calculation, ' 
 that doubts arose, in some quarters, whether the societies at home would 
 not consider such occupation of the time of missionaries as too remote 
 and contingent in its prospect of benefit, to justify them in entering there- 
 on ; and the preacher (Mr Pratt) well remembers a case in which a co??i- 
 pany of missionaries, in utter despair of accomplishing any good work 
 with the adults around them, who were yet willing, from the hope of secu- 
 lar advantages, to intrust to them their children, pleaded earnestly with 
 the society at home that they might be permitted to devote their time to 
 such children : he well remembers, too, the reluctance with which this re- 
 quest was granted : yet the wisdom of the measure now commends itself 
 to all competent judges. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. Ill 
 
 prodigious increase of labourers ; since, at present, the 
 number is so very small, that it looks like attempting 
 to sweeten the Atlantic by the addition of a few 
 drops of rain. Hence, again, a fresh argument, to 
 prove the necessity of some such system as that 
 now pursued, for rearing and multiplying native 
 workmen. 
 
 In attempting to convey spiritual ideas to the minds 
 of such people, the abstract, the formal, the didactic, 
 or intellective style of address, must be wholly aban- 
 doned. The model, both as to substance and manner, 
 must be taken from the Bible itself. Acting the part 
 of a skilful physician, the missionary must try to mark 
 the varying phases which the radical disease of sin 
 assumes in the varying characters of those before him. 
 Not having the supernatural gift of " discerning 
 spirits," he must bring his experience of the " deceit- 
 fulness and desperate wickedness" of his owa heart, 
 as reflected in the mirror of Revelation, to bear upon 
 the study of what may be termed the " pathology " of 
 the souls of others. Having succeeded in detecting 
 the peculiar phasis of the malady, he w^U find in the 
 Bible an inexhaustible " materia medica," whence to 
 supply the appropriate remedy. In order most effec- 
 tually to apply it, he must drink in the very spirit of 
 the symbolic and parabolic mode of instruction, so 
 often employed by the prophets, and our blessed 
 Saviour. And he. who shall present the most faith- 
 ful imitations of it,' — he, who shall embody Divine 
 truth, in the most striking sensible emblems or pic- 
 
112 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 torial images, mil assuredly be the most successful in 
 reaching the understanding, and lastingly impressing 
 the hearts of the gi-eat masses of the people. 
 
 In conducting this, or any similar process, of spiritual 
 instruction, experience will soon teach all, that it was 
 not, without an emphasis of meaning, that the holy 
 apostle singled out " patience" as the first distinguish- 
 ing mark of a true minister of God, when he wrote, 
 — " In all things approving ourselves, as ministers of 
 God^ in much patience" &c. 
 / 4. The second class of native adults which will chal- 
 Jlenge your special attention, consists of the educated 
 / Brahmans. These are the despotic lords not of opinion 
 I merely, but of the very souls of men. The supersti- 
 tions of the vulgar they appear to hold in utter con- 
 tempt, while they strive to confirm them by the sanc- 
 tions of an infallible authority. Speculatively, they 
 profess to assent to the unity and perfections of the 
 Supreme Spirit, though endless confusion attaches to 
 all their ideas on thi^^^mid^MndTecTsubjects. The; 
 have acquired, and deserve the character, of learned, 
 ingenious, ^d acute. T5ut, to a disciple of the 
 Baconian school, their learning may soon appear a 
 huge mass of error and emptiness^ — their ingenuity, 
 the inventive art of an old Grecian sophist, — their 
 acuteness, the subtlety of a schoolman of the middle 
 ages, — their reason, a ladder for often scahng the 
 heights of grossest irrationality, — :their philosophy, a 
 device for multiplying speculations that lead farther 
 and farther from the simplicity of truth, — their science. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 113 
 
 a scheme for rendering en-or plausible, and delusions 
 venerable. Such mental powers and attainments, 
 when applied to subjects that are new^ or foreign to 
 their ordinary concejjtiojis, — subjects that require 
 solid and continued reflection from observation and 
 ej^periment, patient and persevering investigation after 
 the European model, — generally prove worse than 
 useless. On such subjects, therefore, the war}^ are 
 two cautious to commit themselves ; they shift, and 
 shuffle, and evade in a thousand Proteus-like forms, 
 and under the cover of a thousand pretences. Apart, 
 then, altogether, from religious considerations, their ge- 
 neral mind may not appear, to one in any degree im- 
 bued with the spirit and principles of modem philoso- 
 phy, to be truly enlightened, but rather shrouded in 
 darkness, — not cultivated in a way to purify and refine 
 it, but strewn with seeds that spring up into crops of | 
 error, — not free, excursive, and enlarged, but shrivel- I 
 led and contracted w ithin a narrow spot, on which it I 
 remains entrenched, ingeniously weaving its cobwebs \ 
 of theory and airy speculation, and as ingeniously spin- ^ 
 ning its gossamer threads of argument to support them. 
 Confident that all is phantasm and fallacy within 
 this sacred enclosure, will you burn with desire, and 
 resolve at once to enter in and grapple wdth the de- 
 fenders on their own ground, and with their own 
 weapons ? Naturally, most naturally may you cherish 
 the desire, and form the resolution. But, from past 
 experience, we would exhort you to beware, lest, in so 
 doing, you may afterwards have cause to repent of 
 

 114 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 having somewhat trenched upon the Divine precept of 
 "redeeming the time." Who has ever fairly tried the ex- 
 periment, without heing obhged to confess, that within 
 'their own territory, these sons of Brahma do really 
 present a front that is impregnable, — a strength that 
 is indomitable ? — And why ? Because the profoundest 
 philosopher may soon find that he scarcely holds any 
 first principles of evidence, or reasoning, in common 
 vnth. them, — that there is scarcely a single point of 
 contact at which it is possible directly to measure 
 strength. Somewhat like the occupants of their own 
 inaccessible mountain fastnesses, they seem perched 
 on the summit of a rock, which the most skilful tac- 
 tician cannot approach, and which is beyond the play 
 of his artillery. 
 
 Still, he who desires to propound a netv system of 
 truth to such men, should not be ignorant of theirs. 
 If he be, he may expect soon to be despised, and his 
 instructions wholly disregarded. But the great use to 
 be made of his knowledge should be, to convince 
 them, by a few strokes, that if he declines wasting 
 his precious time, in the vain endeavour to track them 
 through all their devious wanderings, it is not because 
 of ignorance. One broad sweep, from the besom of 
 common sense, may often be sufticient to brush away 
 a whole castle of fantastic subtleties. 
 
 In general, it may be laid down as indisputable, 
 that it is best to abstain, as much as possible, from 
 direct argumentative assaults upon error ; and con- 
 fine yourself, as exclusively as possible, to the direct 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS, 115 
 
 inculcation of simple truth. We say, as much a.s 
 possible; because, wliatever you may determine in 
 theory, you cannot always be uniformly successful in 
 practice. Often must you expect to meet with those 
 who will challenge to the combat ; who ^vill not allow 
 you to state the simple truth ; or, who wdll not listen 
 to it, if you proceed A\dtli the statement. In such cases, 
 it is well, by a thorough acquaintance with the strong, 
 as W'cll as weak, points in the system of the adver- 
 -sixry, to be enabled to expose the sophistical and 
 humble the arrogant, resist the OA'erbearing and re- 
 buke the petulant. But your great wisdom must lie 
 in escaping from the region of controvei'sy^jiltogetherj- 
 or, if that may not be, as speedily as possible. Your 
 resolution''miglit to be, to oppose all subtleties and 
 false refinements, by strong appeals to matters of fact, 
 p inciples of intuition, maxims of common experience, 
 and keen-edged and sharp-pointed statements from 
 the volume of Revelation : — not to argue and dispute, 
 Ijut to announce and proclaim — not violently to assail 
 error, but meekly to teach the truth — not to WTcstle 
 and contend with men as antagonists, but peaceably 
 to converse with them as friends — not formally to 
 b oppose their false creed, but to dispose them to lis- 
 ten to the superior claims of yours. The grand secret 
 of success is, on all subjects, not to answer artful 
 syllogism by syllogisms still more artful — metaphysical 
 subtleties by refinements still more subtile — ingenious 
 abstractions by abstractions still more ingenious — 
 acute distinctions by distinctions still more acute : — 
 
116 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 In a word, on all subjects, whether physical or meta- 
 physical, civil or religious, the part of wisdom is, not 
 openly to ^\'age war against the errors, but to endea- 
 vour to let in upon them the full blaze of the counter- 
 part truths. And before the shining of the true light, 
 the errors may drop away like the owls and bats, 
 and impure birds of night, from the rising of the sun ; 
 or Hke Dagon, falling before the ark, without the 
 contact of hostile hands, the errors may crumble 
 down, from the mere presence of truth, mthout one 
 lilow from the weapons of dialectic warfare. 
 
 5. But, whatever your success maybe in persuading 
 any of the class of adults to bend the knee at the foot 
 of the Cross ; from your intercourse with them, you 
 cannot fail to gather fresh evidence, in favour of the 
 system of early instruction, which you shall have been 
 led to pursue. 
 
 In civilized and highly polished countries, where 
 the mind is seldom wholly imexercised in a right Avay, 
 or wholly prepossessed mth ineradicable views and 
 opinions of a trivial or debasing nature, hundreds may, 
 and every year do, redeem in manhood, what was lost, 
 by the want of opportunity, in youth. But, in India, 
 if the season of youth be gone, the season of mental 
 improvement, generally speaking, seems gone for ever. 
 There, every thing is premature in growth. Those 
 may be men, who, in other countries, would be treat- 
 ed as boys ; and the mind, soon passively settling into 
 the form imposed upon it by surromiding influences, 
 becomes too barren for cultivation, or too much pre- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 117 
 
 occupied with idle fancies, to admit of the hope of 
 their being easily removed. In such cases, it is not 
 the inherent power of any species of knowledge that 
 is called in question, but the practical application of 
 the power that is found, all but impossible. When the 
 philanthropist learns from experience, that he cannot 
 approach any class, that has attained to years of matu- 
 rity, on the subject of mental or moral improvement, 
 without a cold repulse, — that there is no sympathy, no 
 intelligent unfolding of mind to mind, no congenial 
 reciprocation of sentiment, — at what conclusion must 
 he arrive ? That he ought to abandon his attempts in 
 despair ? — No ! he must still persevere in hope, and 
 in the strength of the Lord, — if, peradventure, a single 
 wanderer be brought into the fold of the Redeemer. But 
 he may well conclude to this effect : — that, whether he 
 regards the minds of multitudes as peeled and scorch- 
 ed into barrenness, or rendered impenetrable from the 
 luxuriance of noxious growths ; the propriety, the ex- 
 ceeding desireableness of early Christian education, 
 with a view to impart common principles, common 
 facts, and common habits of reflection, which may 
 secure a ready access to the hearts and intellects of 
 men, seems demonstrated beyond the reach of cavil, 
 or the possibility of doubt. 
 
 ,5. The third class, to which we would urge your 
 special attention, is one which, numerically^ bears no 
 proportion to either of the two former. It is a class, 
 however, which will be yearly increasing, and already 
 has rank, and power, and w^ealth, and influence on its 
 
118 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 side. More or less initiated into the intricacy of tlieir 
 own metaphysics, and partially acquainted with the 
 schemes of Em-opean philosophy, and the principles of 
 the Christian faith, the leaders of this class endeavour 
 to interweave what they conceive the most rational 
 parts of all these systems into a new compound. Some 
 of the old ideas of the East are thus retained, and 
 strangely blended with many of the new ideas imported 
 from the West. The resulting system, — if system that 
 be, which seems but a fortuitous combination of hete- 
 rogeneous elements, — has all the strutting air and con- 
 sequence of a boastful rationalism. On this account, 
 it is more insidious, and is likely to prove a more dan- 
 gerous foe to the growth and spread of evangelical 
 Christianity, than either the Pantheism of the learned 
 Brahmans, or the idolatries of the multitudinous tribes 
 of Pariahs and Sudras. 
 
 The substitution of a better logic, and the inti'oduc- 
 tion from abroad of more enlightened opinions, may 
 have banished the most revolting of those crudities 
 which beset their own Pantheistic reveries. But take 
 ye good heed, that the spirit of the old man has not 
 yet been changed, nor the enmity of the heart to- 
 wards true godhness diminished. The same virulence 
 against the truth still rankles within ; and, like the 
 deadly upas, insinuates its poison, though unseen, 
 through all the faculties. Their absurdities may not 
 now be so gross ; but what has been gained in refine- 
 ment, becomes lost in the increased facility of decep- 
 tion which false refinement always superinduces ; and 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 119 
 
 the greater difficulty of exposing en-or, which has 
 taken shelter among the ingenuities of a subtile and 
 cultivated intellect. 
 
 In spirit, principles, and design, this rising school in 
 Calcutta and elsewhere, resembles that of the new 
 ♦ Pla tonics or Eclectics of Alexan dria, in the primitive 
 age of Christianity. How largely these latter borrowed 
 from Christianity, only to refine and strengthen Pagan- 
 ism, the records of Ecclesiastical History, and the 
 heresies of former ages but too painfully testify. 
 Hence the complaint of TertuUian, that these men 
 stript Christianity of her mantle, to clothe Philosophy 
 therewithal ; and plundered dii^ine truth to maintain 
 and enrich those systems of eiTor which it was de- 
 signed to supersede. And the like lamentable result 
 may ere long be experienced in the East, unless the 
 champion of the Cross be watchful and wdse ; and 
 prayerful as well as w^atchful. Above all, be on your 
 guard against all plausible pretexts and artful advances 
 towards a theological conciliation or alliance. In this 
 respect, the learned Brahmans of the old school, are 
 often prepared, from their ultra-liberalism, for a species 
 of compromise. In their own preliminary discourse to 
 the " Code of Gentoo Law," they distinctly aver, that 
 as " the painter, by sketching a multiplicity of figures, 
 and by arranging a variety of colours, procures a repu- 
 tation among men ; or, as a gardener, for planting a 
 diversity of shrubs, and for producing a number of dif- 
 ferent flowers, gains credit and commendation," so the 
 Supreme Being has caused a "ray of his glorious essence 
 
120 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 to shine forth in the difference and varieties of created 
 things," and a beam of his "comprehensive henevolence 
 to be manifested in the contrarieties of rehgion and 
 diversities of behef." " Having/* continue they, " ap- 
 pointed to each tribe its own faith, and to every sect 
 its own rehgion ; and having introduced a numerous 
 variety of castes, and a multiphcity of different customs, 
 lie views with complacency, in each particular place, 
 the mode of worship respectively appointed to it ; 
 sometimes he is employed with the attendants upon 
 the mosque, in counting the sacred beads ; sometimes 
 he is in the temple, at the adoration of idols ; the in- 
 timate of the Mussulman and the friend of the Hindu, 
 the companion of the Christian and the confidant of 
 the Jew." What is this but the iniquitous equalizing 
 system of infidelity noAV so rampant in the West, 
 painted to the life, more than sixty years ago, by a 
 learned body of Hindu Brahmans ? Its outrageous 
 extravagance in regarding the most irreconcileable 
 contradictions in the creeds of different nations, as a 
 proof and illustration of the Divine wisdom and bene- 
 volence, is its best confutation. But the new system 
 of Hindu Eclecticism, or Unitarianism, as its authors 
 dehght to designate it, from rejecting the more marked 
 peculiarities of all creeds, is apt to assume an air of 
 greater rationality, and a form of more dangerous de- 
 ception, in the present intellect-idolizing age. This 
 particular subject has not yet been publicly or practi- 
 cally noticed, so far as we know, in connection with the 
 progress of missions in India ; but, having witnessed 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 121 
 
 the iirst sproutings of the new system, we cannot but 
 long to see it nipped in the bud ; we cannot but raise 
 this early and timeous note of warning and alarm, and 
 earnestly charge you to assail the insidious foe with 
 the keenest weapons Avhich the armoury of heaven 
 can supply. 
 
 6. There is a fourth class of natives with which, 
 from its acquaintance with the Enghsh language, you 
 may be brought in contact long before any of the rest. 
 AVe refer to those who have obtained a European edu- 
 cation mthout religion. This class, from the wealth 
 at its disposal, from the facilities now opened up to 
 offices of responsibility and power under Government, 
 from the influence which it Avields over the general 
 business and commerce of the country, from its com- 
 mand over a fi-ee press, and mthal, from its prodigious 
 activities in disseminating anti-Christian principles and 
 opinions, will challenge your earhest and most strenu- 
 ous endeavours with a view to its evangelization. 
 
 Now it is when you come in contact with these, that 
 you will experience the incalculable advantage of that 
 superior education, literary, scientific, and theological, 
 which is prescribed by our Church for its ordained 
 ministers. Let us glance at the theological depart- 
 ment. 
 
 In most parts of this country, where Christianity is 
 nominally professed by all, a large proportion of the 
 studies prosecuted in our Divinity Halls may become 
 practically of little value. Like weapons of warfare 
 in time of peace, they may be hung up to collect the 
 
 \ 
 
122 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 rust and dust of undisturbed quietude, in the armomy 
 of the ministerial Hbrary. But in the land of your 
 future labours, not one of these weapons can long be 
 suffered to lie unfurbished in the scabbard. 
 
 To the educated natives, the whole field of Western 
 theological controversy is thro^^^l open. And all the 
 battles which have been fought in this field with the 
 deist and the infidel, you may have to fight over again, 
 and again. They seize on the Bible for the express 
 purpose of impugning its sacred contents. And the ten 
 thousand times answered objections will be re-produc- 
 ed, as if original and fresh from the mint of a new 
 dynasty of illuminati. 
 
 The Bible, containing, as it does, an historical 
 and prophetical account of the most interesting events 
 that have transpired on the stage of this world for 
 four thousand years, as well as of the extraordinary 
 dispensations of the Almighty, must naturally and 
 unavoidably include many " things hard to be under- 
 stood." Now, these are the things which, surrounded 
 as they are by so many luminous points, cost the pious 
 believer least trouble. But these are the very things 
 upon which the Eastern unbeliever, as well as the 
 Western, is ever ready to pounce, with more than the 
 ravenous voracity of an eagle, on its prey. In the rea- 
 sonableness of this conduct, he resembles the man 
 who, withdra-sv ing his view fi'om the gorgeous produc- 
 tions of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, 
 and the combined glories of the summer's landscape, 
 ^vould point, in a tone of triumph, to the meanest 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 123 
 
 reptile or weed, or to the dampest and most dingy 
 cavern, in proof of the worse than gratuitous asser- 
 tion, that the external world contained nought that 
 was fair, beauteous, or lovely. Every person of com- 
 mon sense and common honesty, would regard such 
 a procedure with merited contempt and indignation ; 
 while the geologist, the botanist, and the mineralogist, 
 would follow him still farther, and, by evolving the 
 hidden beauties and harmonies of what had been so 
 rashly decried, convict him of the most presumptuous 
 empiricism. Now, what service these men of science 
 are enabled to render in rescuing even the most de- 
 spised of the works of God from the reproaches of the 
 ignorant, the very same will the learned missionary, 
 who is set up for the defence of the Gospel, be ex- 
 pected to render, in throwing light on the hard and 
 dark things, — the abstruse and apparently profitless 
 parts of the Word of God. To be fully qualified for 
 a task so arduous, he ought, of all learned men, to be 
 the most learned. 
 
 Difficulties will be started, w^hicli arise from the use 
 of languages, whose principles and construction differ 
 essentially from the forms of speech that prevail in 
 modern times : — he ought to be tolerably conversant 
 with the peculiarities of these, and of the cognate 
 dialects. Difficulties will be started, which arise from 
 differences in the physical condition, and the habits of 
 mind of numerous writers, having led to differences in 
 the train of images, and the combination of terms 
 adapted for the expression of thought : — he ought to 
 
124 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 be acquainted with the causes by which particular forms 
 of speech, oral or ^vritten, have been originated, mo- 
 dified, or changed ; in other words, with the philo- 
 sophy of language. Difficulties will be started, which 
 have arisen from continual allusions to customs and 
 manners, and institutions now obsolete, or commonly 
 unknown : — he ought to be able to avail himself of 
 the researches of the entei-prising traveller, and the 
 lucubrations of the learned antiquarian . Difficulties 
 Avill be started, which have arisen from the immense 
 range of history which the Bible embraces Avithin so 
 narrow a compass : — he ought to have it in his power 
 to collect the remaining fragments of historians of an- 
 cient nations and remote ages. Difficulties Avill be 
 started, which have arisen from the narrative of mighty 
 physical changes which the world has undergone : — 
 he ought to be familiar with the facts and discoveries 
 of modern science. Difficulties will be started, which 
 have arisen from the magnitude and complexity of the 
 grand drama of Providence, — embracing the being and 
 perfections of the great God, the agency of subordi- 
 nate spiritual intelligences, the fall of man from prim- 
 eval innocence, and the progressive developement of 
 the " great mystery of godliness, God manifest in 
 the flesh," for the present redemption and final glori- 
 fication of soul and body : — he must be no stranger 
 to the speculations of ethical and metaphysical philo- 
 sophy ; above all, he must be no stranger to that most 
 difficult of all sciences, — the knowledge of the human 
 heart in its depravity and deceitfulness, of the con- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 1 2.5 
 
 tracted range of finite reason, and of the total help- 
 lessness of the unaided faculties, in restoring the soul 
 to the image of its offended Maker. 
 
 Thus arduous and important are the offices which 
 the learned missionary may have to discharge. And 
 though he cannot succeed universally (for on a sub- 
 ject so infinite in extent and variety, who could do so 
 but one whose understanding is infinite ? ) — yet he 
 may succeed, so often and so well, in removing doubts 
 and difficulties, as to inspire all candid inquirers with 
 the fullest confidence, that nought but an enlargement 
 of faculties, and an extension of knowledge, is required, 
 to enable them to approximate to that point, where all 
 must finally, and for ever, disappear. 
 
 But, while it is thus proper and even necessary, to 
 remove difficulties in the way of inquirers, beware of 
 tanying too long amongst them. These are, after all, 
 ])ut the rubbish that blocks up the access to the mine 
 of divine truth. And if you allow too much time to 
 be wasted in continually turning over the same i-ub- 
 bish, the inquirers, meeting with no vein of positive 
 truth to satisfy the wants and cravings of immortal 
 spirits, may, in weariness and disgust, wholly abandon 
 the pm*suit. Make it a rule, therefore, the instant 
 you solve any real difficulty seriously urged, to em- 
 brace the opportunity of pointing, in one form or 
 other, to the golden treasure that lies beyond, — a 
 treasure, the possession of which would more than 
 compensate for every toil, and more than satisfy every 
 longing, — and that is "Jesus Christ, and him crucified." 
 
126 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 7. Another danger, against which you must be 
 specially on your guard, is that of allowing these edu- 
 cated natives, in their discussions with you, to run 
 perpetually into mere speculations on the abstract 
 doctrines of Revelation. 
 
 The Bible being found too plain, simple, and 
 humbling a book for men of speculative fancy and 
 wayward inclination, they strive to evade, if possible, 
 its practical aim and requisitions altogether, and be- 
 gin to philosophise — applying the subtleties and dis- 
 tinctions of scholastic learning to its doctrinal contents. 
 Hence, this book of wondrous claims, instead of being 
 consulted as an authoritative guide, is ever apt to be 
 converted into a thesis for ordinary dialectics, — a sort 
 of arena where the athletic force of intellect, and the 
 devices of inventive ingenuity, may find full scope for 
 their exercise, in sifting the reasons wliy^ and the 
 modes in which, infinite attributes have been so pecu- 
 liarly manifested in the works of creation and re- 
 demption. Such investigations at once lead to the 
 separate existence of speculative divinity — di^dnity, 
 viewed apart, or abstracted from, all its more direct 
 and practical influences. This abstract consideration 
 of revealed truth may be regarded by some as a harm- 
 less experiment. And, so it may, in lands where 
 almost all nominally bow at the shrine of Revelation. 
 But, it is unwan-anted by the example of Scripture ; 
 and in a hostile territory, soon proves ruinous. The 
 tree, viewed apart fi'om its fragrance and its fruits, is 
 easily pronounced, a cumberer of the ground. The 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 127 
 
 leading subject and design of Revelation becomes in- 
 finitely more exposed to rude assaults. The vigilant 
 enemy is not inactive. He perceives his advantage, 
 seizes the favourable opportunity, and aims his dead- 
 liest blows at what has been made so vulnerable. 
 The advocate of Revelation may attempt to retahate, 
 but it is no longer with the armour of God. — Having 
 relinquished his stronghold, he has unwarily stepped 
 aside into a region where God's presence is not pro- 
 mised, and there fiercely engages Avith weapons of 
 base material and earthly temper, till, in the heat of 
 polemic warfare, he well-nigh succeeds in unchris- 
 tianizing Christianity. 
 
 Be alive, therefore, to the danger of allowing those 
 whom you wish to convert to the Christian faith, to 
 dwell long in the field of speculation. In this respect, 
 take an example from a subject of ordinary occur- 
 rence. 
 
 Let an indi-vidual observe the slow, and laborious, 
 and painful process by which five hundred human 
 beings seem to toil in raising water from a deep pit ; 
 let him next observe the almost supernatural ease with 
 which a certain piece of mechanism can apply a power 
 suflicient for producing the same effect. And whether 
 or not he can comprehend the exquisite arrangement 
 of parts in the mechanism, he will at least be fully 
 impressed with a sense of its value, and will hence be 
 led to extol the contrivance, and admire the skill and 
 power of the artificer. In point of fact, this is the 
 very mode resorted to by all who know how they can 
 
128 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 best succeed in recommending an ingenious invention 
 to popular favour. They dwell not so much, in the 
 first instance, on the superior skill of the inventor, or 
 the superior workmanship displayed in the execution. 
 They at once overpower opposition by such language 
 as this : — " Behold, what useful, what magnificent re- 
 sults ! " Now, let us suppose this process reversed, 
 and what more effectual mode could be found for dis- 
 paraging the machine and its contriver in the vicAv of 
 the multitude, than carefully to exclude all considera- 
 tion of the varieties of mode in which it can contribute 
 to the comfort and happiness of man ? If, for in- 
 stance, instead of pointing to the steam-engine in prac- 
 tical operation, either emptying a mine of its varied 
 contents, or propelling a vessel through the opposing 
 billows, we should, first of all, call on persons unac- 
 quainted with the subject, to examine this wheel and 
 that lever, this screw and that piston : some parts 
 might appear unconnected, others rudely constructed ; 
 some counteracting the general design, and others 
 totally without a purpose ; and the general impression 
 might be, that there was not only complication but 
 confusion ; and in reference to the whole, the question 
 might be put, " What is the use of it ? " 
 
 In like manner, if you msh effectually to recom- 
 mend Christianity, or to exhibit it as developed in the 
 Bible, you must point at once to the system as inse- 
 parably connected with practical efficacy, and practi- 
 cal results, — awakening to a sense of sin and danger, 
 directing to an all-sufficient remedy, purifying the af- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 129 
 
 fections, sanctifying the feelings, transforming the heart, 
 elevating the soul to a communion with the Father of 
 Spirits, and refreshing it with antepasts of immortal 
 bliss. But if the system be \iewed entirely apart 
 from these effects, it is soon apt to degenerate into a 
 mere theory, a mere series of inoperative dogmas. 
 Doubts and difficulties innumerable will then be started 
 by a subtile opponent, respecting reasons and modesy 
 congruities ^n^Jitnesses^ — leading to impressions the 
 most unfavourable, — causing infidelity to triumph, — 
 and ridiculing faith out of existence. Not that the 
 system in itself, when viewed apart from its practical 
 effects, is really devoid of beauty or harmony ; but 
 that, being more abstract when so viewed, and farther 
 removed from the beaten path of daily experience and 
 ordinary reflection, it is, and must be, less intelligible, 
 and, consequently, more liable to misapprehension, 
 and cavilling, and doubt. While, then, with the key 
 furnished by the Scriptures themselves, you should 
 ever be ready, when duty calls, to defend the beauty 
 and harmony of the system in the abstract, or viewed 
 theoretically ; it should ever be your gTand object to 
 combine the theory with the practice^ — and to prove 
 that the former cannot be understood aright, far less 
 admired, unless seen actually exemplified in the lat- 
 ter. 
 
 8. But while you are bound, in your words and dis- 
 courses, in public and private, to exhibit the whole 
 scheme of revelation, in its Divine harmony, inherent 
 beauty, and practical efficacy, remember the exhorta- 
 
180 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. j 
 
 tion of the apostle — " Be thou a pattern of good ; 
 works " — " Be thou an example of the believers, in ! 
 word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, I 
 in purity." Of the venerable Swartz it has been tes- 
 tified, that " the knowledge and integrity of this irre- 
 proachable missionary, retrieved the character of Eu- 
 ropeans from imputations of general depravity ;" and 
 again, " that we might as well attempt to deprive 
 virtue of its charms, or religion of its superior loveli- 
 ness, as to separate the name of Swartz from good 
 report, or even apostolic praise." And it cannot be 
 doubted, that it was not superiority of talent, or extent 
 of learning, so much as his holy unblemished life, 
 Avhich gained that unrivalled influence over the native 
 mind, which neither the governors of provinces, nor 
 the leaders of gi-eat armies, could command. 
 
 Your very profession of disinterestedness may, for 
 some time, prove a stumbling-block in the way of a 
 people, who, secretly conscious of being swayed by no 
 moving principles beyond what are purely selfish, are 
 ever apt to treat with incredulous scorn every preten- 
 sion to loftier motives. They may not — cannot, at 
 first, believe that no sinister designs are cloaked be- 
 neath the profession of such unaccountable generosity. 
 But the continued absence of all self-aggrandizing 
 ends, and the continued manifestation of meekness, 
 patience, self-denial, and other graces, vaW eventually 
 convert their jealousy into trust, and their suspicion 
 into confidence. Even the tyrant potentate of Mysore, 
 could not help addressing his missionary visitor in 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 131 
 
 these emphatic terms : — " I can trust j/o«, because 
 you do not care for money." 
 
 An example conformable to the letter and spirit of , 
 the Gospel, every M'here necessary, becomes doubly 
 indispensable in the case of those, who, in your 
 outward port and demeanour, may behold the onhf 
 legible print and character of what Christianity is. 
 Let your daily walk and conversation, therefore, be a 
 perpetual comment on your doctrine — seen and read 
 of all men, — and it may prove the fittest vehicle for 
 transplanting evangelical principles into a heathen 
 soil. Let your manners and habits be an exact copy 
 and transcript of what you teach, and these may dart 
 rays of conviction when all oral instructions would 
 fail. Let seriousness and gravity be the indices of 
 that earnestness of spirit, that will rivet attention, 
 when all reasoning would prove powerless. Let love 
 to Jesus and the souls of men, burning strongly within, 
 blaze brightly forth in all your intercourse, and it may 
 melt the most stubborn prejudices, and extort an ad- 
 miration of truths the most distasteful to the natural 
 man. While you speak great things for God, strive to 
 live great things unto holiness ; — and more converts 
 may be gained by the persuasive eloquence of a holy 
 life, than by all the discipline of the schools, and all 
 the oratory of the pulpit. Let holiness be your badge 
 as a Christian, your livery as a saint, your passport as 
 a herald of salvation, and your shining diadem as an 
 heir of immortality ; — and you may win your way into 
 hearts which no arguments would open, no pathos 
 
132 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 touch, no promises allure, no thunders of condemna- 
 tion alarm. 
 y With one of the holiest of uninspired men, you niaj 
 possibly say, — " What does he himself that speaks 
 these things unto me ? " And with him, the speaker 
 may truly reply, — " Alas ! I am ashamed to tell you. 
 All I dare say is, that I think I see the beauty of 
 hohness, and am enamoured with it, though I attain 
 it not ; and how little soever I attain, would rather 
 live and die in the pursuit of it, than in the pursuit, 
 yea, or in the possession and enjoyment, though un- 
 pursued, of all the advantage this world affords. And 
 I trust, dear brother, you are of the same opinion, 
 and have the same desire and design, to follow it, 
 both more diligently, and with better success. To the 
 all-powerful grace of our great Lord and Master, I 
 recommend you, and your future charge, and your 
 whole work amongst them." — Amen. 
 
 VII. It may now be proper briefly to notice some 
 of the trials that await you ; the more especially, as, 
 on this subject, there are many prevalent misconcep- 
 tions. 
 
 Bating the dangers of the deep, and the insalubrity 
 of the climate, from most of the perils and hardships 
 enumerated by the apostle, (2 Cor. xi. 23-27,) you 
 may be exempt. But will you, therefore, be without 
 your trials ? Oh, no. And some of these are of a 
 nature which even the apostle never knew. 
 
 Oh, it is loathsome to hear how men, that are buried 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 133 
 
 in eartliliness and carnality, can babble like children, 
 and prattle like fools, on the subject of the mission- 
 ary's supposed comforts and trials, — estimating the 
 former solely from the number and variety of physi- 
 cal accommodations at his command, and the latter, 
 solely from the nature and amoimt of physical priva- 
 tions to which he may be exposed ! — as if the man 
 were altogether a mass of gross sensuousness, a piece 
 of lumpish materialism, or, at best, a more sensitive 
 species of mere animal life. And then, what dispa 
 raging comparisons they institute between his sup- 
 posed comforts and trials, and those of men of secular 
 professions ! 
 
 In the name of my fellow-missionaries of every 
 denomination, I solemnly protest against all such esti- 
 mates and comparisons. They are, in general, not in- 
 sulting and degrading merely : — always fallacious, — 
 they are often preposterously unjust. Let them be 
 told, that the peculiar comforts of the real missionary 
 are such, that the free revenues of an empire could 
 not heighten them, — that his peculiar trials are such, 
 that all the retinues and palaces of royalty could not 
 alleviate them. And why ? Because these are chiefly 
 of a mental, not of a bodily — of a spiritual, not of a 
 physical character. 
 
 Let me, with a special view to your case, ray bro- 
 ther, advert to a few. 
 
 1. The very position of notoriety to which the mis- 
 sionary is suddenly raised, often proves a source of 
 trial. Following the bent and bias of his own mind, 
 
134 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 under a humble estimate of his self-nothingness and 
 vanity, rather than indulge in the spirit of Jehu of 
 old, saying, " Come with me and see my zeal for the 
 Lord," he would be ever inclined to lay his hand on 
 his mouth, and his mouth in the dust, exclaiming, 
 " Behold I am vile, and my best services worthless- 
 ness and vanity," — rather than descant on his own dili- 
 gence and success, in a strain that might even re- 
 motely savour of boastfulness, he would ever desire to 
 breathe forth in utterance, no more than, — " I am an 
 unprofitable servant." But, situated as the mission- 
 ary is, in his relationship to some conimimity of 
 Christians in his native land, he cannot possibly main- 
 tain that silence and reserve to which his strong sense 
 of unworthiness and unprofitableness would naturally 
 prompt him. He must, at times, speak out. And 
 if he is enabled to do so, in such a way as to ascribe 
 all the praise and glory to God, saying, " Come and 
 see what the Lord hath done for me and by me," all 
 well. But it is the difiiculty of acting wholly for 
 God, and speaking wholly for God, that constitutes 
 the trial. As to acting, a veteran in the warfare has 
 candidly confessed, that he " who leaves his native 
 country, full of love, and zeal, and humility, — on be- 
 ing flattered by public notice of his labours, — on see- 
 ing his name connected with some important mission, 
 — may insensibly find himself acting too much from 
 worldly excitement, — too much under the impression, 
 that what he does will be publicly told of, and too 
 little in the humble retiring spirit of his Master. He 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 135 
 
 may, almost without knowing it, begin to do many | 
 things to be seen of men. Here is a danger common i 
 to all missionaries, and into which too many fall." I 
 As to speakings or writings the counsel of an aged 
 father may well be prefeiTcd to that of a less expe- 
 rienced servant. " I would not have you," said he, 
 " or any others in India, abate their zeal in the ser- 
 vice of the Lord, but only to regulate their efforts with 
 the utmost caution. Do as much good as you pos- 
 sibly can, but do not talk about it, or proclaim it 
 in any ostentatious way. It is not an easy thing J 
 to kill a lion, and not to tell our father or our mo- | 
 ther. Yet, this is the lesson which, under existing 
 circumstances, it is expedient for you to attain ; and 
 I earnestly \>dsh you to impress the idea on the minds 
 of your various correspondents, when in India." 
 
 To preserve the soul, in the integiity of its holy 
 devotedness, from the effects of a trial that is ever apt 
 to be offering violence to its own pure convictions, 
 pray that self, in so far as it is an idol and a tyrant 
 by turns, may be wholly dislodged, and the Lord 
 Jesus seated, without a rival, on the throne of the 
 heart and affections. If any love be still cherished 
 for self, pray that it may only be in^ and for .^ Christ ; 
 and then, and then only, will the indulgence of self- 
 love become innocent, when evacuated of all selfish- 
 ness. Knowing that your proceedings will be publicly 
 watched, and must often be rehearsed by yourself, 
 pray earnestly against the very semblance and form 
 of self-arrogating, self-assuming egotism. To prevent 
 
136 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 the danger of self-wisdom, and self-power, pray that 
 the admonition may he constantly ringing in your 
 ears, " Without me you can do nothing." To prevent 
 the danger of self-seeking, and self-pleasing, pray that 
 your own will and pleasure may he wholly melted 
 and dissolved into the will and pleasm-e of your Di- 
 vine Lord and Master. To prevent the danger of 
 doing or saying aught, merely to secure the honour 
 and praise of men, pray that all the springs of thought 
 and feehng, speech and action, may flow from Christ, 
 as their proper source and centre ; and all the lines 
 terminate in him, as their proper hound and circumfer- 
 ence. To prevent the danger of following any pursuits 
 that have other ohjects in view than the glory of the 
 Redeemer, pray that, as a frontlet on the forehead of 
 all of them, may he engraven the salutary interroga- 
 tion, " Lovest thou me more than these ? " In a 
 word, pray for the grace to carry along with you, in- 
 to every department of lahour, a uniform singleness 
 of aim, — an undeviating simplicity of purpose, — to 
 know nothing supremely save Jesus Christ, and him 
 crucified ; and glory in nothing exclusively, save in his 
 cross ; and delight in nothing transcendently, save in 
 commending his hleeding, dying love to perishing sin- 
 ners. And then, when called on, in the course of 
 providence, to record your own deeds, however distin- 
 guished hy superior excellence, the record will he 
 throughout pervaded with the spirit of the apostolic 
 confession, " Yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me." 
 2. The known wishes and expectations of thousands 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 137 
 
 at home, (wishes which you may not be able to gra- 
 tify, and expectations which you may not be able to 
 realize,) may prove a source of sore trial to you. 
 
 If you felt yourself responsible only to an invisible 
 God, that knoweth the disposition of the heart, and the 
 purity of the motive, as well as the outward action ; 
 and judgeth righteously ; you would escape from this 
 source of trial. But, as you are secondarily respon- 
 sible to the Church, whose servant and missionary 
 you may happen to be, you cannot, you ought not, 
 to be insensible to the reasonable wishes and expec- 
 tations of any of its members. 
 
 But such wishes and expectations may not be al- 
 ways the most reasonable. 
 
 The present is pre-eminently the age of excite- 
 ment. The loud cry is, not so much for something 
 true, as for something new, something stirring, some- 
 thing rousing. 
 
 Now, planted as you will be, within the precincts 
 of no " mean city," — a city which itself contains up- 
 wards of five hundred thousand human beings, — and 
 in the centre of a district so teeming with inhabitants, 
 that within a circle, with a radius of tAventy miles, their 
 aggregate is estimated to exceed two millions, i. e.^ a 
 population equal to that of all Scotland, — your field 
 of labour must be acknowledged to be ample enough, 
 and all your time and strength must soon be more 
 than taxed with its cultivation. 
 
 But your labour in such a field, in order to be ul- 
 timately found productive, may, for years, be of the 
 
138 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 plainest and homeliest, though most substantial char- 
 acter. Your accounts, therefore, may, rather must, 
 disappoint a large class of home contributors. As 
 one report drops in after another, the exclamation may 
 be, — " Ah, how dull, insipid, and uninteresting ! 
 There is nothing new — nothing original — nothing but 
 what we have long been accustomed to before ! No ; 
 nothing but pupils and classes, schools and examina- 
 tions, lectures and sermons, bibles and tracts!" — True. 
 You may have nothing to report of the perils of 
 coasting voyages along barbarous shores, — nothing to 
 report on the formation of coral islands and other 
 sub-marine phenomena, — nothing to report on the 
 geological strata and fossil remains of hitherto unex- 
 plored territories, — nothing to report of the precipices 
 and cataracts of some savage hills, — nothing to report 
 of the discovery of strange and unheard-of denizens 
 belonging to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, — no- 
 thing to report of marvellous adventures, and hair- 
 breadth escapes, among jungles and forests, where the 
 tiger and alligator contend for supreme dominion, — 
 nothing to report of sublime soliloquies among the di- 
 lapidated sculptures, temples, and palaces of ancient 
 capitals. And because all these, and such like topics, 
 may be wanting, — no matter though much of that be 
 included which, after all, has made Scotland one of 
 the happiest, the most prosperous, and most religious 
 of nations, — your report may be banished as insuffer- 
 ably stale, and yourself pronounced a tame and pro- 
 saic character,— "the counterpart, it may be, in the 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 139 
 
 world of human agency, to the flatness of an IIol- 
 landic swamp, as compared with the subUme gran- 
 deur of Alpine scenery. 
 
 Now, to mere " flesh and blood " all this may prove 
 a trial, so sharp, as to tempt the missionary to abandon 
 humble, but really effective, labour, and go in quest of 
 more exciting subjects. But, in the assurances of that 
 prospective sagacity which can already discern a 
 golden harvest through the rough drudgery of break- 
 ing up the fallow ground ; and in the strength of that 
 faith which can endure, as seeing Him who is in- 
 visible, we would beseech you patiently to submit to 
 the trial, and resolutely to resist the temptation. 
 
 If, in the course of your manifold duties, any such 
 objects should naturally fall in your way, neglect not, 
 by any means, to bestow upon them a passing notice. 
 They are all, in their own place, most worthy of a 
 due share of attention. But, remembering how short 
 the time, how precarious the health, how vast the 
 spiritual interests of immortal souls intrusted to your 
 charge, and how few there are to glean the vintage of 
 eternity, be not allured by the gilded bait of an 
 ephemeral applause, to step aside from your proper 
 sphere, and fritter away precious opportunities in the 
 eager endeavour to fall in with, and record the varieties 
 of stirring incident, or the successions of rare pheno- 
 mena. Wearied and sickened with the glare of adven- 
 titious and short-lived interest, which the introduction 
 of such topics has too often thrown on the proper, 
 and far more momentous, subject of missions ; — 
 
140 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 wearied and sickened with the excitement of a species 
 of rehgious romance, which, not haA'ing for its basis 
 the only enduring foundation of love to God and love 
 to man, too often rapidly subsides, and, like the re- 
 fluent tides of ocean, leaves nothing behind it, but 
 the weed-covered shore of rocky hearts and turbid 
 affections ; — wearied and sickened "with all this ficti- 
 tious interest and excitement, do you resolve, through 
 God's blessing, to crucify those emotions and im- 
 pulses towards the novel and romantic, which strong 
 temptation might cause to sprout up luxuriantly in 
 your own breast. Resolve, in the strength of the Lord, 
 to go, or to remain, wherever duty summons — happy 
 and contented in the prosecution of any profitable 
 toil which enlightened judgment may direct, however 
 common-place its character, or monotonous the rou- 
 tine ; bearing ever in mind that, from the very nature 
 of the preparatory work in which you are engaged, 
 you are called on to labour, not so much for the pre- 
 sent^ as for future^ generations. Let real and lasting 
 usefulness to the souls of men, and not an ambition 
 to gratify the ravenous appetite of religious romancers 
 and sentimentalists at home, ever be your guiding 
 pole-star. 
 
 3. Again, there are numbers, at home, who indulge 
 in extravagant expectations o? great immediate success. 
 Their imaginations are ever haunted mth images of 
 the thousands that were converted under the Pente- 
 costal effusion ; and they are apt to be dissatisfied, if 
 they do not constantly hear of whole cities and districts, 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 141 
 
 turning tlieir idols to the moles and to the hats, — of 
 hundreds and thousands being baptized, — and of new 
 churches springing up with the rapidity of apostoHc 
 times. Now, if in his reports, a missionary is not 
 enabled to announce any thing in the remotest degree 
 approximating to such success — and more especially, 
 if for some time, he can scarcely refer to any genuine 
 conversions at all, — he is very sure to be marked 
 down by many as an indolent, unworthy, unprofit- 
 able servant. 
 
 A judgment so harsh and unjust, and communi- 
 cated, it may be, in so many invidious and significant 
 fonns, — more especially, Avhen the workman is really 
 conscious of toiling himself into weakness, and bela- 
 bouring himself into the grave, — becomes the source 
 of sore trial, and is very apt to tempt him, by unscrip- 
 tural inducements, or latitudinarian laxness, to swell 
 the number of reputed conversions. 
 
 Be it your prayer, my brother, to be strengthened 
 to bear the trial, if imposed upon you ; as also to 
 combat the temptation, if subjected to it. 
 
 As to the people at home, fearlessly ask them, What 
 right they have to indulge in such extravagant visions ? 
 It is a glorious maxim, " to attempt great things and 
 expect great things ; " — but, why should they expect 
 great things, while they do not attempt great things ? 
 Why should they view with such self-complacency their 
 own puny efforts in so gigantic a cause ? Why should 
 they expect so much, when by them so little is done ? 
 Why should they feel impatient for magnificent re- 
 
142 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 suits, when insignificance is stamped on all their en- 
 deavours ? Is it reasonable to leave unfinished the 
 labours of the husbandman, dispense with the genial 
 showers of summer, and look for harvest before the 
 end of spring? Why, one is almost forced to be- 
 lieve that there are men more unreasonable still — men, 
 who would reverse the ordinary processes of nature 
 altogether, and without a seed-time at all, expect the 
 waving fruits of autumn. For what seed, it may be 
 asked, have they ever yet attempted to sow, that bears 
 any proportion to the anticipated harvest ? 
 
 As for yourself, you are privileged, yea bound, to long 
 for and expect success. Would it not be utterly irra- 
 tional in an architect to go on for ever digging the foun- 
 dation, without wishing any edifice to rise? — or, for a 
 physician to go on administering medicine, without 
 caring whether his patient recovered ? — or, for a hus- 
 bandman to go on sowing without expecting to reap 
 any fruit ? And would it be less irrational for a mi- 
 nister of Christ to be constantly laying the foundation 
 of Gospel principles, or applying the balm of Gospel 
 grace, or scattering the seed of Gospel doctrine, with- 
 out expecting correspondent results ? No : He, of all 
 men, is the last that must be indifterent to success, — 
 seeing that success, in his case^ implies the tremendous 
 reality of deliverance from a hell of torment, and ad- 
 vancement to a heaven of bliss ! You, therefore, as 
 a missionary of the Cross, should long earnestly for 
 the desired success. Your whole heart, and soul, and 
 strength, and mind, should be set upon it. And in 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 143 
 
 order to realize it, you are bound to attempt every 
 thing that past experience has not proved to be im- 
 practicable, or sound reason has not pronounced to be 
 chimerical. You are bound to persevere in the attempt 
 as diligently as if you must see it accomplished. You 
 are bound to toil for its attainment as laboriously as 
 if all depended on the surpassing strenuousness of your 
 OA\Ti exertions ; while you must pray for it as impor- 
 tunately as if nought depended upon any exertion 
 beyond that of the energy of the invisible God. 
 
 But if, after a season, your earnest and sanguine 
 expectations should not be realized, you must not fret 
 yourself into impatience, or sink yourself into despon- 
 dency, as if all your efforts were utterly thrown away. 
 Remember that no work of faith or labour of love will, 
 in the end, be lost — no, not even a tear, or a sigh, 
 or a secret petition, dropped over perishing souls, from 
 the heart of a child of God, will be unregistered in the 
 book of his remembrance. 
 
 Visible success is not the test of your real deserts 
 as a faithful laboui-er in God's vineyard ; neither is it 
 the guarantee of the real efficiency of your labour. 
 It is for the labour and not for the success — for the 
 toil and not for the fruit, that you are accountable at 
 the bar of your own conscience, and at the tribunal of 
 your God. Paul himself may plant and Apollos 
 water all their days, without witnessing the desired 
 fruit ; since it is God alone who giveth the increase. 
 If that increase be vouchsafed, hail it ^vith overflow- 
 ing joy and gratitude to the Divine Giver. If it be 
 
144 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 withheld, how know you but it may be granted to 
 your successors, as the result of your labour ? And 
 if so, think you that your reward will be the less, or 
 that your crown will shine with dimmer lustre, in that 
 you have not been yourself the reaper on earth of 
 what you have sown ? 
 
 Besides, for your special encouragement, you ought 
 to remember that, in the w orld of mind as well as of 
 matter, the mightiest change is often effected before 
 any symptoms of change become apparent to the 
 outward eye. Look around you at this season of the 
 year. Behold the surface of earth congealed, as if be- 
 numbed into an utter extinction of life, and shrouded 
 in one universal winding-sheet of snow. By degrees 
 the subtile principle of latent heat begins to enter the 
 frozen mass ; and the greatest proportion of it is ab- 
 sorbed before the attention of the inexperienced obser- 
 ver can possibly be challenged. Slow, and impercep- 
 tible in its progress, the widest transition has been 
 made, the most momentous transformation effected, 
 before the process of actual dissolution has visibly 
 commenced. At length, when saturated up to the 
 full extent of its capability of retaining consistency and 
 form, all at once, in the twinkling of an eye, the 
 mighty mass melts away, learning few traces behind. 
 In the evening you look out : all seems as firm and 
 unchanged as ever. In the morning you look out, 
 after a sudden thaw, and behold, all has vanished, as 
 by the breath of an Almighty Spirit. So with Hin- 
 duism. The subtile element of change, under various 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 145 
 
 forms, Is even now gradually insinuating itself into 
 the frozen mass. The process is slow ; it is noiseless ; 
 and to the external sense, in a great measure, invisible. 
 To the eye of a casual or ignorant observer, all may 
 seem as likely to wear out for centuries to come, as it 
 has done during the centuries that are past. But to 
 the intuitive glance of shrewd penetration, there is 
 flashing convictlve evidence that even now the great- 
 est change is progressing, without any very palpable 
 symptoms of outward visible change. And you may 
 be one of the honoured instruments in augmenting the 
 force of the vivifying transforming principle,'and in 
 accelerating the onward progression. And when the 
 huge mass of Hinduism is saturated to the full, it may 
 melt away In a day, like the dissolving snow in a sud- 
 den and universal thaw. 
 
 4. There is yet another way in which want of strik- 
 ing visible success in conversion, may be turned Into 
 a source of new trials to the missionary. It Is when 
 the enemy is encouraged thereby, to pour contempt on 
 the " preaching of the cross," as an ordinance, whose 
 foolishness can only be surpassed by Its supposed de- 
 monstrated inutility. And who that has not felt it, 
 can tell, ho^v deeply this sinks into the heart of the 
 man who is jealous for the honoui' of his Divine 
 Master ; and who trembles lest his own inefficiency 
 and faithlessness may have furnished the occasion 
 for scoffers to blaspheme ? 
 
 Here, however, as a servant of God, you are pri- 
 vileged to cling to, and take comfort from, principles 
 
146 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 that are not less real, tliougli they may seem to 
 wear a transcendental aspect to the disciples of a low 
 and earthly philosophy. These latter move on, with- 
 in the contracted limits of sense ; they place no con- 
 fidence in what is not subjected to human measure- 
 ment ; they affect to contemn what does not admit of 
 fixed previous calculation ; and they cannot brook 
 the toil and the trouble of an achievement which ex- 
 cludes all praise, and flourishes by the amiihilation 
 of human merit. Hence, much of the zeal ^^dth 
 which the men of this world exclusively promote 
 schemes of secular education. Here the mode of 
 operation is their OAvn ; and the glory of success is 
 chiefly theirs. They have only to survey a particular 
 field, weigh the lessons of past experience, and con- 
 trast the nature and number of the obstacles to be 
 overcome, mth the force that can be l^rought to bear 
 upon them ; and they can, without fail, calculate on 
 the appearance of a certain quantity of fruit within a 
 specified time. And in the retrospect, they can refer 
 to the sagacity of their discernment, to the wisdom of 
 their plans, to the singleness of their motives, to the 
 unwearied vigilance of their superintendence, and to the 
 triumphant nature of their success. And what results 
 do they expect to follow ? All that is deemed worthy 
 of possession — praise and fame — the darlmg objects of 
 human ambition, and the main-springs of even all 
 philanthropy that originates from, and terminates in, 
 the mere victim of mortality. 
 
 AYholly diverse in its effect, and in the principle of 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 147 
 
 its efficiency, is " the preaching of the Gospel." It 
 is of a nature too subhme and godlike, to be regulated 
 by views of mere worldly expediency, or be imbued 
 with efficacy from measures that originate in mere 
 human sagacity. It disdains to be graduated by _ any 
 scale of human device : it wholly resists the applica- 
 tion of arithmetic : it eludes all calculation, as it de- 
 fies the unaided power of man : it is the sphere pe- 
 cuharly reserved by the Eternal for the exercise of 
 his high prerogative : it is the pathway in which the 
 God of providence is pleased to display the mysteri- 
 ous workings of his grace, even that grace which ever 
 triumphs in the midst of acknowledged weakness, and 
 ever stamps with vanity the mightiest effi)rts of 
 boasted strength. Its direct aim and legitimate re- 
 sults are the conversion of the soul towards God, and 
 the progressive renovation of its nature. And in the 
 production of these results, man, in his highest estate, 
 is at once reduced to the level of his own nothing- 
 ness — being recognised merely as an instrumental, 
 not an efficient cause, equally devoid of merit, and 
 imdeserving of praise. And need it be wondered at, 
 that a plan which so strips man of all that is endear- 
 ed to the feelings, and accordant with the reasonings 
 of unrenewed nature, should be scorned and scouted 
 by all who still creep in the dust, and grovel amid the 
 fogs of an earthly atmosphere ? But you, as a man 
 of God, rising higher and higher in the Divine life, 
 will be enabled to see all things in the light in Avhich 
 they stand unveiled before Omniscience. With the eye 
 
148 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 of faith directed to the sanctuary above ; and the eye 
 of sense and reason taking a sui-vey of the world be- 
 neath, you can, in opposition to the suggestions of 
 sense, and in opposition to all mere human probability, 
 persevere in preaching Christ crucified, the power of 
 God, and the wisdom of God ; assured that as God 
 cannot lie, there shall, in due season, an act of Omni- 
 potence be put forth to imbue such preaching ^vith 
 an efficacy as irresistible as, in the time and mode of 
 its agency, it is beyond the regulation or control of 
 human mechanisms. 
 
 5. The perpetual resistance to the light of the glo- 
 rious Gospel in ten thousand varied and most aggTa- 
 vated forms, will ever prove one of your severest 
 trials. 
 
 But remember that this is nothing but what you 
 should be prepared to expect. For what great scheme 
 of philanthropy has ever yet succeeded, without hav- 
 ing first to encounter the prejudices, and subdue the 
 opposition of those who were to be benefited ? Un- 
 speakably delightful is the thought, that the great 
 Christian temple, like its material prototype of old, 
 may eventually be raised with noiseless harmony of 
 design and execution. Still, as it is not true, that in 
 no part of the process of constructing that fabric, which 
 was the pride and glory of the ancient Israel, was 
 " hammer, or axe, or any tool of iron " ever heard — 
 as the workshops of Tyre, and the mines of Sheba, 
 and the mountains of Lebanon could amply testify ; — 
 so, in regard to the materials out of which the living 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 149 
 
 temple of Christ is to be reared — materials rude and 
 shapeless by nature, and moulded into forms still more 
 rude and incorrigible by diabolic art — it is not reason- 
 ably to be expected that they can be fashioned or pre- 
 pared without offering the most stubborn resistance. 
 
 Besides, in your warfare, you must ever be ready to 
 distinguish active from passive resistance. The latter, 
 silent and contemptuous, has hitherto been the distin- 
 guishing characteristic of the leading natives of India. 
 The sharpest arrows of spiritual conviction have seemed 
 to sink into their apathetic natures, as noiselessly and as 
 harmlessly, as the most potent missiles of an invading foe 
 into the yielding mass of their own mud-walled fort- 
 resses. Now, however, in the place of your destination, 
 resistance has to a gxeat extent become active. Instead 
 of being dejected on this account, you should hail it as a 
 token for good. Such resistance is at least symptomatic 
 of life, and the more obstinate it becomes, the greater 
 reason have you to believe that its power must speedily 
 decay. The balls, that are repelled with thundering 
 noise from the rocky battlement, leave rents and chasms 
 behind. The sound of your spiritual weapons may 
 now be more frequently heard, as they are made to re- 
 coil from the ramparts of stony hearts ; but remember 
 that scars and fissures may be left behind. The din 
 of opposition may even swell at times into the voice 
 of tumult or violent commotion, and you may be 
 filled with alarm and tempted to tremble for the re- 
 sult ; but remember w^ho hath said, " be not dismay- 
 ed, for I am with thee." Remember that, as the pro- 
 
150 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 mulgator of Christianity, you are Knked with an im- 
 perishable cause. Has it not already encountered all 
 the forms of opposition which ingenuity could devise 
 or malice envenom ? — Sarcasm and irony, — ridicule, 
 and wit, and sophistry, — pride, and passion, and pre- 
 judice, — famine and sword, — -the dungeon and the 
 flames. And what has been the issue ? — Annihila- 
 tion ? No. Discomfiture ? No. Injury or disadvan- 
 tage ? No. From every conflict it has arisen, and 
 like the mighty giant of old, only gathered a fresh ac- 
 cession of strength from every apparent fall. 
 
 Against it, still, may ingenuity and hatred persevere 
 in reforging weapons a thousand times broken. But 
 if you, and such as you, are not faithless but believ- 
 ing, their keenest edge must again and again prove 
 powerless, and they who wield them, forced to retire 
 from the field of contest, imlaurelled and imcrowned, 
 save with disaster and defeat. Partaker, through 
 the grace of God, of a divine nature, you must 
 feel yourself to be, in a certaii^ sense, the very asso- 
 ciate and standard bearer of the Omnipotent. Let 
 your constant prayer then be, that all the forms of op- 
 position, suggested by the spirit of error, may through 
 you be brought, as it were, into naked contact with the 
 glittering sword of divinity. And thus, in the midst 
 of the profoundest acknowledgments, that in yourself 
 you are nothing, and of yourself you can do nothing 
 — may you exhibit to the world the surprising spec- 
 tacle of the omnipotency of a Christian man ! 
 
 6. Again, another of the hardest trials of the mis- 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 151 
 
 sionary, arises from the dilBGculty of maintaining that 
 life of faith and love — that life of holiness — that life 
 of devotion — that life of communion with God in the 
 soul — which is not only the root and flower of human 
 happiness, but the real secret of ministerial success. So 
 long as this spiritual life is maintained in active exer- 
 cise, and the soul is sensible of the presence of its 
 Lord, all difficulties, as a beloved brother, now no 
 more, was wont to remark, " appear trifling, and over 
 the darkest clouds of discouragement, the bow of pro- 
 mise shines ; but when overcome by temptation, and 
 God seems to hide his face from the labourer, the very 
 shadow of death is cast over the gloomy scenes that 
 surround him." 
 
 Now, however contrary to general opinion, let me 
 forewarn you, my brother, that the maintenance of 
 this divine life in the soul may be found far more diffi- 
 cult, in your future field of labour, than at home. Ah ! 
 little do people know how much they are indebted to 
 adventitious circumstances for the preservation of a 
 creditable profession, — ^how much of their religious 
 enjoyment flows from other sources than from God ! 
 In India, often have the best of men been forced to 
 complain, that the very climate affects the soul in 
 ways unkno^vn imder temperate skies, — inducing, at 
 one time, a peculiar irritability of mind, and, at another, 
 an unwonted languor and depression, — then, a flagging 
 and sinking of the spirits, followed by callous insensi- 
 bility, not imlike the stupor of a partial swoon ; — and 
 all this terminating in a felt unfitness, and almost vio- 
 
152 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 lent disinclination, for all devotional exercises what- 
 soever. Nor is it the climate merely that thus affects 
 the integrity of the spiritual frame. Not to talk of 
 the provocation constantly given to the remaining 
 corruptions of the old man, hy the rudeness and the 
 raging of heathen adversaries, — the perpetual con- 
 fronting of the rites, forms, and institutions, of an 
 ahominable idolatry, is apt, in the end, to exercise a 
 chilling, deadening influence. At first, the contrary 
 effect is likely to be produced. Like the dead bodies 
 floating along the stream — torn and mangled by dogs, 
 vultures, and crows, — they may strike the new-comer 
 with horror. But in both cases, and in both alike, their 
 frequency makes them familiar^ and a horrid famili- 
 arity with such scenes, is ever apt to induce a freezing 
 and a petrif3ang indifference — most uncongenial to 
 the spirit and power of devotion. In a word, there 
 is such an imceasing process of attrition earned on, by 
 the action of a thousand new elements, against the 
 spiritual life and health of the soul, that the sturdiest 
 buttresses of resolution seem often crumbling doTNTi, 
 like debris around the bases of the lasting hills. 
 
 It is then that a missionary, looking back on his 
 native land, is ready to exclaim, — Oh, it is easy for 
 you at home, to maintain a blazing fire on the borders 
 of an ancient forest — to rear the tender exotic in a 
 sheltering hot-house — to keep full the liquid reservoir 
 in the neighbourhood of a thousand rills. But, to 
 feed the flames on the very crest of perpetual frost and 
 snow — to cherish the budding exotic on a bleak and 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 1 53 
 
 desert lieatli — to replenish the reservoir amid scorch- 
 ing sands : — this, this is to maintain the plant of Hfe 
 flourishing, the fount of purity overflowing, the fire of 
 devotion huminor bright in the frightful solitude of an 
 idolatrous city in India. 
 
 As a counterpoise to such tendencies, you must, by 
 the grace of God, resolve to be more careful, watchful, 
 and diligent than ever, in the use of all appointed 
 means of grace. You should be much, not only in 
 secret, but in social prayer — prayer, not only in the 
 closet and at the domestic altar, but in the society of 
 a congenial brotherly fellowship. You should converse 
 much and frequently with your brethren, not only on 
 the general affairs of the mission, but specially on the 
 inward health and prosperity of each other's souls — 
 that, as iron sharpeneth iron, so the sympathetic touch 
 of the heart and countenance of one friend, may whet 
 the blunted edge of spiritual life in the other. You 
 should keep up the constant practice of reviewing, in 
 the light of God's Word, all your feelings, motives, 
 principles, and actions. You should retain on your 
 table, for constant consultation, some of the search- 
 ingly practical and strikingly devotional treatises of 
 our older Divines ; — as also, the lives of some of the 
 more eminent saints, martyrs, and missionaries. Above 
 all, let the Bible be with you the " book of books," — 
 the jewel of inestimable price, — the infallible chart to 
 guide across the ocean of time, — the inexhaustible 
 magazine of God's marvellous dealings of mercy with 
 your own soul. Resolve, that the last book which 
 
154 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 you read at night, and the first which you open in the 
 morning, be the Bible. Resolve, that, hke the royal 
 Psalmist, you shall carry your meditations therein to 
 the couch of rest — that the last breathing of the soul 
 before you sink into slumber, and the first breathing 
 when you awake, whether in the silent watches of the 
 night, or at the dawning of day, shall be the utterance 
 of an ejaculatory prayer. Nor let the Bible be con- 
 sulted at stated periods merely. Turn to it often, 
 during those snatches, or fragmentary intervals of time, 
 that intervene between the hours of regular duty. 
 And if you catch but a single text — a single apple, as 
 it were, from this tree of knowledge and of life, the 
 momentary gust and savour of it may help to revive 
 a languishing frame, and fortify it against the friction 
 and recoil of a thousand opposing influences. 
 
 And when joujeel painfully conscious of a growing 
 deadness, and in that blessed volume, find the " resur- 
 rection and the life " to quicken you, — when you feel 
 yourself weak, and there find, an all-sufficient Saviour 
 able and willing to strengthen you, — ^vretched, and 
 there find a merciful Iligh Priest, ready to relieve you, 
 — miserable, the very fountain of happiness to comfort 
 you, — poor, the Lord of heaven and of earth, pledged 
 to bestow an eternal inheritance, — ^blind, the Sun of 
 Righteousness to enlighten you, — naked, the blessed 
 Redeemer, waiting to clothe you with the garments of 
 salvation : — In a word, when you feel deeply sensible 
 of the multitude of your wants, as a shortcoming, 
 backsliding, sinful, and unworthy creature ; and, in 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 155 
 
 the Bible, find all your wants supplied, — supplied, too, 
 in a way immeasurably exceeding your expectations, 
 and contrary to all your deserts ; — this experience will 
 fill your heart with gratitude, and ever tune your lips 
 to sing the praises of the Most High. Youi" study 
 will be a sanctuary consecrated by prayer ; and from 
 its frequent, fervent, exercises, will daily ascend a fra- 
 grant incense, that shall mingle with the odours of 
 the saints before the throne of the Eternal. 
 
 Many may be disposed to regard some of these 
 remarks as the dull and unmeaning utterances of cus- 
 tomary common-place. Well, be it so. But would, 
 my brother, that I could inject the impression into 
 your inmost soul, and leave it fast cleaving there like 
 a barbed dart, that, from the taxation or neglect of 
 some such simple means as these, the fire of many a 
 missionary spirit which at first blazed unto the hea- 
 vens, — threatening to consume, as in a moment, the 
 strongest bulwarks of heathenism, — has often cooled 
 down into the innocuous dimness of a faintly visible 
 phosphorescence. 
 
 7. Once more, when the missionary has most efi*ec- 
 tually risen above the influences of the last mentioned 
 trial, his soul is then most open and exposed to the 
 full influence of other trials, arising from the very na- 
 ture of his labour among a heathen people. And 
 what is most affecting, is, that these trials, instead of 
 diminishing, may go on accumulating, with the widen- 
 ing range of experience, and the gliding lapse of time. 
 
 When, day after day, week after week, month after 
 
156 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 month, and year after year, he goes out and comes in 
 among such multitudes, blindly led captive by Satan at 
 his will, — and feels how little he can directly do for 
 the saving of their precious souls : when he thinks of 
 their indescribable degradation, mental and moral, and 
 their self-complacent satisfaction therewdth : when 
 he thinks of their ignorance and dullness of apprehen- 
 sion in divine things : when he thinks of their care- 
 less ease and voluptuous corrupting sloth : when he 
 thinks of their unfeeling bigotry and sottish uncon- 
 cern : when he thinks of their sand-like fickleness and 
 light-hearted levity. — 
 
 When he thinks of the numberless questions that 
 are often gravely put, and of the questioner, in con- 
 temptuous indifference, disappearing when about to 
 receive a reply : when he thinks of the speculative ob- 
 jections, whose far-fetched fancifulness demonstrates 
 how little the value or importance of his message is ap- 
 preciated : when he thinks of the cold and subtile 
 reasonings, which are opposed to the most earnest and 
 impassioned address : when he thinks of the caballing 
 sophistry, with which the most momentous subjects are 
 entangled, merely to afford play and pastime to an idly 
 curious set of theorists : wdien he thinks of all these 
 questions, objections, reasonings, and sophisms, being, 
 day after day, reiterated in endless, profitless, succes- 
 sion, — apparently annihilating all attempts at laying 
 the foundation-stone of a Christian temple in these 
 benighted lands, as effectually as the fire-balls, con- 
 stantly issuing from the groxmd, blasted all the Imperial 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 1 57 
 
 efforts to rebuild the Jewish temple on Mount Zion, in 
 Jerusalem. — 
 
 When he thinks how nought seems to strike his 
 eyes but temples, and idols, and offerings, and pro- 
 cessions, — and how often he has looked on, in bitter- 
 ness of spirit, and wept : w^hen he thinks how nought 
 seems to reach his ears but the songs, and the cries, 
 and the music, and the praying repetitions of deluded 
 votaries, — and how often he has listened, in sober sad- 
 ness, and sighed : Avhen he thinks how often he has 
 attempted, and attempted in vain, to escape from spec- 
 tacles and sounds, that beset him wherever he moves, 
 as if the very ground on which he trode, and the very 
 atmosphere which he inhaled, were tainted with the 
 breath of idolatrous abomination. — 
 
 When he thinks of the thousands rushing on blind- 
 fold to the lake that burneth, and of one and another 
 taking the last and awful plunge — thousands, who have 
 set at nought all his counsel, and would none of his re- 
 proof : when he thinks of the scorn and the derision of 
 the profane, more difficult far to be endured, than the 
 onslaught of an armed host : when he thinks of the 
 shouts of blasphemy, which have pierced his soul, like 
 daggers plunged into the bosom of his well-beloved : 
 when he thinks how argument, and entreaty, and 
 expostulation have hitherto been lost — how the thun- 
 ders of Heaven's law, and the melting invitations of 
 Heavens love, have been exhausted in vain : when he 
 thinks how the blindness of their minds, the hardness 
 of their hearts, and the searedness of their consciences 
 
158 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 are such, that he might as well expect, by his preach- 
 ing, to enlighten, or soften, or quicken them, as ex- 
 pect that the tomb-stones would shake, or the still 
 earth be imbued with motion, or the clay-cold corpse 
 awaken into life, or the pale and mouldering eye-balls 
 sparkle with vivacity, were he to go forth and pro- 
 claim the glad tidings among the solitary chambers of 
 the dead. — 
 
 Oh, it is, when all these thoughts, impressions, and 
 experiences, come rushing through the soul with a vio- 
 lence, of which the hurricane is but a feeble emblem; — 
 it is then, that the faithful missionary would tell you, 
 with an anguish of spirit bordering on agony ; and tell 
 you, amid floods of tears, that his chiefest, his acutest 
 trials, have little or nothing to do with mere physical 
 suffering ! 
 
 It is at such a time too, when the whole head is 
 sick, and the whole heart faint, that, not merely the 
 sincerity, but the strength of the missionary's piety, 
 — ^not merely the reality, but the power of his faith, — 
 not merely the manifestation, but the stability of his 
 devotedness, are put to the severest test. If he has 
 mistaken head knowledge for a hearty faith — the im- 
 pulse of animal fervour for Christian principle — natu- 
 ral sensibility for the love of Christ and of souls — 
 compliance with the expressed wishes of missionary 
 friends for the spontaneous obedience of the renewed 
 will : — If the fascinations of novelty, or a fondness for 
 strange scenes, — the love of notoriety, or the desire 
 of human applause, — dissatisfaction with the settled 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 1 59 
 
 routine of home duties, or the drudgery of a secular 
 profession, — a restless ambition for discovery, or a 
 thirst for adventure, — the vivid stirrings of a romantic 
 fancy, or the transient motions of a poetic sentimen 
 talism : — If one, or all, of such mistakes and impressions 
 have conspired towards the original decision in favour 
 of labour in foreign lands, how must they be swept 
 away in the hour of sifting trial, like withered leaves 
 before the gales of autumn ! — Then, will all the visions 
 of poetry, all the dreams of romance, and all the 
 squeamish charity of sentimentahsm, prove but as 
 wood, hay, and stubble, before the consuming fire ! — 
 Then, will it be found that nothing can endure, but 
 the constraining love of a bleeding Saviour flowing in 
 compassion for lost souls, — the imyielding sternness 
 of Divine grace under an overpowering sense of duty 
 towards God, — and the more than mortal strength of 
 undivided faith in the Redeemer's promises ! 
 
 VIII. But who, you will be ready to ask, my 
 brother, mth a greater missionary, " Who is sufficient 
 for these things ? " Who is sufficient ? We at once 
 reply. The man who feels most strongly his own utter , 
 insufficiency, and who trusts most absolutely to the i 
 all-sufficiency of God. 
 
 And, though already repeatedly alluded to, this 
 naturally leads us once more, in conclusion, to re- 
 mind you of the indispensable necessity of the Holy 
 Spirit's agency towards the real success of all your 
 labours for the conviction and conversion of sinners ; 
 
160 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 and tlie absolute dependence of all human means on 
 the influence of his grace. Never, never can that grand 
 and all-important truth be too largely or too strong- 
 ly insisted on. Sooner might you attempt, by your 
 own inherent strength, to raise the waters of the great 
 deep, and float your barque over the summits of the 
 lofty mountains, than expect, without the influence 
 of the Holy Spirit, to succeed in converting one soul, 
 by means of reasoning or persuasion, learning or elo- 
 quence, acumen or subtlety, or any other mere human 
 instrumentality. Sooner might you attempt, by your 
 own independent exertion, to empty the ocean, drop 
 by drop, or level the Himalaya, particle by particle, 
 than expect, without the influence of the Holy Spirit, 
 to drain up the fount of corruption in one soul, or 
 demolish the barrier of its natural enmity and opposi- 
 tion to the truth, as it is in Jesus. Sooner might you 
 attempt, by your own unaided efi*orts, to construct 
 and rear a pathway of solid adamant to the skies, 
 and thereby surmount the starry firmament, than ex- 
 pect, without the influence of the Holy Spirit, to 
 succeed in raising one soul from the " horrible pit 
 and the miry clay " of sin, and guilt, and pollution, 
 and causing it to wing its flight, as a regenerated 
 creature, to the heaven of heavens. 
 
 And this grand and solemn trutli you should not 
 merely retain as a fixed idea, or notion, or dogma, in 
 the cold upper region of intellect, but ever carry it about 
 as a practical principle of the renewed heart, — an 
 operative conviction of the enhghtened understanding 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 161 
 
 — a conviction, having all the vividness of a spiritual 
 sense, and all the liveliness of a spiritual emotion. 
 Wherever you are, wherever you go, whatever you 
 attempt to do, towards the conversion of lost sinners, 
 let the impression ever be uppermost in your mind, 
 as a keen and sensible feeling, that you can think 
 nothing: aris^ht — can effect nothins: aris^ht, without the 
 co-operative energy of God's Holy Spirit. 
 
 Oh, my brother ! if you, and I, and all who are 
 invested with the functions of the sacred ministiy, 
 could thus habitually live out of ourselves — thus ha- 
 bitually live in the Spirit — thus habitually feel, as the 
 Spirit's agents ; and our efforts, as the very outstretch- 
 ings of his Almighty arm — then, indeed, would we 
 be apostolic men, and then might Ave expect to be 
 honoured with apostolic success ! But, whether we 
 be the honoured agents or not, oh, let us, when ready 
 to faint, on beholding the heathen in such multi- 
 tudes, still raging against the Lord and his Anointed, 
 and counting the very counsels and messages of the 
 Great Jehovah, as so many idle tales, — Oh, let us re- 
 joice, and be exceeding glad, in the assured hope, 
 that the time is not far distant when the favoured 
 agents shall appear — when the heathen shall be given 
 to the Son as his purchased inheritance, and the utter- 
 most parts of the earth as his purchased possession, 
 — when " his dominions shall extend from sea to sea, 
 and from the river unto the ends of the earth, — when 
 the kings of Tarshish and the isles shall bring pre- 
 sents ; and the kings of Sheba and Se])a shall offer 
 
162 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 gifts ; yea, when all kings shall fall down before 
 Him, and all kindreds shall serve Him ; — when all 
 men shall he blessed in Him, and all nations shall 
 call Him blessed." Precious assurance ! Enchant- 
 ing prospect ! In the grandeur of the scene that 
 opens up to its contemplation, well may the soul 
 be rivetted with admiration, and absorbed in de- 
 light. In the secret pavilion of the Eternal, the God 
 of grace is identified with the God of creation and 
 providence. And, thence, are seen to proceed, in par- 
 allel streams, the two prime analogies in the universe 
 of mind and the universe of matter. As most of the 
 objects of which the latter is composed differ exceed- 
 ingly in their nature, and are obedient to influences 
 inconceivably various ; yet, all of them, suns and 
 planets, with their oceans, and islands, and continents, 
 and all the elementary atoms of which these are con- 
 stituted, are found to yield to that " stupendous 
 energy" which pervades all space, and reaches to the 
 very outskirts of immensity : — So, the minds of men 
 are endlessly diversified in their nature, and submit 
 to the control of the most opposing influences ; but 
 all of them, of whatever hue or constitution, are sub- 
 ject to that irresistible spiritual agency which, in like 
 manner, pervades the moral universe, and maintains 
 it in all its harmony, and which, issuing from the 
 throne of the Eternal, must, at the appointed season, 
 reduce into beauteous order that chaos of confusion 
 which, at present, deforms one province of God's 
 dominions. 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 163 
 
 IX. Arise, then, my brother, and prepare you for 
 the approaching struggle. At a time when nought 
 reaches our ears from the far distant East, but the 
 loud note of warlike tumult, the clashing of arms, and 
 the clangour of trumpets — it well befits you to go 
 forth as a warrior too ! But oh, how different your 
 martial equipment from that of the embattled hosts, 
 whose spears are now gleaming on the sunny banks 
 of our Indian streams. Yours are not the weapons 
 of a carnal warfare. Clad in the whole armour of 
 God, your girdle is the girdle of truth ; your breast- 
 plate, the breastplate of righteousness ; your shield, the 
 shield of faith ; your helmet, the helmet of salvation ; 
 your sword, the sword of the Spirit, which is the 
 Word of God ; your general panoply, the preparation 
 of the Gospel of peace. And oh, how different your 
 respective objects ! Let the marshalled squadrons of 
 Sutlej and of Ind proceed, if they mil, to the sub- 
 jugation of earthly kingdoms, and the reinstatement 
 of fallen dynasties. Be it your's to forward the mighty 
 contest, for the subversion of principalities and powers; 
 the overthrow of the bloody demons of idolatry and 
 superstition ; the destruction of sin, and death, and 
 hell, with all their desolating ravages ; and the restor- 
 ation of forfeited titles and cro^^^lS to millions of the 
 species. Let these iron-hearted warriors pant for the 
 signal, that may cause the voice of lamentation and 
 woe to ascend from many a dwelling. Be it your's, 
 as the messenger of salvation, to proclaim peace on 
 earth, and good will to the children of men. Be it 
 
164 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 your's to hasten on the great year of jubilee, when men 
 shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their 
 spears info pruning hooks, — when nation shall not 
 rise up against nation ; neither shall they learn war 
 any more, — when the beams of charity shall shine in 
 every countenance, and joy spread its smiles and in- 
 fluences in every dwelling, — when peace, friendship, 
 and happiness, shall reign paramount in every land 
 — emblems of what was lost in Eden, earnests of what 
 shall be more than restored in the New Jerusalem. 
 
 In entering on a contest of so unearthly a character, 
 you must know well that you have thereby subjected 
 yourself to the sneers, the contempt, and the ridicule 
 of the men of this world, — that dangers, temptations, 
 and trials, painful to flesh and blood, must be encoun- 
 tered, — yea, that death itself, sudden, untimely death, 
 may be the probable consequence. But, in the midst 
 of all that is dark and frowning, yom- consolation 
 must be, that if you cling unswervingly to the arms of 
 an omnipotent Saviour, he will bestoAv that faith 
 which ever strengthens, that faith which is ever vic- 
 torious. This faith wrought wonders in the times 
 that are past, and is the Lord's hand straitened that 
 it may not work wonders still ? In the times that are 
 past, faith made the people of God gloriously to 
 triumph in the midst of cruel mockings and fiery per- 
 secutions, — and in the death of martjTS, it gained 
 many a victory more glorious still. To the eye of 
 sense, nought more dreary, more dismal, more horrific, 
 than the closing scenes of their pilgrimage : but the 
 
CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 165 
 
 eye of faith penetrated the palpable obscure. And 
 where their hell-enkindled adversaries beheld nothing 
 but anguish, and misery, and excruciating torment ; 
 faith beheld the river of pure water, and the tree of 
 life ever blossoming, and the harps of pure gold, and 
 the crown of dazzling brightness, and all the over- 
 powering glories of the New Jerusalem. Faith listen- 
 ed to the hosannahs of angels amid the shouts of in- 
 furiated men. Faith made the scaffold their chariot, 
 and the faggot and the stake their passport to the re- 
 gions of immortal bliss. And is the spirit of these 
 martyrs buried with their mouldering ashes in the 
 sepulchre ? And is the glorious crown awarded them, 
 no longer in reserve for the cold, and careless, and 
 ungrateful Christians of a degenerated age ? 
 
 Arise, my brother, and by your onward career, prove 
 that the seed of these holy Confessors has not yet perish- 
 ed from off this earth, nor from under these heavens. 
 If their death was converted, by the hands of violence, 
 into the sacrifice of bloody martyrdom, let your life 
 be one unintermitted sacrifice in the cause of the Re- 
 deemer, and yours, in readiness and resolution, ^Yi\\ 
 be all the reality and all the reward of essential, 
 though it may be bloodless, martyrdom. Arise, then, 
 my brother, and, as the herald of salvation to distant 
 climes, let your prayer be, that — come life or come 
 death — you may be privileged to breathe the spirit and 
 emulate the conduct of those heroic witnesses, of whom 
 the world was not worthy. Arise, and speed you to 
 the battle field. India, captive India, — still groaning 
 
166 CHARGE AND ADDRESS. 
 
 in her house of bondage, and pavilioned in the shadow 
 of death, — longs to hail you as one of her deliverers. 
 The Church universal on earth, longs to greet you as 
 a valiant son. The Church of the redeemed in hea- 
 ven, longs to salute you, on being encircled with 
 the crown, that ever waits on victory. And oh, that 
 hell from beneath were moved at your going thither, 
 — in foreboding dread of the triumphs over sin and 
 Satan which, through grace, you may be destined to 
 achieve ! 
 
 And now, dearly beloved brother, fare thee w^ell ! 
 
 To the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love 
 of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, we 
 unitedly commend thee. 
 
 May the eternal God be thy refuge ; and under- 
 neath the everlasting arms. 
 
 The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. 
 
 The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be 
 gracious unto thee. 
 
 The Lord lift up his coimtenance upon thee, and 
 give thee peace. 
 
 The Lord be thy helper, and thy shade on thy 
 right hand. 
 
 The Lord preserve thy going out and thy coming 
 in, from this time forth, even for evermore. 
 
ADDRESS TO THE CONGREGATION. 
 
 Friends and Brethren, 
 
 After the protracted services of this day, 
 it were unreasonable to detain you with any lengthened 
 address. Did time permit, it would be seasonable, 
 and might be profitable, to urge the special claims 
 which our newly ordained Brother has on your sym- 
 pathies and your prayers ; as well as the special claims 
 which that great and holy cause, to which his life is 
 devoted, has on your abounding liberality. But, for 
 the present, w^e must forbear. 
 
 One word, however, as to the obligation under which 
 ye are laid to come forward to the rescue of perish- 
 ing millions. "Obligation!" do we hear some cold 
 heart respond ? — " Obhgation ! Under what obhga- 
 tion am I laid in this matter ?" Truly, if by obli- 
 gation be meant a legal obhgation resulting from some 
 statute of the realm, some enactment of the Imperial 
 Legislature, we at once grant that there is none. But 
 we insist upon it that there are other obligations of a 
 higher order than any which flow from acts of earthly 
 Senates, — obligations that spring from ordinances of 
 the Court of heaven, — ^fi-om special mandates of the 
 King of kings. But not to dwell on positive commands 
 
1 68 ADDRESS TO THE CONGREGATION. 
 
 at all, let us at once declare that ye are under a sa- 
 cred and binding moral obligation to contribute to 
 the advancement of the missionary cause. 
 
 Suppose you saw an individual stationed at some 
 distance on an eminence, and past him, rushing to the 
 brink of a precipice, groups of heedless children. You 
 hasten to join in the rescue. But ere you have reached 
 the summit, all is over : the mihappy beings stopped not, 
 till they all tumbled down headlong, and were dashed 
 to pieces in the fall. You turn round and find the 
 stranger still standing where he was, an idle, unmoved, 
 unconcerned spectator. Astonished at such revolting 
 apathy, can you help addressing him : — Why did you 
 not reach forth your hand to arrest the fatal progress ? 
 Why did you not at least raise a loud note of warn- 
 ing ? To such expostulations were he coolly to reply. 
 Oh ! I was under no obligation to reach forth my hand, 
 or raise a note of warning ! Could you stop to ar- 
 gue with such a man ? Impossible. Your indigna- 
 tion, bursting through all restraints, must give vent to 
 itself in expressions of abhorrence. Cruel man that you 
 are ! unworthy of the name of man ! fiend rather in 
 human form ! 
 
 Now, if that word be true, which all that name the 
 name of Jesus profess to make the standard of their 
 faith, is not every Christian specially ordained to be 
 as " a city set upon a hill," to be seen of all — as a 
 light that is kindled, to give light to all — as a 
 watchman that is stationed on some high tower of 
 observation, to sound the Gospel trump of warning to 
 
ADDRESS TO THE CONGREGATION. 169 
 
 all around ? And why all this settmg uj) of notice- 
 a])le objects, this kindling of light, this sounding of 
 trumpets ? Because the same infallible word assures 
 us that crowds of careless, heedless sinners are every- 
 ivhei^e, throughout the tvorld, hunying on with frantic 
 speed to the brink of a precipice, overhanging an 
 abyss, — deep, dark, and bottomless : It is the gulph of 
 perdition ! And will ye, who profess to make that word 
 the standard of your faith and practice, will ye stand 
 idly by, all the while, as unmoved, unconcerned spec- 
 tators ? or will ye, like infidel Cain of old, summon 
 up corn-age in the presence of Omniscience to re- 
 ply, " Am I my brother's keeper ? " — Am I under 
 any obligation to act the part of friend and guardian 
 towards my brethren of mankind, as concerns their 
 immortal interests ? Oh, if ye do thus act, may ye 
 not be justly chargeable with murderous cruelty ; and 
 at the bar of heaven be fomid guilty of the blood of 
 lost souls ? 
 
 From so severe a sentence of condemnation many, 
 we doubt not, will strive to escape. And if ye do, 
 there is always ready at hand a numerous body of 
 reserve, in the form of wretched sophisms, and cun- 
 ning evasions, and artful pretexts, to cover the re- 
 treat. Let us, then, for a moment try to soar beyond 
 the misty atmosphere of subterfuges altogether. Let 
 us transfer ourselves, in spirit, to that solemn scene, 
 where neither the mountains nor the rocks will 
 shelter those who may 7ioiu be heaping up a thousand 
 excuses for neglecting the path of duty. Hark ! the 
 
170 ADDRESS TO THE CONGREGATION, ^ 
 
 knell of creation is sounded. The Judge descends, 
 seated on the great white throne, from whose face the 
 earth and the heaven flee away, and there is found 
 no place for them. And the sea gives up the dead 
 which are in it ; and death and hell deliver up the 
 dead which are in them ; and all the dead, small and 
 great, stand before Him for judgment. And you, 
 let us suppose, have your station on the right hand, 
 among the happy number whose robes do shine so 
 bright, having been washed in the blood of the Lamb. 
 Confronting you, on the left hand, you behold the 
 miserable throng, whose guilty souls are racked with 
 horror, and maddened with despair. And as they 
 eye you, in your transports of joy, they send forth 
 the doleful, agonizing cry : — Ah me, miserable ! — 
 Whither shall we fly ? Backwards, and escape ? we 
 cannot. Downwards, and be crushed beneath tlie 
 rocks and mountains ? we dare not. And must we 
 go forwards to that fiery lake ? Oh, ye British Chris- 
 tians ! ye professed to know that such was destined to 
 be our everlasting doom, and yet, while it was the 
 day of grace, ye would not raise one voice of warning, 
 nor send one messenger to deliver. Could no sorrows 
 touch you ? Could no anguish melt you ? Could no 
 compassions move you ? — that ye should leave us to 
 perish in these flames ! If it were conceivable that, 
 at such a time, and in such a scene^ ye could re- 
 turn, as many of you are ever ready to do noiv^ the 
 cold, chilling answer. Oh, we were imder no obli- 
 gation to raise the voice of warning, or send any 
 
ADDRESS TO THE CONGREGATION. 171 
 
 messenger to deliver. And as the freezing sentence 
 is uttered, ye look upwards to the throne, and be- 
 hold that countenance, beaming with love ineffable, 
 and compassions boundless ; and hear dropping 
 from those sacred lips the piercing words, Was / 
 under any obligation to veil the glories of my God- 
 head, and appear on earth, as the Infant of days, the 
 Bal)e of Bethlehem, the apparent malefactor on the 
 accursed tree, — and all this, to rescue i/oii from the 
 brink of that bottomless perdition which opened 
 up before you with all its dark and fiery horrors ? 
 Oh ! in the hearing of such thrilling strains, we ap- 
 peal and protest in the presence of angels and of men, 
 whether, in the hideous contrast of your own selfish- 
 ness, which such words supplied, ye would not sink 
 doMii, smitten to the dust, as if scathed and blasted 
 by the Almighty's thunder. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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